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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

#71

Post by jjeaff »

delecti wrote: post #47
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).

I had to look up the difference, and I don't think that distinction is something most people are aware of. I've only ever known "nation state" to mean "country", and suspect I'm in the majority. I don't think most people use that term intentionally, because few countries would qualify. That list gets even shorter when you limit it to countries that might be antagonistic to the US, and even shorter when you get to tho…

Ya, I think I consume far beyond the average for political news and had never heard of that distinction until now. I just always equated nation-state to country.

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

#72

Post by keebored »

johndill wrote: post #55

Good thing we have Christopher Krebs, director of the Homeland Security Department's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, on the job......Oh,wait,, Trump fired the guy responsible for defending against just such at attack? Brilliant.

krebs was fired last month (~11/17/20) and per the article:

> Staff emails at the agency were monitored by the hackers for months, sources said.

so krebs was in fact not defending against such an attack?

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

#73

Post by mjburgess »

koreanguy wrote: post #59
seniorivn wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

the Americans are making billions from raytheon, the Saudi coalition. The Obama administration sold weapons to saudi to kill yemen people. greed comes worse from the other side.

he said putin specifically. An oligarch who stole a nation's wealth in a period of mass destabilisation; and is likely the richest person in the world.

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

#74

Post by nathias »

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…

Not all nations, just the bad ones.

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

#75

Post by markdown »

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).

> Iran and Russia

Or Israel. Israel is the nation state that has subverted the US govt more than any other.

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

#76

Post by volkfish55 »

gao8a wrote: post #36
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?

That's a good one! :D

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

#77

Post by tt433 »

young_unixer wrote: post #60
asia92 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually pretty fucked up

It seems like a fair game to me. You can always protect yourself by investing in cyber-security if you don't want to be spied on. It's not like war where innocent people die and a there's a lot of human suffering. It's just a tech race where the nations doing a good job get a deserved advantage without doing direct damage to the population.

Unless someone exacts extensive damage to something like the electrical grid. In which case it would cause mass suffering and death. Don't underestimate the steel trap of that cold war mentality.

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

#78

Post by oceanplexian »

thomascgalvin wrote: post #44
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).

Comptia's Security+ exam refers to countries as "nation states" when it talks about government entities targeting businesses or other governments, and that nomenclature has become commonplace. Sec+ is also a requirement for a lot of government related computer work, so it's not surprising that the guy they interviewed used the term.

Just because an attack originated in a certain place does not mean it was supported by a nation state. For some reason it seems like a large number of security folks don’t understand this. I know lots of intelligent Russian engineers who could easily break into US corporate or government systems or orchestrate a DDoS attack. And if they chose to do so there would be zero legal consequences since they live in Russia and are Russian citizens. Doesn’t mean they are on Putin’s payroll.
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