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Kaspersky believes it found new CIA malware

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Re: Kaspersky believes it found new CIA malware

#291

Post by CRConrad »

oytis wrote: post #121
_jal wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let's not pretend Who is pretending? The discussion is about the CIA. When I discuss cats, there is no reason I should have to always qualify it by saying "yes, and dogs are cute, too."

Kaspersky's ties to FSB are an open secret, so it's really believing FSB vs believing CIA unless you have a way to verify them.

If you already believe the CIA is usually lying, then the accusation "But you believe the FSB!" when the FSB says "The CIA is lying" may be technically true, but meaningless.

Hey, I don't even believe the CIA quite always lies: I'm sure it has sometimes said "The FSB is lying", and I believe that too. Because the FSB is pretty much always lying... Just like the CIA.

Re: Kaspersky believes it found new CIA malware

#292

Post by peter_d_sherman »

>"While an initial analysis did not find any shared code with any previously-known malware samples, Kaspersky has recently re-analyzed the files and said it found that “the samples have intersections of coding patterns, style and techniques that have been seen in various Lambert families.”

To the writers of these things:

In the future, would you kindly NOT name your malware after terms in Physics:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambert_(unit)

Re: Kaspersky believes it found new CIA malware

#293

Post by modo_mario »

willcipriano wrote: post #229
mandmandam wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That silence resulted in the loss of at least one hundred and fifty thousand human beings needlessly Just gonna point out that non-Americans are human beings as well, and millions have died - directly as a result of this silence. The fact that Biden played a key part in enforcing this silence at various stages is particularly galling, and it's beyond fucked-up that he isn't held to account for it.

>Just gonna point out that non-Americans are human beings as well, and millions have died - directly as a result of this silence. 150k is the most conservative estimate I could find for Iraq. US and Iraqi deaths included. Some estimates are in the millions but I try to be as generous as possible to the other side of a argument I am making.

>150k is the most conservative estimate I could find for Iraq.

It is the lowest I could find. It also has quite a list of criticisms attached to it. The Iraq body count project counts more just from reported deaths alone.

I wouldn't be surprised if the ORB study showing in excess of 1.2 million is closest to the truth. especially since it ended in 2006 i think and it's not like people stopped dying since then.

Re: Kaspersky believes it found new CIA malware

#294

Post by kirill5pol »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #89
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.

Likewise, Kaspersky always seems to ferret out CIA activities quite frequently; but never seems to get the same kind of discoveries on his own countries hacking exploits and activities.

I mean is this unexpected or even being argued here? This is the same case regardless of home country. Of course they would focus on CIA or NSA exploits

Re: Kaspersky believes it found new CIA malware

#295

Post by specialist »

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.

> If I had to wager I'd always bet on the CIA lying...

If an idea is reasonably feasible, I just assume someone, somewhere is already doing it.

The practical benefit is lowering my cognitive overhead, transaction costs.

Instead of guarding against every possible attack vector, I take basic precautionary measures, and then decide if any action is worth the risk, knowing full well it'll likely go terribly wrong.

So I always wear a mask, use a password wallet, drive just under the speed limit. Etc. It's habit, routine. Then when I step outside my personal safety bubble, it's an affirmative choice.

Re: Kaspersky believes it found new CIA malware

#296

Post by anaphor »

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…

There's a difference between them telling what they think is the truth, and them actually knowing something and telling it. The whole "Havana Syndrome" thing might actually be them telling what they think is the truth (Russian/Cuban conspiracy to use secret weapons to give headaches to people), even though it's complete nonsense.

Re: Kaspersky believes it found new CIA malware

#297

Post by modo_mario »

wait_a_minute wrote: post #54
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.

Because the entire goal is to promote skepticism about the USA while remaining as mum as possible on Russia and China. In the case of Russia, it’s not a secret that they try to disrupt and divide the states via internal conflicts so they can take over if we decline because of it. Here is just one example: https://www.wsj.com/articles/russian-backed-facebook-account... We also know that hundreds of thousands of foreig…

Russia has been pretty damn effective at this. (I took note of this when moderating r/europe on reddit when things started churning in ukraine)

China on the other hand not so much. I might go trough the effort of finding them again but someone here shared some American studies that showed china initially didn't really have such a presence of bots and the like on twitter, fb, etc like Russia at that point (i think around 2016 or 2017) but there were notable networks of bots targeting chinese people with anti china stuff.

A second study showed that i think 3 years later China had also gotten into this but that it was comparatively small scale and notably incompetent.

Re: Kaspersky believes it found new CIA malware

#298

Post by whimsicalism »

vatican_banker wrote: post #261
whimsicalism wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which is suspected to be affiliated with Russian intelligence - possibly unwillingly I have yet to see actually compelling evidence that this is the case.

There are several examples. This is one: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/26/kaspersky...

This is not compelling evidence - the contractor had the "upload suspicious files" flag on and it uploaded flagged malware - this is consistent with pretty much every AV I've ever heard of and not evidence of a "Russian plot."

Re: Kaspersky believes it found new CIA malware

#299

Post by whimsicalism »

enkid wrote: post #258
whimsicalism wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which is suspected to be affiliated with Russian intelligence - possibly unwillingly I have yet to see actually compelling evidence that this is the case.

Here you go: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-11/kaspersky...

The Bloomberg articles are definitely the closest I've seen coming to substantive evidence, that is for sure.

I do, however, think that there is a big difference between being "affiliated with Russian intelligence" and providing an anti-DDOS service to the FSB, which is what this article is discussing, and really all it gives evidence for. Kapersky also provided services to the US intelligence services, I don't think it would be described as "affiliated with American intelligence."

Re: Kaspersky believes it found new CIA malware

#300

Post by asveikau »

_jal wrote: post #95
scoofy wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If I had to wager I'd always bet on national security agency of any powerful country lying, I don't see how anyone could come to another conclusion given their history. Let's not pretend the FSB and MSS don't also lie constantly. That you're more familiar with the CIA lying is a testament to the free press of the US, not the other way around. The point of the previous post is that it could easily be another security…

> Let's not pretend Who is pretending? The discussion is about the CIA. When I discuss cats, there is no reason I should have to always qualify it by saying "yes, and dogs are cute, too."

It's logical in the context of comments, your parent comment, the parent of that, and up the tree.

Somebody says people are skeptical of attribution to governments outside the US, but not the US. Specifically he says that he does not doubt it was the US.

So yeah, the discussion you're replying to is not just about CIA.

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