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Chinese Spies Got the NSA’s Hacking Tools, and Used Them for Attacks
- komali2 7y ago> Based on the timing of the attacks and clues in the computer code, researchers with the firm Symantec believe the Chinese did not steal the code but captured it from an N.S.A. attack on their own computers Out of curiosity, I wonder who directed the NSA to attack Chinese computers?
- alehul 7y agoAnd on that note, are choices like these autocratic top-down decisions, with each attack approved by those leading the NSA, or is it run-of-the-mill, and done without explicit authorization per target by each team? Or are teams separated by target?
- katzgrau 7y agoI'd imagine it's just the digital extension of an historically ongoing effort to collect anything that could be used as leverage in a conflict, if and when one happens.
- hawaiian 7y agoEven though the NSA-style attack was conducted by Chinese hackers in March 2016 (comfortably before the Shadow Brokers' leak of NSA tools in August 2016), it's possible that the tools were circulating outside the NSA earlier and thus used outside of NSA direction. Edit: That was confusing. Basically, we don't know when exactly before Aug2016 the tools were leaked, so it could have been someone else probing the Chinese server.
- kermitismyhero 7y agoAfter the Wikileaks Vault 7 releases, specifically the details about how Marble and Umbrage make it easy to implement a digital false-flag attack, I don't see how anyone can be certain of the identity of a sufficiently skilled attacker in the modern era. Any state security agency in any reasonably-advanced country likely has their own equivalents of the Marble and Umbrage tools at this point. Was this attack from China? Was it from the US making it look like China to justify US economic and diplomatic retaliation? Was it from Germany looking to embarrass the US with a false-false-flag attack making it look like the US made a false-flag attack on China after the US spied on Merkel's phone conversations? We could go down rabbit holes forever. Who can be completely trusted to speak openly, knowledgeably, and honestly on specific instances of attacks? Every last individual and organization in that world is neck-deep in their own agendas.
- 781 7y agoWho do you expect the NSA to attack? The French? (I know they probably do that too) What do you think is NSA's mission?
- chillwaves 7y agoHow about you share your answers and we can compare notes. Here's what I have. https://www.nsa.gov/about/mission-values/ https://www.nsa.gov/about/mission-values/
- wtmt 7y agoThat page sounds like standard stuff that organizations put up. Based on James Clapper’s lies that the NSA didn’t collect telephone metadata on Americans, none of the points on that page seem to be truthful or respected.
- wallace_f 7y ago>the Chinese did not steal the code but captured it from an N.S.A. attack on their own computers I don't understand the US's relationship with China. The above seems to possibly suggest some mild cold war scenario?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- dekhn 7y agoWe are in an advanced persistent cold war with multiple Nations. I've always been curious just how aggressive the nsa's tailored access operations and other groups were in terms of attacking other nation-states.
- hangonhn 7y agoI don't know how much foreign relationships or China-US policy you follow but when it comes to China-US, the term "Thucylides' Trap" gets thrown around a bit ( https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/06/09/the-thucydides-trap/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/06/09/the-thucydides-trap/ - a term coined by this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_T._Allison https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_T._Allison ) Rivalry between a rising power and an existing superpower is inevitable. How it gets resolved though is not certain. China is on track to overtake the US economically in a decade or two (if you consider PPP adjusted GDP they've already surpassed us). That have implications in other areas too -- strategic, diplomatic, cultural, etc. How will the US respond to this? Will we simply let it happen or will we stop it and perhaps violently? What will it mean for our agendas in different areas since China and the US don't share the same goals in many areas. What's especially frightening to me is that Xi seems to advocate a view that China's rise is a return to a historical greatness and that China is destined to dominate -- similar in some sense to the old "manifest destiny" idea of the US. Xi's idea is now enshrined into the Chinese constitution along side Mao's ideas. My view is on this rather bleak but I think the US needs allies more than ever. Ironically I think two equally matched powers are more likely to come to a peaceful coexistence than if one side perceives the other to be weaker. Maybe a new cold (or cool-ish) war isn't so bad compared to a hot war.
- StanislavPetrov 7y agoGolly, who could have ever expected this? Hopefully everyone remembers this when authoritarians cry about needing backdoors in all of our encryption.
- ackbar03 7y agoDo you think cybersecurity or ai is a better field to dive deeper into as a career/business field? I feel like in some ways ai has already been hyped up but cybersecurity tends to be quite niche in its demands?
- krapht 7y agoEvery company with valuable data is interested in computer security. I have never seen a shortage of positions for qualified candidates. AI has way too much hype behind it. Deep learning is not the best solution for most business data problems.
- Godel_unicode 7y agoWhy only pick one?
- danaur 7y agoBecause one has limited time
- gkilmain 7y agoBut shouldn't you at least try both? They seem to me to be two very different things.
- Thorrez 7y agoackbar03 didn't seem to be asking about what to try, but about what to dedicate a career to.
- ackbar03 7y agoI've already been dabbling in both but if Im to either start a business or pursue a career in a single field I feel it's probably going to require more more dedication to one thing, but thanks for the response
- dogma1138 7y ago
- redwards510 7y agoSo China ran a network sniffer and captured and reversed some 0day that the NSA lobbed at them? I'd be pretty surprised if this sort of thing didn't happen all the time in cyberwar, considering the NSA has a massive, worldwide sniffing operation and China has the GFW. I feel like this story is omitting some important fact that makes this a bigger deal.
- fosco 7y agoAgree, this reminds me of a 'limited hangout' [0] where a small bit of the big story was released for people to talk about so that the real story never gets revealed. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_hangout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_hangout
- dev_dull 7y agoLately this seems to be virtually every story related to “spygate” from the times. One persons “scoop” is another powerful person’s attempt to shape narrative.
- yeahitslikethat 7y agoThe ufo conspiracies are an example of this. The government promoted ufo stories to distract from the real stories.
- Mtinie 7y agoAs an insider please let us know, what are the real stories?
- yeahitslikethat 7y ago"According to later estimates from CIA officials who worked on the U-2 project and the OXCART (SR-71, or Blackbird) project, over half of all UFO reports from the late 1950s through the 1960s were accounted for by manned reconnaissance flights (namely the U-2) over the United States. (45) This led the Air Force to make misleading and deceptive statements to the public in order to allay public fears and to protect an extraordinarily sensitive national security project. While perhaps justified, this deception added fuel to the later conspiracy theories and the coverup controversy of the 1970s. The percentage of what the Air Force considered unexplained UFO sightings fell to 5.9 percent in 1955 and to 4 percent in 1956. (46)" Source: https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/97unclass/ufo.html https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intellig...
- mamon 7y agoOk, so Edward Snowden runs off with few terabytes of NSA data. He briefly stops in China, before finally going to Russia. Now NSA hacking tools are used against US and we are supposed to believe that "Chinese did not steal the code but captured it from an N.S.A. attack on their own computers". Somehow I'm not convinced.
- sexy_seedbox 7y ago> He briefly stops in China, before finally going to Russia. Hong Kong is NOT China.
- rossdavidh 7y agoWell, it is and it isn't. But I think any tools he had that long ago would not be newsworthy by now.
- jessaustin 7y agoYeah that's what I was thinking. 4 years between Snowden's releases and Vault 7, and another 2 years from then until now. Most 0-days don't live that long. Not to mention the fact that Snowden has always refused to work with Wikileaks... The conspiracies that people treasure are quite revealing.
- omeid2 7y agoWhile I don't believe the allegation about ES and CN. > Hong Kong is NOT China. It actually is, while HK enjoys a high degree of autonomy, it is still a "special administrative regions" of China and has been since 1997 when the 99 year lease expired.
- lopmotr 7y agoThere isn't a clear definition of what counts as part of a country. For this purpose, it's about access to intelligence. By that standard, Britain is part of America too because they share intelligence. If it's decided by the country that claims it, then many disputed regions belong to more than one country. If it's decided by international agreement, then what happens when they don't agree? Like Taiwan and other disputed regions. What about Puerto Rico? Is that part of the US? If it's about control of the government and military, was Iraq part of the US when it was occupied?
- quotz 7y agoChina is becoming an increasingly big threat to the west and it’s values, only because it’s a communist dictatorship. With the rise of the middle class and the ultra rich in China, I dont know for how long with the communist party stay in power. It seems the government censorship and all the spying does work for controlling the people into believing the government is doing good to them...
- rossdavidh 7y agoChina hasn't actually been communist in a long time. I think the current situation is that the growing middle class will give at least tacit support, so long as they keep growing. With memories of the late 60's still hanging over that nation, they prize stability more than nations that haven't lost it in living memory. Now, if the economy turns really sour, then like Indonesia in the 90's they may discover that the populace gets restless very quickly. But, for now, I think the Chinese middle class is not in the mood to make big trouble.
- eternalban 7y agoThe Chinese have found (or been given) the modern Middle Kingdom under the rule of the Communist Party. What is happening in China is what has always happened in China. Certain invariables that even the Cultural Revolution could not erase from the Chinese nation. What China dislodged during the reign of Mao was out dated forms of these invariables. Confucius is out, Party Chairman's 'thoughts' are in. The West is used to seeing the decrepit aspect of the Chinese and associates that with its characteristic societal structure. But this nation also has an aspect of splendor. This renewed splendor appears to bother some in the West. In fact, any sort of renewal of Asia not under the control of the West is "alarming" to the West. Don't worry. Asians don't hold grudges .. ;)
- tiredyam 7y agoevery country has its history. That does not justify China’s human rights violations. I am all for China overtaking the throne as the global hegemony, if they cared about human rights outside of the Han people. Stopping the genocide on the western part of China would be a start. Either way, US being number two may give us a much needed gut punch. We can trim some of our collective fat.
- cryptokernel 7y agoHow are they able to do that? Just leaving this here: Join CoinCircle's daily competition to earn awesome ETH rewards. Minimum of $10 can be won if you join: https://coincircle.com/l/50VVxbObg3 https://coincircle.com/l/50VVxbObg3
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Anardo 7y agoPlease don't tell me this is true... The US government can't be this fucked.
- jlgaddis 7y agoThis NYT article is paywalled but Symantec's blog post [0] (on which much of the NYT article is based) is not. --- According to the blog post, "Buckeye", a group allegedly working on behalf of the Chinese state, also used an "exploit of a previously unknown Windows zero-day vulnerability. This zero day was reported by Symantec to Microsoft in September 2018 and patched in March 2019." So Symantec reported a zero-day -- which was being actively exploited in the wild by a state-based actor -- to Microsoft and Microsoft STILL didn't release a patch for it until six months later? [0]: https://www.symantec.com/blogs/threat-intelligence/buckeye-windows-zero-day-exploit https://www.symantec.com/blogs/threat-intelligence/buckeye-w...
- imhelpingu 7y agoWhat an unexpected and wholly unforeseen consequence of backdooring domestic technology while pretending to the opposite. Let's hear it, IC apologists: Get your mob of astroturfers out her to tell us why this is a specious concern.
- lawnchair_larry 7y agoDid you read the article? There is no backdoor of any technology involved, let alone domestic technology.
- freeflight 7y agoSo China pretty much pulled the reverse card in UNO?
- function_seven 7y agoSounds like it. They arranged to be rubber to our glue.
- olliej 7y agoYet more evidence that you can't trust anyone with magic software that defeats device security without making the devices insecure.
- lopmotr 7y agoOS makers have that magic software and seem to keep it secure enough. They can update your device and potentially hack if it they want to. If you think that's a bad idea, what alternative would you propose for automatic security updates?
- TaylorAlexander 7y agoLinux distros can all be configured to update automatically. This does not require external control - the machine is capable of checking update servers on its own and updating if configured to do so. I don’t see how external control would be required for automatic updates.
- fwip 7y agoAutomatic updates give the update server the ability to compromise your machine.
- kitotik 7y agoBut at least you get to choose who is on the list of potential suppliers.
- TaylorAlexander 7y agoMost software updates risk compromising your machine, no? I’m talking about whether external control is required for software updates to occur. As with Windows, where Microsoft can replace software on your machine at any time. On Ubuntu, canonical can add backdoored software to their repositories but they can’t forcibly install software on your machine AFAIK. Maybe I just misunderstood the comment I was responding to.
- mLuby 7y agoIf someone steals a gun and kills someone, I'm mostly mad at the murderer, but I'm at least a little mad at the irresponsible gun owner.
- TaylorAlexander 7y agoIt’s more like one murderer stealing a gun from another murderer, since they both use the tools against everyone else.
- elihu 7y ago> Chinese intelligence agents acquired National Security Agency hacking tools and repurposed them in 2016 to attack American allies and private companies in Europe and Asia, a leading cybersecurity firm has discovered. Does that open up the NSA to a lawsuit from those U.S. companies that were attacked by the same tools the NSA created and used against targets in China? It seems like there ought to be some liability for any organization that gives this kind of technology to another organization who is likely to misuse it, even if "give" in this instance means "use it against them".
- lawnchair_larry 7y agoOf course not. The NSA didn’t put those vulnerabilities there. If we want to start pointing fingers, the first point of liability would be with whoever released the vulnerable software.
- lapinot 7y agoI do and you probably do too. Of course we can fantasize that these vulns have been planted, maybe even a couple have been. But most of them are probably just uncaught mistakes and subtle semantic errors. I believe in proving software (and other stuff) correct, but that doesn't mean we'll arrive at some point to the one true software. The problem is about defining formally what it is to be correct, having a model that encompasses all things you care about. You can't blame people for writing faulty software and shipping exploitable hardware, that's just what one does. I think it makes sense to blame people for discovering exploits and not disclosing them properly tho. That's what one is expected to do... Some wishful thinking: let's hope the US will see that the only move with positive outcome is to start a global disarmament initiative. We seem to have forgotten the days of fighting for de-weaponizing encryption, this should apply to cyber-security in general.
- bearmcbearsly 7y ago188 upvotes in 3 hours and already off the front page. Clearly people are flagging this post. The question is why...
- anxman 7y agoSomething about this whole article is bullshit. In fact, it could be a planted story BY NSA. The Shadow Brokers released source code and the USA still doesn't know how it was leaked. There's no source code in an "interception".