301–310 of 623 posts
What exactly is a 'payment server' in terms of a crypto wallet? Surely, they're not storing their bitcoin keys on some aws linux box are they?
It was a mistake to attack the business side of the oil company, because it created what could be sold as reasonable doubt to shut down the pipeline. As a result, the ransom had the optics of an attack on infrastructure. As evidenced by the coverage of Americans desperately filling up containers. This created the impetus for the US to treat this as an incident far and above the ambient ransomware activities leading u…
The fact that their coins were apparently easily stolen also debunks another favourite talking point of the crypto people that it secures your money from government access. Clearly, ways and means have been developed to do just that if necessary.
It just demonstrates that they're incompetent.
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It's not possible to bring "extraordinary" evidence of a 3 letter agency doing this kind of shit the way some HN user would want without ending up as a political prisoner somewhere learning all about the meaning of the word "pain". Never-the-less, I have no doubt that FSB operatives are allowed to moonlight.
The United States Department of Justice has not exactly been shy about charging operatives of foreign governments for their illegal activities online (e.g. OlympicDestroyer, Solarigate). As far as I've been able to determine, neither their prosecutors nor the FBI agents doing the investigating have had the problems you so colorfully describe. If it were the case that this type of moonlighting was happening, I think t…
During the conspiracy, the FSB officers facilitated Belan’s other criminal activities, by providing him with sensitive FSB law enforcement and intelligence information that would have helped him avoid detection by U.S. and other law enforcement agencies outside Russia, including information regarding FSB investigations of computer hacking and FSB techniques for identifying criminal hackers. Additionally, while working with his FSB conspirators to compromise Yahoo’s network and its users, Belan used his access to steal financial information such as gift card and credit card numbers from webmail accounts; to gain access to more than 30 million accounts whose contacts were then stolen to facilitate a spam campaign; and to earn commissions from fraudulently redirecting a subset of Yahoo’s search engine traffic.
Here's what the Treasury had to say about it in April [2]:
To bolster its malicious cyber operations, the FSB cultivates and co-opts criminal hackers, including the previously designated Evil Corp, enabling them to engage in disruptive ransomware attacks and phishing campaigns.
More about Evil Corp etc in [3].
[1] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-charges-russian-fsb-office...
[2] https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0127
[3] https://apnews.com/article/business-technology-general-news-...
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If you anger a sufficiently powerful nation-state, you should assume all options are on the table for recovering you, your hard drives, and your keys.
The hiding crypto from government entails im large part avoiding taxes, yet it seems like the government does not do much to recover lost taxes on current schemes such as fiscal paradises and so on. I doubt the governemnt would go as far as locating a harddrive, seizing it just for tax purposes. Something else must raise their flags for them to go that route. Also this route is very hit and miss in my oppinion and on…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have any extraordinary evidence for these extraordinary claims?
It's pretty clear that the Russian Gov is not actively prosecuting cyber criminals, provided they attack foreign competition. On top of that, there is a fair amount of forensic data indicating shared resources between hacker groups and GRU operatives.
Go on
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Terrorism is a non-state use of violence for political aims. Ransomware is non-state, not violent, and is done for economic, not political aims.
> non-state > economic, not political There’s a well known phenonenom of a certain large nation harbouring cybercrime gangs and keeping them on the government leash. Their economic activity benefits the governments political agenda. Ergo all conditions are true.
That doesn't mean that the large, developed nations in question are engaging in organized crime.
Taking advantage of regulatory arbitrage does not mean that their government is in collusion with them.
If it did, then we could pile a lot of crimes at the feet of Western governments. Some mining firm violently puts down a strike in Central America? Clearly, we can conclude that Canada/the US is engaging in terrorism! [1]
[1] https://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?... [2]
[2] 28 Canadian companies, 44 deaths, 30 of which were targeted extra-judicial killings. Are we going to lay those at the feet of Parliament, too? [3]
[3] Or do we have one set of standards for Russia, and another for our own behaviour?
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If you store your coins on a hard drive there's nothing the government can do to get them right? They would need your private key and your hard drive?
Opinions are my own. There is something called the "gun test". The crypto on an encrypted hard drive is not more secure than the gold bars in a locked safe. Its security is a function of how the secret holder response to gun-on-their-head events. In this case, since the government is directly involved (and angry), a lot of criminals may pick personal safety over assets. Frankly, I think a large portion of cryptocurre…
It's very hard to do this with gold.
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If you store your coins on a hard drive there's nothing the government can do to get them right? They would need your private key and your hard drive?
Opinions are my own. There is something called the "gun test". The crypto on an encrypted hard drive is not more secure than the gold bars in a locked safe. Its security is a function of how the secret holder response to gun-on-their-head events. In this case, since the government is directly involved (and angry), a lot of criminals may pick personal safety over assets. Frankly, I think a large portion of cryptocurre…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Opinions are my own. There is something called the "gun test". The crypto on an encrypted hard drive is not more secure than the gold bars in a locked safe. Its security is a function of how the secret holder response to gun-on-their-head events. In this case, since the government is directly involved (and angry), a lot of criminals may pick personal safety over assets. Frankly, I think a large portion of cryptocurre…
While I tend to agree with your argument, there is a difference: crypto is safe if no one knows it exists, or rather no one can link ownership to owner. It's very hard to do this with gold.