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U.S. Treasury breached by hackers backed by foreign government – sources

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. Treasury breached by hackers backed by foreign government – sources

#31

Post by asia92 »

southeastern wrote: post #19
Merman_Mike wrote: post #12

Does 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 offli…

This is actually pretty fucked up

Re: U.S. Treasury breached by hackers backed by foreign government – sources

#32

Post by WJW »

asia92 wrote: post #31
southeastern wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 offli…

This is actually pretty fucked up

Welcome to the world :)

Re: U.S. Treasury breached by hackers backed by foreign government – sources

#33

Post by elliekelly »

corytheboyd wrote: post #13
peter_retief wrote: post #2

How 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.

I think sometimes the proof they have isn't proof they're willing to publicly admit they have because they don't want to let on how they know.

After Jamal Khashoggi was assassinated, for example, it turned out audio of the entire murder had been recorded through surveillance. (I'm still not sure we ever found out how exactly it was recorded?) So there were lots of announcements that certain governments "knew" or "suspected" it was Saudi Arabia with little or no substance to back up their claims until the existence of the recording was later leaked.

I think there was similar discussion after MH17 when western governments "knew" Russia-backed rebels had shot down the plane and only later did we learn there was a recording of a conversation about what happened.

I guess even after Snowden governments like to do their best to pretend they don't have the entire world under surveillance at all times.

Re: U.S. Treasury breached by hackers backed by foreign government – sources

#34

Post by xapata »

dan-robertson wrote: post #27

‘Nation state’ is such a stupid term for them to use as two of the usual suspects, Iran and Russia, are not nation states but rather multiethnic states. If they don’t have a clue who it is, it seems unlikely they would rule out these two states specifically and do so in this subtle way. For some reason it is very common amongst people who are interested in cybersecurity (or national security in the US).

Russia may not be currently, but is aspirationally a nation-state.

Re: U.S. Treasury breached by hackers backed by foreign government – sources

#35

Post by cbanek »

"monitoring internal email traffic at the U.S. Treasury Department _and_ an agency that decides internet and telecommunications policy"

That's an interesting way of saying a U.S. organization. Does this mean the NSA? I would have assumed they were talking about the FCC, but why not name them?

Re: U.S. Treasury breached by hackers backed by foreign government – sources

#36

Post by gao8a »

jkelleyrtp wrote: post #3

> The hack involves the NTIA’s office software, Microsoft’s Office 365. Staff emails at the agency were monitored by the hackers for months, sources said. > The hackers are “highly sophisticated” and have been able to trick the Microsoft platform’s authentication controls, according to a person familiar with the incident, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to speak to the press. > “This…

they wanted to restart the print job?

Re: U.S. Treasury breached by hackers backed by foreign government – sources

#37

Post by zebrafish »

corytheboyd wrote: post #13
peter_retief wrote: post #2

How 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.

Don’t they usually have “styles” of intrusion? I’m certain I’ve read in the past where intelligence agencies could differentiate between Russian backed styles of hacking and Chinese backed styles of hacking. I’m sure Americans have their own style of hacking as well.

I would say it’s also quite likely that the US knows who did this or has known who has been doing it for a while. It’s highly unlikely that this press release wasn’t coordinated by the intelligence agencies to play into some advantageous scenario they’ve drawn up.

Re: U.S. Treasury breached by hackers backed by foreign government – sources

#38

Post by seniorivn »

ardit33 wrote: post #23
breakingcups wrote: post #18

It's always a nation state. A great way to increase defence budgets and not have to admit incompetence.

I have seen a couple of corporate hacks (not publicized) who happened to be Russian groups hosted in Syria.... By state 'sponsored' it can mean many things, even if the countries just let them be and some officials get bribed to not do anything. In this case it was in Syria, which is a fundamental mess, but the fact that it was Russian groups and they have military presence there, it is enough to put it 'state sponso…

don't underestimate Putin's greed the very friends who are known to be connected to "private" militias operating in Syria, also own companies making money from all sorts of activities of regular people, like 2% of all regular household transactions goes through their bank etc

Re: U.S. Treasury breached by hackers backed by foreign government – sources

#39

Post by comboy »

asia92 wrote: post #31
southeastern wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 offli…

This is actually pretty fucked up

Is it really? Theoretically with perfect information you don't need to go to war, you can just compute the result and start with treaty negotiations.
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