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The FBI investigating hacking of Covid research by “PRC-affiliated cyber actors”

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Re: The FBI investigating hacking of Covid research by “PRC-affiliated cyber actors”

#101

Post by orbifold »

zaxu wrote: post #97
orbifold wrote: post #37

Just for additional context several super computing sites in Europe were attacked a few weeks ago and are still down, among them PizDaint at CSCS, which ranks 6th in the world, several super computing sites in Germany (FZ Juelich) and so on. I think no-one wishes this to turn into a kinetic war, but for all we know besides the economic warfare that has been going on for quite some time, this feels like we are in an a…

These are crypto mining schemes, though. This looks a lot more like run of the mill money making cybercrime than espionage - I don't think any nation state would be interested in outing themselves for a pittance in bitcoin.

At least according to this incident report https://csirt.egi.eu/academic-data-centers-abused-for-crypto..., one of the two attacks had "unknown purpose". In particular it was not tied to crypto mining.

Re: The FBI investigating hacking of Covid research by “PRC-affiliated cyber actors”

#102

Post by spacephysics »

dheera wrote: post #96

Given today's anti-free-thinker HN climate I'm probably going to get downvoted to oblivion for saying this, but I feel I need to say it. I don't think COVID-19 research should be secretive, I think it should be a global effort, and I'm perfectly happy with the idea of any nation having open access to all COVID-19 research, vaccines, results, and (anonymized) data. There should NOT be a concept of intellectual propert…

Before sanctioning stealing, perhaps the problem is two fold. China wants to have the first vaccine for:

* Becoming the first to market, to try and salvage their reputation

* Using the vaccine as leverage toward the incoming sanctions for violating the Hong Kong treaty during UK handover, as well as the now-declared possible non-peaceful reunification of Taiwan

* monetary gain

* leverage against the US restricting/removing Chinese’s companies from the NASDAQ

I agree research should be open, but it’s hard to say to what degree, and how that might effect the economics of it. Whether we like it or not, capitalistic driven progress requires a reward, and one of the few reasons pharmaceutical companies will take the risk of finding a vaccine is the potential for increased reputation, and being first to market.

Without those incentives, it’s straightforward to not to take a massive monetary risk as others are all working on similar problems, thus the likelihood that your lab will be the first is slim.

Further, the crisis is a worldwide pandemic, but if the rate of natural immunity is as high as some predict, the efficacy of these vaccines may lead to less ‘sales’ than initially expected.

Oxford running out of people to test their vaccine on: https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-05-25/COVID-19-disappearing-...

China report about Taiwan has “peaceful” removed: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-parliament-taiwan/c...

China breaking the handover treaty: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/05/ch...

Re: The FBI investigating hacking of Covid research by “PRC-affiliated cyber actors”

#103

Post by zaxu »

orbifold wrote: post #101
zaxu wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are crypto mining schemes, though. This looks a lot more like run of the mill money making cybercrime than espionage - I don't think any nation state would be interested in outing themselves for a pittance in bitcoin.

At least according to this incident report https://csirt.egi.eu/academic-data-centers-abused-for-crypto... , one of the two attacks had "unknown purpose". In particular it was not tied to crypto mining.

From the site you linked, the one with "unknown" motive has exclusively attacked Chinese academic victims. It would be extremely bizarre to suggest that the Chinese government is behind this.

Re: The FBI investigating hacking of Covid research by “PRC-affiliated cyber actors”

#104

Post by [deleted] »

tree3 wrote: post #54
elliekelly wrote: post #3

I appreciate that there’s probably a lot I don’t know or understand about the national security aspects of this but it seems wrong to not share as much information as possible with as many researchers as possible in order to help as many as people as possible. Protecting security interests is one thing but this press release specifically mentions protecting intellectual property and that seems kind of tone deaf. I al…

Anytime the CCP does something bad, there's always someone like you to downplay it in the comments...

[deleted]

Re: The FBI investigating hacking of Covid research by “PRC-affiliated cyber actors”

#105

Post by fpgaminer »

Reelin wrote: post #94
orbifold wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well this is clearly a hostile act during a time in which several European countries have declared medical emergencies. They were not just "attacked" but have been completely offline for almost two weeks now ( https://www.hpcwire.com/2020/05/18/hacking-streak-forces-eur... ). In Germany it is (incident was 15.05) - NEMO (Freiburg) - bwUniCluster 2.0 and ForHLR II (Karlsruhe) - Hawk (Stuttgart) - Leibniz Supercomputin…

> this is clearly a hostile act That's not my reading of the article you linked. A bad actor compromised the credentials of multiple researchers with access to various supercomputers (over some unknown or at least unspecified period of time). They then simultaneously accessed the compromised machines and installed cryptocurrency mining software on them. This could easily be profit motivated (as it appears). It could…

Also the article mentions that Chinese researchers had access to the clusters as well. So the GP's implication is that the PRC attacked these datacenters ... to stop their own research?

Seems more likely that more people are using/accessing these services, and people's guards are down, which made it easier for intruders to get in.

Re: The FBI investigating hacking of Covid research by “PRC-affiliated cyber actors”

#106

Post by orbifold »

Reelin wrote: post #94
orbifold wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well this is clearly a hostile act during a time in which several European countries have declared medical emergencies. They were not just "attacked" but have been completely offline for almost two weeks now ( https://www.hpcwire.com/2020/05/18/hacking-streak-forces-eur... ). In Germany it is (incident was 15.05) - NEMO (Freiburg) - bwUniCluster 2.0 and ForHLR II (Karlsruhe) - Hawk (Stuttgart) - Leibniz Supercomputin…

> this is clearly a hostile act That's not my reading of the article you linked. A bad actor compromised the credentials of multiple researchers with access to various supercomputers (over some unknown or at least unspecified period of time). They then simultaneously accessed the compromised machines and installed cryptocurrency mining software on them. This could easily be profit motivated (as it appears). It could…

Well there were two incidents (https://csirt.egi.eu/academic-data-centers-abused-for-crypto...) one of which had "unknown purpose". It had the real effect of disrupting the majority of the super computing infrastructure in Switzerland and Germany for almost two weeks now. The attacks originated from China (Shanghai Jiao Tong University and CSTNET).

Re: The FBI investigating hacking of Covid research by “PRC-affiliated cyber actors”

#107

Post by zaxu »

zaxu wrote: post #103
orbifold wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least according to this incident report https://csirt.egi.eu/academic-data-centers-abused-for-crypto... , one of the two attacks had "unknown purpose". In particular it was not tied to crypto mining.

From the site you linked, the one with "unknown" motive has exclusively attacked Chinese academic victims. It would be extremely bizarre to suggest that the Chinese government is behind this.

Ah, I misread the table. This is very suggestive, then.

Re: The FBI investigating hacking of Covid research by “PRC-affiliated cyber actors”

#108

Post by orbifold »

zaxu wrote: post #103
orbifold wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least according to this incident report https://csirt.egi.eu/academic-data-centers-abused-for-crypto... , one of the two attacks had "unknown purpose". In particular it was not tied to crypto mining.

From the site you linked, the one with "unknown" motive has exclusively attacked Chinese academic victims. It would be extremely bizarre to suggest that the Chinese government is behind this.

The second one is the attack that spread all the way to a basement HPC cluster in the Physics Institute at LMU Munich, the IP addresses listed are indicators to look for that your system might be compromised, not the victims of the attack.

Re: The FBI investigating hacking of Covid research by “PRC-affiliated cyber actors”

#109

Post by free_rms »

jorblumesea wrote: post #87
free_rms wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Compared to the CCP, it's fairly benign It would take a book-length treatment to evaluate that sentence, but I don't think it's justified. We've been VERY active, around the whole world, since WWII. China's only started to look past their immediate neighbors recently. I guess 'benign' can do a lot of work for you if you think we're the protagonists of history.

I don't think anyone would ever argue that the West isn't active or that they've never done anything wrong. Obviously there are huge wikipedia articles and hundreds of books on the subject. But from what it seems of what little we know of that world, the US seems to have some kind of value system, and the CCP has almost none. Freedom of speech is a good example. If the US were to spy on a citizen, they wouldn't end u…

Oof, Korea? Bad example.

We spent 4 years fighting, with 3 million casualties, in order to leave the border between north/south in the same place we found it, and install an allied dictatorship for the following 30 years. I guess it worked out eventually, but that's to the credit of the Koreans, not us. We were fine with a capitalist dictatorship as long as the Cold War was on.

Did you ever hear about this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwangju_Uprising

Thousands of protestors killed, by US weapons, while our defense dept was kept in the loop. And I had never even heard of it until I went to fact-check myself about the length of the dictatorship there. Funny. I wonder why.

Re: The FBI investigating hacking of Covid research by “PRC-affiliated cyber actors”

#110

Post by pengaru »

orbifold wrote: post #37

Just for additional context several super computing sites in Europe were attacked a few weeks ago and are still down, among them PizDaint at CSCS, which ranks 6th in the world, several super computing sites in Germany (FZ Juelich) and so on. I think no-one wishes this to turn into a kinetic war, but for all we know besides the economic warfare that has been going on for quite some time, this feels like we are in an a…

I'm not under the impression that non-military research and academic computing facilities are particularly well secured.

Decades ago I spent a bunch of time around fnal.gov with a buddy who worked there, and they were debating the requirement of every computer, including desktops, having a static, public IPv4 address. Nobody wanted to be behind a firewall in the name of open, collaborative research.

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