311–320 of 479 posts
False flag in the run up to a severe regulatory clamp down. Won't be the first or the last.
Regulatory clamp down as in higher regulations that companies must have good computer security? I think it's already potentially illegal to pay a ransom. Maybe governments could increase those penalties and make it more clearly illegal.
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I built some of the SCADA and IT systems for Colonial Pipeline. Many industrial SCADA systems (nearly all) send data from their "OT" systems (PLC/DCS/SCADA) to their "IT" and business layers (Historians/Timeseries Databases, Dashboards, Power BI/etc). This almost always happens through a two-way link (think TCP/IP, HTTP). While the software should not allow data flow backwards, the hardware absolutely does. So how mu…
I’m curious — how would something like a data-diode work in real life? It makes sense, but what about something like TCP where the sending side needs the ability to receive ACK messages? Is a firewall (dedicated, if need be) enough? Or would this be some other kind of physical interface that took some kind of read-only data (serial?) and sent it up the layers using TCP/IP, where only this box would be at risk? Edit:…
A webcam? Second hand, but that's what I was told a dam operator was using as a "grass-roots" solution a while back
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You could have an air-gapped system and still have remote access. Just not external access. I don't think it's unreasonable to have a couple of people in a control booth monitoring a computer that regulates the pipeline 24/7. The recommendation is, however, that we should not have that monitoring computer connected to any other network besides the internal one. If you're running pipeline, surely you can run some data…
This is what the financial industry does. There's a secured "extranet" that everyone runs FIX on top of. For the most part, it works.
It's my understanding that Dark Fail is a Russian criminal gang and that Russia does not extradite, stop, or punish these criminal gangs. To me that makes the Russian government culpable and this an act of war.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27102024.
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And if “the individuals” turn out to be operatives of the Russian government? I find as world events unfold these last few years I have drifted away from my isolationist/non-interventionist views. I wouldn’t say I’d advocate for a military response (either electronic or physically destructive) at this point, but I wouldn’t think badly of our government if they did something like that. Americans have become a rather s…
They've already succeeded. America is already unprecedentedly divided and demoralised. “One need not destroy one's enemy. One need only destroy his willingness to engage.” ― Sun Tzu
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
That gang may have bitten off more than they can chew. They've now gotten the US government involved officially, which means that beyond the sheer mass of resources that will go into tracking this gang, the government also has something to prove now. Being at the center of an international incident is probably not good for business.
If they want to go overkill, they can additionally use a public VPN account purchased using walmart giftcards bought on ebay using a stolen identity and then mailed overseas.
They can also perform the hack using a brand new computer that they never use again afterward.
It just seems to me like the attacker has most of the advantage here if they know what they're doing.
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They've already succeeded. America is already unprecedentedly divided and demoralised. “One need not destroy one's enemy. One need only destroy his willingness to engage.” ― Sun Tzu
Since this account appears to be using HN primarily for ideological battle and that's against the site guidelines, we've banned it. Please don't create accounts to do that with. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
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Lol this was my first reaction as well, they now have a nation-state on their ass. But that being said its not impossible that this was just a cover for a Russian state-sponsored attempt on US infra
"nation-state" is not just a fancy infosec word for country, and there's some debate as to whether the USA constitutes an actual nation state, rather than a state.