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Chinese hackers go after think tanks in wave of more surgical strikes
- badrabbit 9y agoMy opinion isn't that remarkable and quite cheesy, but, I seriously think not using windows and enabling two factor authentication wherever possible is the best defense against APT attacks. They are not "a room full of genius hackers" most of their attacks I have read about use phishing attacks that can be stopped by two factor auth (credential stealing) and not using powershell,MS office,windows script host and other dependable and reliable tools that come with windows. It's not that windows is so insecure but that it is so uniform and easy to prepare an attack for. Try finding a way to have a user download and execute a malicious executable in Linux or a script (much like Office macros) - in my experience it is very unreliable and difficult. You have to resort to 0 days or hope the machine isn't well updated. Please correct me if I am wrong,I only speak from a limited experience. I get how difficult replacing windows can be in BigCorp and large organizations,but for small orgs like think thanks that are of high risk to APT attacks,I believe the risk associated with windows and single factor auth far exceeds the cost of a linux only network with 2fa and dedicated security staff.