4 ms·
It just seems to me that the window is small (and you have to write a weaponised exploit in that time too), and the only people likely to be able to reliably in
by pm215 10y ago
It just seems to me that the window is small (and you have to write a weaponised exploit in that time too), and the only people likely to be able to reliably intercept the email are nation-state actors who do bulk email slurping, and they're probably sitting on a pile of zerodays anyway. But that's just gut feeling so it's likely wrong.
- openasocket 10y agoI'll admit it's not a likely scenario, it's just good trade craft. The window isn't as small as you'd think. The hacker would have all the malware written except for the infiltration point. And a skilled team, who is familiar with the software you are targeting, can go from a whitepaper to something actionable in a couple weeks. Less if they don't sleep much. Even better, a lot of these vulnerability reports come with POCs that can be pretty easily adapted to your needs. As for who could pull this off, you don't necessarily need nation-state resources. In fact, bulk email slurping probably wouldn't help, since STARTTLS is pretty ubiquitous. Since you're focusing on a single target, your best bet is compromising the SMTP server. If that's someone's personal server, that's well within the abilities of a moderately skilled group. If it's managed email (say gmail) it gets much harder, but maybe they get lucky and figure out your password, either from good guessing/brute force or from an account leak. Of course, a group could get access to those vulnerability reports by hacking the laptop of someone with the keys, but at least using PGP lowers the attack surface.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]