How does somebody exfiltrate 34 TERABYTES from a secure facility without getting noticed? To misquote Dr. Strangelove, "ze whole point of ze secret hack is lost if you don't keep it a secret." https://youtu.be/2yfXgu37iyI?t=205 Oh, maybe they have a firewall built on a RaspberryPi somebody ordered online. Seriously, WTF? This is as insecure as having contract sysadmins with root privilege spread all over the globe. A…
CIA hacking unit failed to protect its systems, allowing Vault 7 disclosure
61–70 of 106 posts
Re: CIA hacking unit failed to protect its systems, allowing Vault 7 disclosure
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
I left a high pay info-sec position at a large insurance corporation for this very reason. CIO trumped CISO (fractional) on literally every security issue that was surfaced - and worse yet the CIO and CEO refused to acknowledge the risk being onboarded/ignored. The irony of insurance execs refusing to acknowledge information security risk was just too much.
I'd actually expect this to be the opposite. Insurance is heavily risk analysis based. It sounds like they were choosing to take the risks because either you didn't show them properly, or you don't realize how cheap the actuated cost of non compliance is.
Re: CIA hacking unit failed to protect its systems, allowing Vault 7 disclosure
#63I find it ironic that the CIA didn't bother to have it's systems secured/verified by the NSA. I'm sure the CIA thought that they were good enough, coming from an organization that was infiltrated from its inception, their hubris isn't surprising.
No logs, no congressional investigation.
These are smart well-resourced people. They don't do things like this for no reason.
Re: CIA hacking unit failed to protect its systems, allowing Vault 7 disclosure
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Another, related paradox is that in corporate org structures, the CIO is responsible for making sure the company's systems are available and working correctly, but the CISO is responsible for securing systems. Departments of CIOs can frequently be seen as a profit center which unlocks potential for the company while CISOs are almost always seen as a cost center which (ostensibly) slows the potential of the company. T…
I left a high pay info-sec position at a large insurance corporation for this very reason. CIO trumped CISO (fractional) on literally every security issue that was surfaced - and worse yet the CIO and CEO refused to acknowledge the risk being onboarded/ignored. The irony of insurance execs refusing to acknowledge information security risk was just too much.
If an insurance company is unable to price it's own internal IA risks either at all, or at a non-zero value, I'm discouraged from hoping for a market solution to the problem that, as the truism states, "offense is easy, defense is impossible." I think the intelligence services and LE have also done a bad job, as evidenced by the hoarding, instead of reporting or fixing, of vulnerabilities.
Schneier has lately argued that regulation is necessary. The idea of GDPR for infosec is unappetizing, but I have trouble thinking of any other solution that hasn't already failed.
Re: CIA hacking unit failed to protect its systems, allowing Vault 7 disclosure
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
I left a high pay info-sec position at a large insurance corporation for this very reason. CIO trumped CISO (fractional) on literally every security issue that was surfaced - and worse yet the CIO and CEO refused to acknowledge the risk being onboarded/ignored. The irony of insurance execs refusing to acknowledge information security risk was just too much.
I've been in infosec since the 90's. A lot of times I think this is on us. As much as I respect the technical acumen and creativity of my colleagues in the industry, I don't think we broadly understand risk that well and as a consequence we do a pretty bad job of communicating it. We tend to peg the panic meter with multiplied likelihoods and catastrophized impacts of possible scenarios while directly causing revenue…
Re: CIA hacking unit failed to protect its systems, allowing Vault 7 disclosure
#66I saw a screenshot of a CNN article which said that that the CIA frequently used tactics to make hacks appear as though they were from Russia. Which is something I always suspected was relatively easy to do...change some logs, some timestamps, use some existing code...I'm not a hacker per se, but most of us write code here and deal with these kinds of things... So does anything in this vault possibly call certain rec…
The intelligence community's opinion that the DNC hack was done by Russia was based upon the single source of a private organization CrowdStrike. But given all the heavy hitting nation states regularly frame others, "Russia's fingerprints" can mean either they did it or they didn't, so it's functionally worthless.
Re: CIA hacking unit failed to protect its systems, allowing Vault 7 disclosure
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
I left a high pay info-sec position at a large insurance corporation for this very reason. CIO trumped CISO (fractional) on literally every security issue that was surfaced - and worse yet the CIO and CEO refused to acknowledge the risk being onboarded/ignored. The irony of insurance execs refusing to acknowledge information security risk was just too much.
I've been in infosec since the 90's. A lot of times I think this is on us. As much as I respect the technical acumen and creativity of my colleagues in the industry, I don't think we broadly understand risk that well and as a consequence we do a pretty bad job of communicating it. We tend to peg the panic meter with multiplied likelihoods and catastrophized impacts of possible scenarios while directly causing revenue…
This is the root of so many problems for technical teams in ostensibly non-technical businesses. More developers and engineers really need to embrace the reality that your work doesn't always speak for itself - sometimes you have to speak convincingly on its behalf.
Re: CIA hacking unit failed to protect its systems, allowing Vault 7 disclosure
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
The intelligence community's opinion that the DNC hack was done by Russia was based upon the single source of a private organization CrowdStrike. But given all the heavy hitting nation states regularly frame others, "Russia's fingerprints" can mean either they did it or they didn't, so it's functionally worthless.
You're either misleading or ill-informed. Since 2016 it is well documented Russia intervened through hacking and disinfo operations.
Re: CIA hacking unit failed to protect its systems, allowing Vault 7 disclosure
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, Russian interference allegations were confirmed through other means, mainly human intelligence and other types of intercepts. The dutch even filmed the meddling operations through GRU hacked security camera.
I don't see how the Dutch story is relevant, if it's the one I looked up, and it sounds therefore like there is at best circumstantial evidence. Even motive isn't very reliable because all kinds of people are out to do things like influence the elections.
Just one source: https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...
Re: CIA hacking unit failed to protect its systems, allowing Vault 7 disclosure
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're either misleading or ill-informed. Since 2016 it is well documented Russia intervened through hacking and disinfo operations.
It's my understanding that nothing truly concrete has been shown to the public?
When intelligence agencies share clear evidence a dictator gassed his own civilian population, no one cares or trolls ask for more evidence.