US companies hit by 'colossal' cyber-attack

Post by ackbar03 » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 6:44 AM UTC

jiggawatts wrote: post #4

I never quite understood why these ransom-ware attackers restrict themselves to a small subset of the MSP's clients. E.g.: The SolarWinds attack affected only something like 1% of their customers, when it could easily have been 50% or more! If you're evil and out for money, wouldn't you want to cast the widest net possible? Similarly, by encrypting a huge number of corporations concurrently, you'd "exhaust" the abili…

Post by coolspot » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 6:51 AM UTC

nuker wrote: post #44

jiggawatts wrote: post #4

I never quite understood why these ransom-ware attackers restrict themselves to a small subset of the MSP's clients. E.g.: The SolarWinds attack affected only something like 1% of their customers, when it could easily have been 50% or more! If you're evil and out for money, wouldn't you want to cast the widest net possible? Similarly, by encrypting a huge number of corporations concurrently, you'd "exhaust" the abili…

> The SolarWinds attack affected only something like 1% of their customers, when it could easily have been 50% or more! If it was me (it was not), I’d use it to gain persistance in companies like Kaseya, extending my beachhead as first priority. After that is basically game over, cleaning it would take making new IT systems from scratch. And lets not forget firmware…

Post by coolspot » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 6:59 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #71

zaroth wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there are plenty of zero-days the NSA can deploy if you step out of your lane. It’s as much a political game at this point as anything. If anyone thinks they can hide behind cryptocurrency and hold truly strategic companies hostage they are deluding themselves. They’ll either end up hacked beyond their wildest imagination or facing literal hellfires. It’s brinkmanship. When the devs literally die, they think…

At some point, some nation-state will get annoyed enough to do something drastic. That's what ended state-sponsored terrorism. Or even a company. Uber's security chief once became annoyed with an attack from Nigeria. They traced the attack to an Internet cafe and sent some "lawyers" to talk to the attacker. Someone tried a ransomware attack on the Teamsters Union in 2019.[1] The FBI advised them to pay. The Teamsters…

Post by puranjay » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 7:06 AM UTC

lurquer wrote: post #84

runawaybottle wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without crypto, would it be impossible to extract cash from a company? What is the current mechanism used to get funds that the FBI can’t track down? Wire the money to a jurisdiction mostly out of our sphere of influence.

More difficult, but feasible. One way is to demand that a smaller amount of money be wired to 1,000 accounts throughout the world. You — the bad guy - own merely one of them. Difficult to trace them all before you empty your particular account.

Post by test_epsilon » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 7:12 AM UTC

FractalHQ wrote: post #93

test_epsilon wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a tiresome, meaningless religious mantra nowadays. Yes there is corruption. No not everybody is corrupt. No it does not only exist in USA nor is USA anywhere near the worst. No you can't blame anything and everything you don't like on corruption and greed.

Perhaps, but of all the leading developed nations on Earth, the US has a particularly corrupt government that sells itself to the highest bidder thanks to Citizens United and armies of lobbyists. Our healthcare, prison, and student loan systems, for example, prey on US citizens without repercussions at lengths that don’t fly in most developed countries. I think it’s safe to say that corruption and greed are at the ro…