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Winnti: Hackers attacking the heart of German industry

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Re: Winnti: Hackers attacking the heart of German industry

#21

Post by hakantan »

sparkling wrote: post #12
akuji1993 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really sure what is so obnoxious about this. The whole article is made up like the NYTimes interactive articles are. Quite a high design standard to compare to and they're doing pretty well. No idea what you are talking about.

> The whole article is made up like the NYTimes interactive articles are. Not him, but for me: yes and thats the problem. I don't need Infotainment wrapped, information wrapped in some storytelling timeline with broken scrolling. Just give me a well done article without the nonsense, Jesus. These animation, hex code dumps etc. add ZERO value to the article.

Hi. One of the author(s) of the article here. The plain article with information-only is over here: https://www.tagesschau.de/investigativ/ndr/winnti-101.html

We released a longer version, because we do hear very often that people don't understand how these intrusions are actually working. Also, we tried to show the scale.

-> both long form and shorter version

hope that helps.

Re: Winnti: Hackers attacking the heart of German industry

#22

Post by mbeex »

mschuster91 wrote: post #17
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany's tech illiteracy is a self-inflicted consequence of its pitiful salaries in this field, treating IT like a cost center that has to be outsourced to wherever is cheaper and companies' tradition of rewarding management incompetence over technical competence. Consequently, Germany's most brilliant tech minds leave for The Valley, Zurich or London. You reap what you sow.

> treating IT like a cost center that has to be outsourced to wherever is cheaper As if outsourcing wasn't a common trend across Western companies "thanks" to globalization and the utter dominance of US-american neoliberalism. > and companies' tradition of rewarding management incompetence over technical competence Again, quite common - the "old" Soziale Marktwirtschaft moguls with decades-long visions would not let…

> People avoid SV/USA due to the current President

_some_ people do. Others allow themselves different opinions to this president and even to their prospects in SV

> and London due to the Brexit uncertainity

True

> before Johnson drives everything into the ground

... but also here there are different opinions concerning the nature of this uncertainty

Re: Winnti: Hackers attacking the heart of German industry

#23

Post by solarkraft »

Good article. I am not so bothered by the effects, I think they complement the article well. I sure like that what may seem like decoration to some readers is actually real - I find it very interesting to find out that they find the malware using nmap.

Now where do I get that script? More detail would of course always be nice.

Re: Winnti: Hackers attacking the heart of German industry

#24

Post by adrianN »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #11
lnsru wrote: post #10

As of today we still use shared network drives for everything in major German company. We don’t use slack/irc/Skype/zoom/whatever. Phone calls and conferences(!) from the middle of open office is normal. Asana/Trello/Jira are not known at all. GitHub is paid for, but never used. I am single weirdo in multi department project using github ticket system. The code with prefix is copied for colleagues to project’s shared…

Germany's tech illiteracy is a self-inflicted consequence of its pitiful salaries in this field, treating IT like a cost center that has to be outsourced to wherever is cheaper and companies' tradition of rewarding management incompetence over technical competence. Consequently, Germany's most brilliant tech minds leave for The Valley, Zurich or London. You reap what you sow.

I don't think that's the case. I believe the problem is that large German companies tend to be hardware companies. They're used to development cycles that take years and extremely conservative in adopting new methods. Management and company culture is not used to dealing with fast changing development methods (where fast is anything that changes more often than once a decade). Rigid processes for compliance with external regulations over time where adopted for internal rules as well, making any change a bureaucratic nightmare.

Salary for developers really isn't that much of an issue. In Berlin for example a developer gets two or three times the median salary easily. That's enough for attracting people who are talented enough to choose, e.g. git and JIRA over whatever crusty system of shared folders and zip files or IBM crap you'd see for projects in many companies.

Re: Winnti: Hackers attacking the heart of German industry

#25

Post by DangerousPie »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #11
lnsru wrote: post #10

As of today we still use shared network drives for everything in major German company. We don’t use slack/irc/Skype/zoom/whatever. Phone calls and conferences(!) from the middle of open office is normal. Asana/Trello/Jira are not known at all. GitHub is paid for, but never used. I am single weirdo in multi department project using github ticket system. The code with prefix is copied for colleagues to project’s shared…

Germany's tech illiteracy is a self-inflicted consequence of its pitiful salaries in this field, treating IT like a cost center that has to be outsourced to wherever is cheaper and companies' tradition of rewarding management incompetence over technical competence. Consequently, Germany's most brilliant tech minds leave for The Valley, Zurich or London. You reap what you sow.

Based on what I have heard from friends in London and Germany salaries are actually a lot better in Germany. Especially once you account for cost of living.

Re: Winnti: Hackers attacking the heart of German industry

#26

Post by vageli »

iagovar wrote: post #2

This group of german companies founded their own security group [German Cyber Security Organization (DCSO)]. That speaks a lot about their trust in their public services. The only time I've been involved in a hacking attempt (it was ransomware) the company I work for contacted the CCN-CERT. I wonder if US companies contact NSA/Other gov agencies or deal with it themselves with security companies. Also, while I unders…

> This group of german companies founded their own security group [German Cyber Security Organization (DCSO)]. That speaks a lot about their trust in their public services.

> The only time I've been involved in a hacking attempt (it was ransomware) the company I work for contacted the CCN-CERT. I wonder if US companies contact NSA/Other gov agencies or deal with it themselves with security companies.

In the US, most large companies that have suffered breaches contact the FBI.

Re: Winnti: Hackers attacking the heart of German industry

#27

Post by est31 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #17
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany's tech illiteracy is a self-inflicted consequence of its pitiful salaries in this field, treating IT like a cost center that has to be outsourced to wherever is cheaper and companies' tradition of rewarding management incompetence over technical competence. Consequently, Germany's most brilliant tech minds leave for The Valley, Zurich or London. You reap what you sow.

> treating IT like a cost center that has to be outsourced to wherever is cheaper As if outsourcing wasn't a common trend across Western companies "thanks" to globalization and the utter dominance of US-american neoliberalism. > and companies' tradition of rewarding management incompetence over technical competence Again, quite common - the "old" Soziale Marktwirtschaft moguls with decades-long visions would not let…

I'm a German soon to be CS graduate and right now my favourites are SV and London. I'll try to get into a company that can sponsor L1 visa for SV first and then I'll try London.

The German job market is precisely as described by GP: you are competing all the time with remote people in countries with much smaller cost of living and the wages are super low compared to aforementioned places. Germany has great schools, and medical system and I think when/if I want to raise a family I'll come back. But until then I want to make money and you do this while it's easy to move around.

You can say this is a cultural problem but I think the problem is different: there is just no big software industry in Germany. It's mostly SAP salespeople, development of various custom ISV software and a small startup scene in Berlin. Most German companies don't need good software for the stuff they are doing.

Re: Winnti: Hackers attacking the heart of German industry

#28

Post by yorwba »

hakantan wrote: post #21
sparkling wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The whole article is made up like the NYTimes interactive articles are. Not him, but for me: yes and thats the problem. I don't need Infotainment wrapped, information wrapped in some storytelling timeline with broken scrolling. Just give me a well done article without the nonsense, Jesus. These animation, hex code dumps etc. add ZERO value to the article.

Hi. One of the author(s) of the article here. The plain article with information-only is over here: https://www.tagesschau.de/investigativ/ndr/winnti-101.html We released a longer version, because we do hear very often that people don't understand how these intrusions are actually working. Also, we tried to show the scale. -> both long form and shorter version hope that helps.

Who was the target audience for the long-form article? It has some technical details, but they appear to be used more for decorative effect. E.g. the string daa0 c7cb f4f0 fbcf d6d1 from the hexdump is eventually revealed to correspond to C:\Windows, but isn't actually explained. I was able to come up with the following Python for the obfuscation: [hex((i + 153) ^ ord(c)) for i, c in enumerate(r'C:\Windows')] but most of your readers probably just see a jumble of letters and numbers they're told has some significance, but which appears incomprehensible to them.

Did you do testing with focus groups to determine whether the longer article helped people "understand how these intrusions are actually working" or whether it just made readers aware that they don't understand?

Re: Winnti: Hackers attacking the heart of German industry

#29

Post by adrianN »

est31 wrote: post #27
mschuster91 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> treating IT like a cost center that has to be outsourced to wherever is cheaper As if outsourcing wasn't a common trend across Western companies "thanks" to globalization and the utter dominance of US-american neoliberalism. > and companies' tradition of rewarding management incompetence over technical competence Again, quite common - the "old" Soziale Marktwirtschaft moguls with decades-long visions would not let…

I'm a German soon to be CS graduate and right now my favourites are SV and London. I'll try to get into a company that can sponsor L1 visa for SV first and then I'll try London. The German job market is precisely as described by GP: you are competing all the time with remote people in countries with much smaller cost of living and the wages are super low compared to aforementioned places. Germany has great schools, a…

There are companies in Germany who pay really well, especially if you take into account cost of living. Look around a bit before leaving the country.

Re: Winnti: Hackers attacking the heart of German industry

#30

Post by maze-le »

lnsru wrote: post #10

As of today we still use shared network drives for everything in major German company. We don’t use slack/irc/Skype/zoom/whatever. Phone calls and conferences(!) from the middle of open office is normal. Asana/Trello/Jira are not known at all. GitHub is paid for, but never used. I am single weirdo in multi department project using github ticket system. The code with prefix is copied for colleagues to project’s shared…

>> Packet analysis was seen as the worst thing in the company

Wow, that is just insane... "We want you to put a nail in that board but, by god do not even think of using a hammer". That must be the worst case of "security" by obscurity I have ever heard. Was this one of the bigger companies or a smaller firm? I wonder what kind of decision making process leads to such policies.

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