WADA Confirms Attack by Russian Cyber Espionage Group • Hacker News Board

Re: WADA Confirms Attack by Russian Cyber Espionage Group

#51

Post by mulmen » Tue, Sep 13, 2016, 9:14 PM UTC

ezhik_ wrote: post #42

bsder wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why the hell US government, US media and pro-US organizations (ex. WADA) says that the Russian government was behind all hacking attacks in the last 6 month (maybe year or even more)? It sounds like a broken joke from 60s... You are likely on solid ground accusing the US government of using Russia as an excuse. When you accuse WADA of being "pro-US"; however, you lose all your credibility.

Probably you should read a data, leaked from WADA about US sportsmen and the drugs they used before talking about my credibility.

Can you provide this data to enlighten the rest of us?

Re: WADA Confirms Attack by Russian Cyber Espionage Group

#52

Post by tptacek » Tue, Sep 13, 2016, 9:14 PM UTC

dunkelheit wrote: post #50

tptacek wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an industry of reputable, large scale businesses that do attribution work. Generally, if you see attack attributions written up in major news outlets, one or more of them have concurred on the attribution. For instance: the HRC/DNC attribution started with CrowdStrike (whose executive team is not exactly HRC-friendly), and concurrences were later released by some of CrowdStrike's competitors. Attribution is…

So, what are the most common methods for this?

Extremely large scale instrumentation of endpoints and networks that unpack and fingerprint every transmitted executable across a decent sized fraction of the whole planet.

Attack tools are deployed cliquishly, and different groups have different tradecraft; they leave fingerprints.

Re: WADA Confirms Attack by Russian Cyber Espionage Group

#53

Post by s_q_b » Tue, Sep 13, 2016, 9:15 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #39

kushti wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What government and who are the "consultants" ?

There is an industry of reputable, large scale businesses that do attribution work. Generally, if you see attack attributions written up in major news outlets, one or more of them have concurred on the attribution. For instance: the HRC/DNC attribution started with CrowdStrike (whose executive team is not exactly HRC-friendly), and concurrences were later released by some of CrowdStrike's competitors. Attribution is…

This particular APT is also not exactly subtle. Their attacks appear to be political maneuverings that the Russians want the American security establishment, which includes many reputable attribution analysts, to recognize as Russian activities.

Re: WADA Confirms Attack by Russian Cyber Espionage Group

#54

Post by gaius » Tue, Sep 13, 2016, 9:18 PM UTC

conistonwater wrote: post #38

> “This is just the tip of the iceberg,” a statement posted to the Fancy Bears site said. “Today’s sport is truly contaminated while the world is unaware of the large number of American doping athletes.” What's up with hackers and their English grammar? Shouldn't it be doping American athletes ? This reminds of the adjective-word-order rule and Tolkien's "green great dragons" story. [1] [1] http://languagelog.ldc.upe…

I'll wager their English is better than your Russian.

Re: WADA Confirms Attack by Russian Cyber Espionage Group

#55

Post by supergirl » Tue, Sep 13, 2016, 9:19 PM UTC

conistonwater wrote: post #46

supergirl wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean? That statement was made by Olivier Niggli, Director General, WADA

They are not the organization that conducted the investigation.

You didn't get me. In this post they say the attack originated in Russia. I hope you don't think that automatically means the government did it. In any case, wada does not explicitly accuse the government. But still they give that condescending statement, as if Russia now has to become a country without criminals to win trust back. I think it is telling of their bias.

Re: WADA Confirms Attack by Russian Cyber Espionage Group

#56

Post by threeseed » Tue, Sep 13, 2016, 9:21 PM UTC

supergirl wrote: post #40

> Let it be known that these criminal acts are greatly compromising the effort by the global anti-doping community to re-establish trust in Russia Seems like they imply the Russian state is behind this but they don't explicitly say it, probably because they have no proof, as always. What trust do I have in WADA when they clearly have a bias against Russia?

WADA doesn't have a particular bias against Russia. It's undisputed that there was state supported and sanctioned doping regimes that athletes were full aware of.

If anything WADA and the IOC have been far too lenient with Russia given the extent of evidence.

Re: WADA Confirms Attack by Russian Cyber Espionage Group

#57

Post by linkregister » Tue, Sep 13, 2016, 9:22 PM UTC

criley2 wrote: post #10

helloworld wrote: post #6

Sadly, I conclude that devices connected to the Internet are irremediably insecure. Air-gap it or lose it, I guess.

Digital is dangerous. There's a reason why the Kremlin switched back to typewriters.

The news stories from 2013 were amusing and compelling but all the articles reference an order of about a hundred typewriters. This implies an amazing level of productivity by Russian bureaucrats or that the typewriter order was not sufficient for their needs.

Re: WADA Confirms Attack by Russian Cyber Espionage Group

#58

Post by supergirl » Tue, Sep 13, 2016, 9:23 PM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #56

supergirl wrote: post #40

> Let it be known that these criminal acts are greatly compromising the effort by the global anti-doping community to re-establish trust in Russia Seems like they imply the Russian state is behind this but they don't explicitly say it, probably because they have no proof, as always. What trust do I have in WADA when they clearly have a bias against Russia?

WADA doesn't have a particular bias against Russia. It's undisputed that there was state supported and sanctioned doping regimes that athletes were full aware of. If anything WADA and the IOC have been far too lenient with Russia given the extent of evidence.

Well Russia disputes it. But anyway, let's stay on the current topic

Re: WADA Confirms Attack by Russian Cyber Espionage Group

#59

Post by threeseed » Tue, Sep 13, 2016, 9:24 PM UTC

supergirl wrote: post #55

conistonwater wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not the organization that conducted the investigation.

You didn't get me. In this post they say the attack originated in Russia. I hope you don't think that automatically means the government did it. In any case, wada does not explicitly accuse the government. But still they give that condescending statement, as if Russia now has to become a country without criminals to win trust back. I think it is telling of their bias.

The extent of doping in Russia was far beyond anything seen elsewhere. So yes when you have a complete collapse in trust in a country they will have to earn their way back.

Re: WADA Confirms Attack by Russian Cyber Espionage Group

#60

Post by threeseed » Tue, Sep 13, 2016, 9:28 PM UTC

Taek wrote: post #13

helloworld wrote: post #6

Sadly, I conclude that devices connected to the Internet are irremediably insecure. Air-gap it or lose it, I guess.

That is ultimately too pessimistic. Security is a gradient, and there's a lot you can do make yourself both a smaller target, and a harder target. Compartmentalization is one of the strongest defense tools we have. For example, with the icloud leaks an attacker was able to gain access to all the data in a single strike. If it's true that Apple can no longer decrypt user's icloud data, an attacker now needs to hack pe…

Unless I am mistaken iCloud wasn't compromised.

There was an issue with allowing brute force attacks which was fixed. But all the publicised hacks were to do with individual accounts being compromised.