Kaspersky believes it found new CIA malware • Hacker News Board

Re: Kaspersky believes it found new CIA malware

#281

Post by DyslexicAtheist » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 8:04 AM UTC

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #175

squarefoot wrote: post #147

We're lucky that we can still catch some of them now. The current status of closed CPUs running proprietary firmware talking with closed chipsets running proprietary firmware blobs would make trivially easy to move the malware injection to the iron level for agencies funded by governments. Once they accomplish it, detecting their spyware using software, at any privilege level, will become impossible. I fear the scena…

It's not impossible but it's complicated and the more complicated the harder to it is to keep secret. It's easier to just amass exploits for use when needed.

right, that's why there is no need for all the elaborate schemes proposed by the shameful Bloomberg "Big Hack" conspiracy. Doing so would be a) stupid and b) cost a bomb.

for plausible deniability and to be able to reuse the same attack vector over and over, it's cheaper to just intercept shipments and install/modify what they need:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa...

impossible to reproduce unless you have the exact same equipment.

Re: Kaspersky believes it found new CIA malware

#282

Post by boomboomsubban » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 8:12 AM UTC

jychang wrote: post #239

bcrosby95 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So when the CIA tells me some foreign government is doing something bad, I should believe them? Then when the CIA denies they lied about the foreign government was doing something bad, I should ignore them? This advice makes no sense to me.

> So when the CIA tells me some foreign government is doing something bad, I should believe them? Honestly, yes. > Then when the CIA denies they lied about the foreign government was doing something bad When have they done this? A few times probably, but not really a high percentage. At any rate, P(CIA telling the truth about a foreign govt|foreign govt is doing something bad) is much higher than P(CIA lying about fo…

The ratio of lies isn't as important as when they do lie. Their willingness to lie on big things means that they are never trustworthy.

99 reports could be truthful but the 1 lie that leads to war is enough to ruin their reputation.

Re: Kaspersky believes it found new CIA malware

#283

Post by icare_1er » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 9:08 AM UTC

So, to summarize, according to Kaspersky, the West creates malware, and according to Mandiant, North Korea and Russia create malware. What a great discovery !!

Re: Kaspersky believes it found new CIA malware

#284

Post by dreen » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 9:28 AM UTC

willcipriano wrote: post #24

mc32 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall how when we had North Korean hacking activities and official attributions people would say, but how do we know it was them and how do we know the government isn’t making things up? But when someone accuses the US we never add any salt. Not that I don’t think it’s false, it’s just that the lack of consistent skepticism is interesting.

If I had to wager I'd always bet on the CIA lying, I don't see how anyone could come to another conclusion given their history.

Well spies are professional liars. I guess it's just as hard for them to not bring their work to home (country) as it is for professional boxers not to keep practicing their job on their spouse.

Re: Kaspersky believes it found new CIA malware

#285

Post by loceng » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 9:34 AM UTC

mhermher wrote: post #212

stjohnswarts wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I highly doubt if they have an order of magnitude more than China "budget" for CIA type activities. Probably more but not 10X, maybe 2X

you can use military spending as a proxy.

You could use investment in companies that the CCP has investment in (and generating revenue for them; which also acts as taking revenue/fuel away from competing government types/ecosystems) as a proxy as well.

Re: Kaspersky believes it found new CIA malware

#286

Post by b112 » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 10:06 AM UTC

jononor wrote: post #273

b112 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

During early WWII, prior to Pearl Harbour, the US used to place supplies on the US side of the Canadian/US border. We'd then "steal" those supplies, thus allowing the US to avoid breaking non-aggression treaties, and (as you mentioned) the ire of some of its citizenry. Not much profit in theft.

Everyone except the final payer (the government, indirectly the people) made profits. Same happens if the supplies and munitions were used instead of stolen. Many people profit along the way, and it is the same today.

Yes, but this does not refute what I said. The parent comment makes it appear as if the motive for staying out of the was was, easy profit. Clearly not so.

Re: Kaspersky believes it found new CIA malware

#287

Post by ddalex » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 10:30 AM UTC

dilyevsky wrote: post #264

ddalex wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing in EastEurope is not intelligence-based, its' political.

There’s a difference?

The difference is that there is no new informational knowledge coming out from the East Europe affair. It's just matching expulsion numbers, but none of the parties (or the general public) learned anything new (as with this disclosure).

Re: Kaspersky believes it found new CIA malware

#288

Post by freeflight » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 10:40 AM UTC

mike_d wrote: post #253

freeflight wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Smith–Mundt Act makes it illegal to distribute propaganda where it may be consumed by a primarily US audience. That hasn't been true for nearly a decade as the Smith-Mundt act was "modernized" in 2012 to allow for exactly that [0]. Even when it was in effect, I doubt anybody was seriously trying to abide by that. The closest thing to practically doing that would have been to completely skip on the English langu…

That is not at all what the modernization act did. It allows Voice of America and other clearly government owned media outlets to also broadcast in the United States. Independent fact checkers agree [0]. The "opinion wars" in the US are won on what you consider to be the dominant social media networks. Again, if you want to convince a bunch of people to overthrow Putin, those daily active users are on VK - not Facebo…

> Independent fact checkers agree

They agree on a very different question. Even if we want to reframe it as an allegedly completely harmless "VoA can now broadcast to Americans!", the embezzles the fact that outlets like VoA/Radio Liberty&co. are very much the US equivalent to a Russia Today.

With the difference how their US versions have been broadcasting globally, completely unopposed, for literally decades. Yet whenever RT is linked anywhere it doesn't take long for somebody to go "That's Russia bad/propaganda/all lies!", usually derailing the discussion from the actual topic.

> Again, if you want to convince a bunch of people to overthrow Putin, those daily active users are on VK - not Facebook.

You also want to dampen any criticism, propaganda is not just a game of offense, it's also one of defense [0] That's where it's really helpful to have more than just two eyes, like Five Eyes [1]

> Your second link plainly states that the US created an entirely new social network to try and influence Cuba, they didn't do it on Instagram.

Cuba actively blocks Internet traffic when it's convenient to them [2], Instagram can't sidestep that, SMS can [3], it can even reach people that still only have dumb phones, something quite relevant back in 2012.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsehood_in_War-Time#Summary

[1] https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/

[2] https://twitter.com/netblocks/status/1333495221712265217

[3] http://cubamoneyproject.com/2019/09/21/zunzuneo/

Re: Kaspersky believes it found new CIA malware

#289

Post by wraptile » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 10:41 AM UTC

__m wrote: post #279

Imagine the outrage if it was chinese maleware, HN comments would call for the boycott of china and political measures

American software has been under "boycott" since PRISM - it's kinda getting old. Additionally I feel that people are bit tired of USA's evilness and the results of it are not so apparent but we hear of chinese protesters disappearing every week.

Re: Kaspersky believes it found new CIA malware

#290

Post by varjag » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 10:47 AM UTC

caeril wrote: post #197

varjag wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kaspersky himself is a 1987 KGB school alumni. The naïveté of Westerners is sometimes astonishing.

This is a very good point, and stands in stark contrast with no management or employees of FireEye or CrowdStrike ever being associated with FVEY intelligence services. Nope, it's ONLY the evil Russians. The naïveté of non-Westerners is sometimes astonishing.

Kaspersky is the ever-presiding CEO and the founder of the company. Was CrowdStrike founded by a CIA alumni?

And I hope you realize your whole retort amounts to "Kaspersky is as bad as CIA shell companies".