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DuQu Mystery Language Solved With the Help of Crowdsourcing

wired.com

1–10 of 37 posts

Re: DuQu Mystery Language Solved With the Help of Crowdsourcing

#2
Well we already know that crowdsourcing works for funding---that it works for coding is no surprise. The folks over in Bio have learned that lesson. All of which makes me wonder about a future (at least to me) formal mechanism to allow projects to adopt crowds as part of their overall coding methods. Parsing the useful from the cruft might be a pain, but it seems like it might well be worth it depending on the need and circumstances.

Re: DuQu Mystery Language Solved With the Help of Crowdsourcing

#3
HN's previous speculation: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3682280

As for this Wired article, feel free to stop reading after:

> A custom framework allowed DuQu’s authors to meld C code with object-oriented programming.

The rest is just Costin Raiu spewing bullshit.

Re: DuQu Mystery Language Solved With the Help of Crowdsourcing

#4
I actually found myself disappointed that it turned out to be something as pedestrian as C on Visual Studio - I thought (hoped?) it would be something really obscure and exotic.

I confess that I'm tickled silly by the whole mystery of Stuxnet. It must have been a fascinating project to work on.

Re: DuQu Mystery Language Solved With the Help of Crowdsourcing

#5
post #3

HN's previous speculation: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3682280 As for this Wired article, feel free to stop reading after: > A custom framework allowed DuQu’s authors to meld C code with object-oriented programming. The rest is just Costin Raiu spewing bullshit.

http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2012/Mar/78

The FD discussion, if you're interested :)

Re: DuQu Mystery Language Solved With the Help of Crowdsourcing

#6
Igor's comment on Reddit referenced in the article:

  [–]igor_sk 8 points 9 days ago
  They're wrong, or, rather, they did not express their 
  thinking well. They do add "It is possible that its authors 
  used an in-house framework to generate intermediary C code" 
  [which was then compiled with MSVC], and this, I think was 
  exactly the case. I even found something that matches very 
  closely after a hint over at /r/ReverseEngineering: Simple 
  Object Orientation (for C).
My comment on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3682531

Just saying.. :)

Re: DuQu Mystery Language Solved With the Help of Crowdsourcing

#8

Igor's comment on Reddit referenced in the article: [–]igor_sk 8 points 9 days ago They're wrong, or, rather, they did not express their thinking well. They do add "It is possible that its authors used an in-house framework to generate intermediary C code" [which was then compiled with MSVC], and this, I think was exactly the case. I even found something that matches very closely after a hint over at /r/ReverseEngine…

In context: https://pay.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/qnyy9/duqu_tro...

Re: DuQu Mystery Language Solved With the Help of Crowdsourcing

#9
post #3

HN's previous speculation: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3682280 As for this Wired article, feel free to stop reading after: > A custom framework allowed DuQu’s authors to meld C code with object-oriented programming. The rest is just Costin Raiu spewing bullshit.

Eugene Kaspersky's twitter comment seemed a lot more speculative than anything I heard Costin Raiu say. Exact quote:

"The mystery of #Duqu framework http://bit.ly/w5BrzP I don't even do much programming and I was immediately wondering "wtf?" at that statement. The idea of developing a new programming language just to create a worm seemed far fetched, to say the least. He also mentions, as if it were fact despite that I've seen no hard evidence supporting it, that DuQu was created by a nation state. The whole thing just reeked of alarmist cyberwar nonsense.

Re: DuQu Mystery Language Solved With the Help of Crowdsourcing

#10
post #3

HN's previous speculation: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3682280 As for this Wired article, feel free to stop reading after: > A custom framework allowed DuQu’s authors to meld C code with object-oriented programming. The rest is just Costin Raiu spewing bullshit.

Eugene Kaspersky's twitter comment seemed a lot more speculative than anything I heard Costin Raiu say. Exact quote: "The mystery of #Duqu framework http://bit.ly/w5BrzP I don't even do much programming and I was immediately wondering "wtf?" at that statement. The idea of developing a new programming language just to create a worm seemed far fetched, to say the least. He also mentions, as if it were fact despite that…

While I agree that it is reasonable to expect trending towards an alarmist reaction, there are significant enough similarities between DuQu and Stuxnet to suggest that the authors of the former had access to the source code of the latter. If you read the W32.Stuxnet Dossier (http://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/enterprise/media/secur...) from Symantec it pretty objectively articulates the complexity and sophistication of the creation of Stuxnet. I personally don't think it's an alarmist opinion to believe Stuxnet had national interest behind it, and so am pretty wary of DuQu until more information is uncovered.
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