Earlier quoted context omitted.
>terrorism Isn't ransomware profit-motivated? I thought with terrorism the goal was fear rather than profit.
The original meaning of the word "terrorism" has long lost its course since the early 2000s.
-
FBI, DHS, HHS Warn of Imminent Ransomware Threat Against U.S. Hospitals
211–220 of 357 posts
Re: FBI, DHS, HHS Warn of Imminent Ransomware Threat Against U.S. Hospitals
#212If this attack results in actual loss of life, I firmly believe the US should ensure that there are real-world physical consequences for these criminals. They cannot be described as anything less than the worst humanity has to offer. A failure to respond with meaningful and severe consequences for those responsible (assuming this is attack can be confidently attributed to a particular threat actor) opens the floodgat…
If US citizens die due to this, I am 100% down with bringing the full might of our military down on the state/group that did this. No mercy.
I was about to say that this is practically an act of war. You could make a good case that military intervention is justified.
Re: FBI, DHS, HHS Warn of Imminent Ransomware Threat Against U.S. Hospitals
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
>terrorism Isn't ransomware profit-motivated? I thought with terrorism the goal was fear rather than profit.
There have been ransomware attacks that are covers for outright attacks, iirc some where the payment and decryption mechanism didn't even function. On a more theoretical level, it's certainly possible to do both at the same time, two birds with one stone. But it seems a lot of the big gangs are suspected state-sponsored, which is less terrorism and more cyber warfare
NotPetya is a good example. Looked like a broad ransomware attack very similar to the earlier Petya attack. Turned out it was very likely a broad cover for a very narrow attack against Ukraine’s power grid during Russian invasion.
Re: FBI, DHS, HHS Warn of Imminent Ransomware Threat Against U.S. Hospitals
#214This is not what we need in these final chapters of 2020 with COVID cases spiking. > Charles Carmakal, senior vice president for Mandiant, told Reuters that UNC1878 is one of most brazen, heartless, and disruptive threat actors he’s observed over the course of his career. This is what terrorism looks like in 2020. Horrifying, terrifying, disgusting.
Wasn't there a ransomware case in Germany recently where when they advised the hackers that they'd hit a hospital, the hackers immediately turned over the unlock keys, without a ransom? Not that that is any way a defense, and I'm sure there was as much a self-interested motivation of "We are going to be hit hard if we ransom a hospital _now_" as much as "doing the right thing"...
> Not that that is any way a defense, and I'm sure there was as much a self-interested motivation of "We are going to be hit hard if we ransom a hospital _now_" as much as "doing the right thing"...
You're correct. Said ransomware case is now under the investigation of involuntary manslaughter, as a woman died during transfer to another hospital: https://www.dw.com/de/haben-russische-hacker-den-tod-einer-p...
Re: FBI, DHS, HHS Warn of Imminent Ransomware Threat Against U.S. Hospitals
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why the assumption that its terrorist and not a state sanctioned attack?
If we're honest, it's neither. It's 1000% profit-orientated.
Not true. Ransomware attacks have become top cover for more targeted attacks that happen in the chaos. See NotPetya.
Re: FBI, DHS, HHS Warn of Imminent Ransomware Threat Against U.S. Hospitals
#216If this attack results in actual loss of life, I firmly believe the US should ensure that there are real-world physical consequences for these criminals. They cannot be described as anything less than the worst humanity has to offer. A failure to respond with meaningful and severe consequences for those responsible (assuming this is attack can be confidently attributed to a particular threat actor) opens the floodgat…
If US citizens die due to this, I am 100% down with bringing the full might of our military down on the state/group that did this. No mercy.
Ah the usual American response: for every US citizen that dies, kill 5 foreign soldiers and 15 civilians.
Then you wonder why everyone is burning US flags.
Re: FBI, DHS, HHS Warn of Imminent Ransomware Threat Against U.S. Hospitals
#217This is not what we need in these final chapters of 2020 with COVID cases spiking. > Charles Carmakal, senior vice president for Mandiant, told Reuters that UNC1878 is one of most brazen, heartless, and disruptive threat actors he’s observed over the course of his career. This is what terrorism looks like in 2020. Horrifying, terrifying, disgusting.
Does anyone else feel that any organization that isn't doing regular secure backups with a way to restore that data deserves for this to happen? It like an airplane running out of gas because the pilot forgot to fill up the tank. Its kind of step one of working with computers.
There are a lot of systems in a hospital. Maybe 3000 different systems, made by different suppliers, some long gone.
In good countries, we maintain important records and have roll back capabilities on most of the things we control ourselves. But that doesn’t necessarily include the MRI machines windows XP that is maintained by some third party supplier that operates through another 3rd party seller, and that’s just one of the 3000 things that can go wrong.
Then there is the parts where attacks will affect you, even if they don’t do any damage that can’t be reversed. Typically global internet access gets shut down during an attack, but that makes transfers harder. It also makes acute arrivals harder, because the ambulance helicopter might not be in range of your “internal internet” and thus may not be capable of feeding you important live data.
Some attacks target the network itself, and while you’ll generally have a good set of people running that, they aren’t always a match for nation state backed hacking tools.
So there is just a billion things that can go wrong, even if you have the best of the best working on it, and in many countries, there is a good chance that’s not even the case. I can count myself lucky to work in a country where we take digitisation very serious in the public sector, and I can easily see why things could go wrong.
Re: FBI, DHS, HHS Warn of Imminent Ransomware Threat Against U.S. Hospitals
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
>terrorism Isn't ransomware profit-motivated? I thought with terrorism the goal was fear rather than profit.
The original meaning of the word "terrorism" has long lost its course since the early 2000s.
Terrorist, too; it's a cheap and easy way to apparently get around those pesky human rights. Only caveat is that you can't use it against white people because those are on our side.
(sarcasm / irony / etc)
Re: FBI, DHS, HHS Warn of Imminent Ransomware Threat Against U.S. Hospitals
#219Re: FBI, DHS, HHS Warn of Imminent Ransomware Threat Against U.S. Hospitals
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
Takes a goofy definition of terrorism to get Bay of Pigs to fit. A military attempt to overthrow a violent leader of another country doesn’t really land in the same category of shutting down hospitals and killing sick people with no political power.
Using violence to attempt to cause a regime change without formally declaring war, sounds much more like the traditional definition of terrorism to me [although maybe not the perfect fit], then randsomware which sounds like organized crime to me.
> Using violence to attempt to cause a regime change without formally declaring war, sounds much more like the traditional definition of terrorism
Or insurrection.
Unless we're talking about some fourth-world wish-we-had-even-bananas republic, there will be geopolitics in play. The rebelling groups are almost certainly being funded, either directly or indirectly, by foreign governments.
Those rebels, are they terrorists or freedom fighters? Are the foreign governments funding terrorism or supporting unnecessarily violent grass-roots opposition? Where does political meddling end and waging a covert war begin?
Can you ever be cynical enough?