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China hacked Norway's Visma to steal client secrets
- frozenport 8y agoSadly an honest discussion of this issue will most likely be censored due to potlicial correctness concerns.
- withhighprod 8y agoThe story could be more vivid if it involves the business motivation why China chose this mid sized company(compared to other giants)
- josteink 8y agoIn Norwegian scale Visma is pretty big. Pretty much every non-huge company uses them for accounting and other business-crucial stuff. Hack Visma properly and you probably have more accounting-data on the whole nation than the IRS does.
- mongol 8y agoI didn't know Visma was Norwegian. It is probably among the top 3 companies in Sweden used for bookkeeping/accounting software, especially small to medium sized companies.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- sciolistse 8y agoVisma SPCS is Swedish, founded in the 80s. Visma bought them in the early 2000s.
- ccnafr 8y agoIt's pretty big all over Europe. Similar to SAP, only cheaper.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- diftraku 8y agoOr you could just be on the receiving end of the quality that is Basware where user accounts are merely suggestions, audit logs are mutable and all the clients talk directly to the SQL Server. Part 1 of the 4 part adventure (plus finale): https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/9m8fzj/cant_approve_payroll_blackhat_sysadmin_when_my/ https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/9m8fz...
- orn688 8y agoNot to detract from the gravity of the situation, but the main picture (and caption) are amazing. "A man holds a laptop computer as cyber code is projected on him in this illustration picture taken on May 13, 2017."
- duxup 8y agoIt might sound weird but those kinds of silly cyber images ... make me trust a given story less. They just seem dumb.
- 52-6F-62 8y agoAFAIU Reuters is one of the leaders in terms of news/wire agencies for generating things like that via machine learning and other algos. It might be an automated choice, where the author or editor merely had to check a few boxes before publishing to get a remotely relevant clipart and caption, essentially. Saves a lot of time and money in an age where it's sort of a weird abstract form that needs to be fulfilled. -> Hed -> Byline - Date -> (Dek) -> Graphic -> Caption -> Body Copy That is, it's not to say the system is elegant, yet.... https://innovation.thomsonreuters.com/en/labs.html https://innovation.thomsonreuters.com/en/labs.html edit: LOL. Just a few more clicks brought me to this article. I laughed. https://blogs.thomsonreuters.com/answerson/art-artificial-intelligence/ https://blogs.thomsonreuters.com/answerson/art-artificial-in...
- elipsey 8y agoFantastic. In Ian Mcewan's novel 'Solar', the boorish physicist protagonist remarks that when people talk about "the planet" he assumes their remarks will be ignorant or frivolous and takes this as a cue to stop listening. This is how I feel about any utterance of the word "cyber" occuring after 1993.
- ancorevard 8y agoIn China, there is no difference between international espionage and corporate espionage. Their Ministry of State Security has proved this again and again. Stealing intellectual property from companies advances their military goals.
- markdown 8y agoThankfully, the biggest threat to the individual is a sprinkling of privacy invasion and the odd blackmail. They're miles behind the US on that front. They won't come and bomb your country to dust to benefit corporate goals like getting access to oil for profit, or massive defence contracts.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- vertline3 8y ago"Thankfully, the biggest threat to the individual is a sprinkling of privacy invasion and the odd blackmail." They have prison camps for political dissidents.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
- operatorius 8y agoThis breach happened in September 2018. More info https://www.recordedfuture.com/apt10-cyberespionage-campaign/ https://www.recordedfuture.com/apt10-cyberespionage-campaign... official visma statement: https://www.visma.com/press-releases/intelligence-report-visma/?fbclid=IwAR1_pUJvJ9vPVkJjQu8StgKrsMiXMTgoGrA7MdW-FcFKw_5nJleUOHLXfJM https://www.visma.com/press-releases/intelligence-report-vis...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- sonnyblarney 8y agoWhy doesn't the EU impose trade tariffs, sanctions or embargos on China? China will continue to do this and laugh at the naiveté their victims. There's no reason for them to stop until there is one.
- tuxpenguine 8y agoI think the Norwegian farmer is depending on the Chinese to buy their Salmon fish. If the Chinese just stopped importing Salmon from Norway, a lot of people's livelihood is at stake.
- sonnyblarney 8y agoAnd Germans depend on machinery exports, and Airbus depends on exports etc. etc.. But there has to be a price, or the leveraging game will continue. When there is enough collective power they will waver as we can see in the current US-China negotiations. The trade balance heavily favours EU and the US and the materiality of that fact becomes evident as soon as someone has the cohones to play the card. Right now as China is facing an existential turning point with much lower rates of growth, is a good time to do it. And sooner is always better.
- Sabinus 8y agoAfraid of losing a large market. It's the same with Australia. OECD countries need to band together to respond to countries abusing global trade.
- Gustomaximus 8y agoEU is large enough they could do this alone. Or team up with US and really have some firepower. Things like this is the point of the EU, not creating swaths of regulations about how much or little banannas can be bent. A place like Australia (alone) could never stand up to China. They would be too willing to make an example of a small country that crosses them. China trade comes with huge amounts of political pride and convenience. Even if Australia joined forces with a larger block we risk being g made an example of like that general saying he would sink an Australian ship to send a message to the US.
- oh_sigh 8y agoWhat naughty thing did Norway do 250 years ago that people can use to justify this hacking? (See references to Samuel Slater when China/Chinese nationals hacking American firms for trade secrets is discussed).
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- outworlder 8y agoThese news pop up almost weekly now. I wonder what it will take for nations to start imposing a firewall on them – just like the one they impose on the rest of the world.
- NightlyDev 8y agoThese titles are so damn stupid. I'm so sick of "they did that", and "they did this", when they don't know. I've always wondered how someone comes to the conclusion that is was China, Russia or USA who did something. Anonymity isn't exactly hard on the internet, so how do this all play out? Are data left behind saying something along the lines of "Hey, gotcha! Best regards, China. Contact <person> for confirmation."? No. "Advanced Persistent Threat 10" "Suspected attribution: China" But, let's face it, it's not known that is was China, it might just as well be anyone else. Maybe people should stop being so damn stupid and use accurate headlines.
- stevev 8y agoAll speculation; no proof in article.
- aszantu 8y agowas more work for hackers to hack every single device xD now they're just hacking one big server farm
- age_of_stone 8y agoread through the article but can't find any hard evidence pointing to China. It makes me think that blaming China is just an easy way out when western companies got hacked due to their own failures to secure their businesses.