Certainly such information has value on the open (dark) market, and not only to nation states.
U.S. Treasury breached by hackers backed by foreign government – sources
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Re: U.S. Treasury breached by hackers backed by foreign government – sources
#12Does the US conduct offensive cyber operations like this?
I feel like we never hear about them in the news.
Re: U.S. Treasury breached by hackers backed by foreign government – sources
#13How do they know it was backed by a foreign government? I would immediately suspect China or North Korea but that seems too obvious and a bit of a setup?
I don’t know a lot about how states conduct cyber espionage against one another, but it does feel a bit off to be told that this was the work of a nation state with zero proof as to why.
Re: U.S. Treasury breached by hackers backed by foreign government – sources
#14Does the US conduct offensive cyber operations like this? I feel like we never hear about them in the news.
History is written by the victors, as they say
Re: U.S. Treasury breached by hackers backed by foreign government – sources
#15Does the US conduct offensive cyber operations like this? I feel like we never hear about them in the news.
The United States has admitted to perpetrating coups to get a us-friendly dictator in otherwise democratic societies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2khAmMTAjI
Re: U.S. Treasury breached by hackers backed by foreign government – sources
#16Does the US conduct offensive cyber operations like this? I feel like we never hear about them in the news.
Yes. Stuxnet being the most famous which brought this to more daylight -'cat out of the bag.'
Trump admin also did a press push after changing policy to ramp up digital offense [1]. Notably these stories were obviously is coordinated and on purpose. e.g. not just someone leaker talking to reporter it was strategy.
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/under-tru...
Re: U.S. Treasury breached by hackers backed by foreign government – sources
#17How do they know it was backed by a foreign government? I would immediately suspect China or North Korea but that seems too obvious and a bit of a setup?
Could be just about anyone. Knowing what USA has done, it seems that even this type activity is standard even between "friendly" governments....
Yup. Jon Pollard, for one. He spied for Israel.
Israel certainly has the chops to do something like this, but lots of other "friendly" countries with good geeks wouldn't mind having this kind of info.
Re: U.S. Treasury breached by hackers backed by foreign government – sources
#18It's always a nation state. A great way to increase defence budgets and not have to admit incompetence.
Re: U.S. Treasury breached by hackers backed by foreign government – sources
#19Does the US conduct offensive cyber operations like this? I feel like we never hear about them in the news.
All nations do. It's become very normal. On the surface relations are nice and respectful. But we even spy on our allies behind closed doors. Take the case of Germany, that became public knowledge because of wikileaks. We had Angela Merkel's office wiretapped, among other things[1]. After it became known, they hardly responded past some internal investigations. I think their Senate switched to storing documents offline too. But at this point it isn't something inexcusable. And you can be sure Germany does too[2]. Knowledge is power.
1- https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-usa-spying-idUSKC...
2- https://m.dw.com/en/how-the-uss-cia-and-germanys-bnd-spied-o...
Re: U.S. Treasury breached by hackers backed by foreign government – sources
#20How do they know it was backed by a foreign government? I would immediately suspect China or North Korea but that seems too obvious and a bit of a setup?
I don’t know a lot about how states conduct cyber espionage against one another, but it does feel a bit off to be told that this was the work of a nation state with zero proof as to why.
It worked (a lack of acknowledgement that identities can be spoofed) for the "Russian hackers / disinformation agents" on Twitter meme, it will likely work just as well here.