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> "a whole section of the CIA is working on Umbrage, a system that attempts to trick people into thinking that they had been hacked by other groups or countries

by devy 10y ago

> "a whole section of the CIA is working on Umbrage, a system that attempts to trick people into thinking that they had been hacked by other groups or countries by collecting malware from other nation states, such as Russia." What do you think of Umbrage?

086421357909764 10y ago
That it's a logical program for a Covert / Clandestine intelligence agency.
problems 10y ago
I think it's going to be severely abused politically. I've already seen a few people on the right saying it means the DNC hack was 100% fake. And I've already seen a security researcher on the left saying it has nothing to do with the results because "they found running C&C servers in that case", like you can't buy C&C servers anywhere in the world that you want. Neither claim makes any verifiable sense. Hacking attribution is somewhere between hard and impossible if your opponent doesn't want to be found or wants you to find someone else instead. It's a legitimately interesting program and something to consider when these claims get made. But don't listen the politics of it. It'll be a nightmare.
mikeyouse 10y ago
Wikileaks is dramatically misrepresenting what Umbrage is. There are descriptive documents that explain exactly what it is and how it's meant to be used that were also leaked. Even the Intercept, who aren't exactly friendly to intelligence sources took umbrage (ha) with WL's characterization: > It would be possible to leave such fingerprints if the CIA were re-using unique source code written by other actors to intentionally implicate them in CIA hacks, but the published CIA documents don’t say this. Instead they indicate the UMBRAGE group is doing something much less nefarious. > They say UMBRAGE is borrowing hacking “techniques” developed or used by other actors to use in CIA hacking projects. This is intended to save the CIA time and energy by copying methods already proven successful. If the CIA were actually re-using source code unique to a specific hacking group this could lead forensic investigators to mis-attribute CIA attacks to the original creators of the code. But the documents appear to say the UMBRAGE group is writing snippets of code that mimic the functionality of other hacking tools and placing it in a library for CIA developers to draw on when designing custom CIA tools. https://theintercept.com/2017/03/08/wikileaks-files-show-the-cia-repurposing-foreign-hacking-code-to-save-time-not-to-frame-russia/ https://theintercept.com/2017/03/08/wikileaks-files-show-the...

by devy 10y ago

086421357909764 10y ago

That it's a logical program for a Covert / Clandestine intelligence agency.

problems 10y ago

I think it's going to be severely abused politically. I've already seen a few people on the right saying it means the DNC hack was 100% fake. And I've already seen a security researcher on the left saying it has nothing to do with the results because "they found running C&C servers in that case", like you can't buy C&C servers anywhere in the world that you want. Neither claim makes any verifiable sense. Hacking attribution is somewhere between hard and impossible if your opponent doesn't want to be found or wants you to find someone else instead. It's a legitimately interesting program and something to consider when these claims get made. But don't listen the politics of it. It'll be a nightmare.

mikeyouse 10y ago

Wikileaks is dramatically misrepresenting what Umbrage is. There are descriptive documents that explain exactly what it is and how it's meant to be used that were also leaked. Even the Intercept, who aren't exactly friendly to intelligence sources took umbrage (ha) with WL's characterization: > It would be possible to leave such fingerprints if the CIA were re-using unique source code written by other actors to intentionally implicate them in CIA hacks, but the published CIA documents don’t say this. Instead they indicate the UMBRAGE group is doing something much less nefarious. > They say UMBRAGE is borrowing hacking “techniques” developed or used by other actors to use in CIA hacking projects. This is intended to save the CIA time and energy by copying methods already proven successful. If the CIA were actually re-using source code unique to a specific hacking group this could lead forensic investigators to mis-attribute CIA attacks to the original creators of the code. But the documents appear to say the UMBRAGE group is writing snippets of code that mimic the functionality of other hacking tools and placing it in a library for CIA developers to draw on when designing custom CIA tools. https://theintercept.com/2017/03/08/wikileaks-files-show-the-cia-repurposing-foreign-hacking-code-to-save-time-not-to-frame-russia/ https://theintercept.com/2017/03/08/wikileaks-files-show-the...