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Romanian Hackers Infiltrated 65% of DC Outdoor Surveillance Cameras

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Re: Romanian Hackers Infiltrated 65% of DC Outdoor Surveillance Cameras

#71

Post by walrus01 »

3pt14159 wrote: post #10

When I was an irresponsible high school grey hat (2001) I was part of a small group of people that shared exploits. We weren't that talented, but one of the guys in our group was still able to get into the cameras in the parking lot of the CIA. This is the problem with cyber security: Even if you're the most knowledgeable organization on earth you still fuck it up. Any one person can fuck up any one thing and if it i…

> the CIA

this is why anything sensitive is air gapped and inside a SCIF... but good luck getting everyone to adhere to that all of the time. it's a hard problem to solve when people want things to "just work".

Re: Romanian Hackers Infiltrated 65% of DC Outdoor Surveillance Cameras

#72

Post by TeMPOraL »

userbinator wrote: post #59
TeMPOraL wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Torrenting and child porn, I would guess. I remember the slow transition from people using open networks to securing the shit out of them, and there was this big fear that someone could use your network to download copyright-protected and/or illegal material, and it would be tied to your IP.

Indeed, 10-15 years ago in almost any area with a population you could easily find an open network to get onto the Internet when you wanted to. I could check email and lookup some quick things even while riding public transit, without needing mobile data. There was also a grassroots movement of sorts to "share your WiFi", and even a well-known security professional opened his: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2…

I miss them too, though less than I did in the period between when people started locking down Wi-Fi and when mobile data became cheap.

Anyway, this is just yet another example of computing getting worse the more money there is to be made in it from mainstream use.

Re: Romanian Hackers Infiltrated 65% of DC Outdoor Surveillance Cameras

#73

Post by bhk »

juiyout wrote: post #41
amigoingtodie wrote: post #31

It is 65% of outdoor cameras operated by the DC city police, not 65% of all outdoor cameras in DC. That would have been impressive, Person of Interest style.

Yes 65% is a soundbite. Cameras are notoriously easy to break into. I would venture to say those 123 cameras has the same manufacturer and share the same reset instruction.

A false soundbite.

The first sentence of the article has more detail but is still false. Then the second sentence of the article contradicts the first sentence, adding the phrase "of the DC city police". Shall we believe that version?

Re: Romanian Hackers Infiltrated 65% of DC Outdoor Surveillance Cameras

#74

Post by 3pt14159 »

walrus01 wrote: post #71
3pt14159 wrote: post #10

When I was an irresponsible high school grey hat (2001) I was part of a small group of people that shared exploits. We weren't that talented, but one of the guys in our group was still able to get into the cameras in the parking lot of the CIA. This is the problem with cyber security: Even if you're the most knowledgeable organization on earth you still fuck it up. Any one person can fuck up any one thing and if it i…

> the CIA this is why anything sensitive is air gapped and inside a SCIF... but good luck getting everyone to adhere to that all of the time. it's a hard problem to solve when people want things to "just work".

True. Also, the problem with air gaps is that people come to depend on them. According to documents about stuxnet and the Snowden leaks, the CIA has said that air gaps have never stopped them, so why should we think that it's any different?

Also, many places people think are air gapped aren't any more. Think smart lightbulbs and bluetooth worms. A hacked android device that gets too close to the perimeter can infect the lightbulb which infects the next one on and down the chain. If someone networks the control computer for the lights to the same network with the classified files it's lights out.

I think of the internet less of a binary thing these days and more of a spectrum. Things can be "pretty dark" like in the basement of NORAD or "white hot" like the twitter feed of Donald Trump. But twitter still goes down sometimes and data can be exfiltrated in so many ways. What's the baud on opening and closing vents and reading it from space satellites?

Re: Romanian Hackers Infiltrated 65% of DC Outdoor Surveillance Cameras

#75

Post by 3pt14159 »

AFNobody wrote: post #35
3pt14159 wrote: post #10

When I was an irresponsible high school grey hat (2001) I was part of a small group of people that shared exploits. We weren't that talented, but one of the guys in our group was still able to get into the cameras in the parking lot of the CIA. This is the problem with cyber security: Even if you're the most knowledgeable organization on earth you still fuck it up. Any one person can fuck up any one thing and if it i…

> This is the problem with cyber security: Even if you're the most knowledgeable organization on earth you still fuck it up. Any one person can fuck up any one thing and if it isn't part of your predetermined threat vector analysis then it gets through and you lose everything. It isn't just cyber security but surveillance infrastructure in general. If you cultivate a large group of surveillance assets (even people) w…

I disagree with your conclusion, but I think your comment has a ton of truth to it. It's like that meme with the smiling black guy: "You can't write any bugs if you don't write any code."

But the truth is that all the infrastructure for surveillance is going to be built anyway, if not by us then by our enemies or private industry. It's better to accept that it is going to be built and use our resources as best we can to protect the world.

Re: Romanian Hackers Infiltrated 65% of DC Outdoor Surveillance Cameras

#76

Post by nawtacawp »

QAPereo wrote: post #68
gumby wrote: post #54

Much kudos to submitter for using the text-only cnn.io version. Instead of loading a megabyte of executable crud, moving images etc for three paragraphs of text I got...three paragraphs of text!

Thanks, but all credit goes back to HN for turning me onto cnn.io in the first place.

TIL I needed this. -- do you use any other text based sites?

Re: Romanian Hackers Infiltrated 65% of DC Outdoor Surveillance Cameras

#77

Post by 45h34jh53k4j »

kalleboo wrote: post #67
3pt14159 wrote: post #10

When I was an irresponsible high school grey hat (2001) I was part of a small group of people that shared exploits. We weren't that talented, but one of the guys in our group was still able to get into the cameras in the parking lot of the CIA. This is the problem with cyber security: Even if you're the most knowledgeable organization on earth you still fuck it up. Any one person can fuck up any one thing and if it i…

> This is the problem with cyber security This is why I think cryptocurrency is a terrible idea. Even if nobody ever finds a problem with the system itself (unlikely on an infinite timescale), every bank will get hacked at some point, and with no rollbacks it will eventually end in disaster.

but there are so many things that have this 'irreversible' property in the real world. Identities. Secrets. Exploits. Once (hacked) you cant get the genie back in the bottle. I feel this irreversibility is what is of real value in an information economy.

Cryptocurrency is similar. Its 'real', unlike USD/EUR/etc, which are insured. At best its a record in a centralized db.

Please rethink your position on disaster :-) If 2017 is anything to go by, the world is more resilient to disaster than believed.

Re: Romanian Hackers Infiltrated 65% of DC Outdoor Surveillance Cameras

#78

Post by drawnwren »

d33 wrote: post #26
draugadrotten wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> . We weren't that talented, but one of the guys in our group was still able to get into the cameras in the parking lot of the CIA. Well, by now, 16 years later perhaps you will have learned about the concept of honeypots.

How do you imagine a camera honeypot at the CIA parking lot? They'd still be leaking a lot of information if the image was true.

Why do you imagine the CIA parking lot would leak information? Keep in mind the CIA has been fighting an adversary they believe to have significantly infiltrated the US since at least the 30s. Anything that would be leaked by personnel being associated w/ the CIA is probably not done at the building with CIA on the side to begin with.

Re: Romanian Hackers Infiltrated 65% of DC Outdoor Surveillance Cameras

#79

Post by throwaway5665 »

sailfast wrote: post #70
throwaway5665 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this what happened.. the government has very formal hiring procedures, a government employee can’t just send spurious offer letters to foreign nationals.

This is not necessarily the case for organizations that have special hiring authorities and/or contract dollars for use rapidly.

If a hacker reports themself to the CIA, its the government who gets involved, not a contractor.

Re: Romanian Hackers Infiltrated 65% of DC Outdoor Surveillance Cameras

#80

Post by d33 »

drawnwren wrote: post #78
d33 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you imagine a camera honeypot at the CIA parking lot? They'd still be leaking a lot of information if the image was true.

Why do you imagine the CIA parking lot would leak information? Keep in mind the CIA has been fighting an adversary they believe to have significantly infiltrated the US since at least the 30s. Anything that would be leaked by personnel being associated w/ the CIA is probably not done at the building with CIA on the side to begin with.

Metadata. They can't keep everything in check.
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