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This is not what we need in these final chapters of 2020 with COVID cases spiking. > Charles Carmakal, senior vice president for Mandiant, told Reuters that UN
by haswell 6y ago
This is not what we need in these final chapters of 2020 with COVID cases spiking.
> Charles Carmakal, senior vice president for Mandiant, told Reuters that UNC1878 is one of most brazen, heartless, and disruptive threat actors he’s observed over the course of his career.
This is what terrorism looks like in 2020. Horrifying, terrifying, disgusting.
- Larrikin 6y agoWhy the assumption that its terrorist and not a state sanctioned attack?
- sudosysgen 6y agoIf we're honest, it's neither. It's 1000% profit-orientated.
- Johnjonjoan 6y agoI think you just accurately described most of North Korea's cyber attacks. Not to say that they are the culprit; just that state sponsored and and money driven aren't necessarily exclusive.
- toomanybeersies 6y agoCyber attacks are probably the least interesting enterprise that North Korea is involved in [1] They're also involved quite heavily in the illegal drug trade and bootlegging cigarettes and alcohol, using their embassies and diplomats as a distribution network, as well as counterfeiting currency and pharmaceuticals, running an international restaurant chain [2], building statues for tinpot dictators [3], shipping citizens off to Russia as "contract workers", smuggling ivory, trafficking arms, and previously leased out embassy buildings in Berlin to a hostel [4] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea%27s_illicit_activities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea%27s_illicit_activi... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyongyang_(restaurant_chain) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyongyang_(restaurant_chain) [3] https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35569277 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35569277 [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embassy_of_North_Korea,_Berlin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embassy_of_North_Korea,_Berlin
- BlueTemplar 6y agoYeah, fucking North Korean forced labor camps in Poland (!) in the middle of the European Union. It's mind-boggling !
- OpticalWindows 6y agoMost state sponsored terrorism is profit-oriented
- HenryKissinger 6y agoThe expression "state sponsored terrorism" is vague and subject to a lot of biases. For what it's worth, most state-sanctioned cyberattacks are _not_ profit oriented. They rather aim to disrupt the operations of an organization (see: American cyberattacks against ISIL), establish deterrence (see: the US allegedly planting digital "bombs" in Russia's networks), collect intelligence (see: the OPM hack). The exception being North Korea, a state that conducts cyberattacks for the explicit purpose of making money.
- hanniabu 6y agoWell I hope they don't request bitcoin since the US recently made it illegal to make cryptocurrency ransomware payments: https://www.coindesk.com/ban-all-ransomware-payments-bitcoin https://www.coindesk.com/ban-all-ransomware-payments-bitcoin
- ethanbond 6y agoNot true. Ransomware attacks have become top cover for more targeted attacks that happen in the chaos. See NotPetya.
- SimbaOnSteroids 6y agoThese are not mutually exclusive.
- djsumdog 6y agoTrue. The United States is the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world (School of the Americas, Bay of Pigs, Iranian-Contra, Operation AJAX, COINTELPRO, Operation Mockingbird, United Fruit...)
- keeganpoppen 6y agogot anything from the past 50 years?
- djsumdog 6y agoYou gotta wait for it to be declassified. Syria was likely CIA funded. Same with Libya. Just wait a bit. It all comes out after everyone's stopped caring.
- jonnybgood 6y agoAre you speaking about Syria and Libya today that was a result of the Arab Spring in multiple Arab countries, which took everyone including CIA by surprise? Do you really believe the CIA is capable of something on that scale? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring
- TaylorAlexander 6y agoIf it took the CIA by surprise, why were Syria and Libya on the short list of countries that General Wesley Clark identified as regime change targets in 2007, three years before the Arab Spring? https://youtu.be/9RC1Mepk_Sw https://youtu.be/9RC1Mepk_Sw
- 6y ago
- kylebenzle 6y agoDoes anyone else feel that any organization that isn't doing regular secure backups with a way to restore that data deserves for this to happen? It like an airplane running out of gas because the pilot forgot to fill up the tank. Its kind of step one of working with computers.
- shajznnckfke 6y ago“Deserve” doesn’t do anything for the people hurt by this, and it doesn’t justify the behavior of the hackers.
- dzhiurgis 6y agoPay the ransom and nobody gets hurt. It's actually tiny price to pay compared to proper infrastructure. Insurers make trillions, it's nothing to them. The happy ending of this would be continuing to pay terrorists who keep you IT top notch...
- Thorrez 6y agoBlack hat bug bounty hunters, interesting.
- sellyme 6y agoI'm not sure that's of much comfort to the passengers on the plane.
- agar 6y agoYou certainly express an unpopular opinion, and at first glance you are right: secure backups should be a priority for any IT organization. However, not all backups are continuous and pervasive. There are often backup windows, gaps, and processes that halt with no one noticing. Ryuk also actively disables and deletes backups to maximize impact, while also seeking out mount points that might be backup targets - and encrypts those as well. Of course, we're also talking about hospitals here. Even a well-managed system with hourly differential backups leaves plenty of time for radiology data to be lost in the critical hour before life saving surgery. More realistically though, how long would it take you to discover and remove a sophisticated penetration, then restore every device, ensure none of the restores are also infected by the malware that had probably been there for a while, and bring a hospital system with thousands of impacted systems back online? 72 hours? A week? A month? What happens to the patients? Admissions to the emergency room? What if adjacent hospitals are also hit, or are already impacted by the COVID spike and have no open beds? People literally die due to hospital ransomware attacks. No one deserves that. Ransomware is akin to kidnapping, it's just the data and customers that are held hostage, not kids or loved ones. Always blame the criminal, never the victim.
- dzhiurgis 6y agoI sometimes wonder how much of Covid could've been spread by on purpose (asides from freedom fighters refusing common sense).
- Thorrez 6y ago>terrorism Isn't ransomware profit-motivated? I thought with terrorism the goal was fear rather than profit.
- Polylactic_acid 6y agoTerrorism is a buzzword that means "Person I don't like" now.
- the_only_law 6y agoI thought terrorism were those guys we're at war with?
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoNo, those have rights (geneva convention)
- markdown 6y ago> Brown person I don't like. FTFY
- kergonath 6y agoNo, those are fascists.
- bonestamp2 6y agoTo make matters even more complicated, even the anti-fascists (aka "antifa") have become the enemy too.
- szczesniewski 6y agoIIRC antifa from the start is a violent group. Use whatever means necessary to stop fascism. What means are necessary and what is fascism is left as an exercise for a reader.
- 6y ago
- FireBeyond 6y agoWasn't there a ransomware case in Germany recently where when they advised the hackers that they'd hit a hospital, the hackers immediately turned over the unlock keys, without a ransom? Not that that is any way a defense, and I'm sure there was as much a self-interested motivation of "We are going to be hit hard if we ransom a hospital _now_" as much as "doing the right thing"...
- newsclues 6y agoAt a certain point a “hack” becomes an “attack” and the response moves from “police action” to “military response” and I’m guessing that only state actor or sponsored groups are willing to cross that line.
- Cantbekhan 6y agoSuch responses happened in the past, sometimes with some added sarcasm https://twitter.com/idf/status/1125066395010699264 https://twitter.com/idf/status/1125066395010699264
- mschuster91 6y ago> Not that that is any way a defense, and I'm sure there was as much a self-interested motivation of "We are going to be hit hard if we ransom a hospital _now_" as much as "doing the right thing"... You're correct. Said ransomware case is now under the investigation of involuntary manslaughter, as a woman died during transfer to another hospital: https://www.dw.com/de/haben-russische-hacker-den-tod-einer-patientin-in-d%C3%BCsseldorf-auf-dem-gewissen/a-55043651 https://www.dw.com/de/haben-russische-hacker-den-tod-einer-p...
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoSelf-interest; a financial crime is nowhere as high on the priority list as one causing injury and death. It crosses the line from fairly petty crime to getting an international warrant on your ass.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
- dfsegoat 6y agoI wonder at what threshold asymmetric responses get put into play, with these actors clearly focused on basic terrorism. At what point is a ‘kinetic response’ to a cyberattack warranted ? Edit: got to point
- mcintyre1994 6y agohttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/16/us/politics/pentagon-nuclear-review-cyberattack-trump.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/16/us/politics/pentagon-nucl... The Pentagon have at least suggested that there’s a potential for a nuclear response to a significant enough cyber attack.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- onetimemanytime 6y ago>>This is not what we need in these final chapters of 2020 with COVID cases spiking. That's a play "why do you rob the banks". Some choice those hospitals have
- wrkronmiller 6y ago> This is what terrorism looks like in 2020. Given the (extra-)legal powers that are activated by that word, I'd be circumspect in using it. Many crimes are "horrifying, terrifying, [and] disgusting" without rising to the level of terrorism.
- titzer 6y agoAttacking a hospital is a war crime, so how is it not terrorism?
- mszcz 6y agoIsn't terrorism trying to achieve a political goal through violence? Getting ransom money is just garden variety greed imo.
- pmachinery 6y ago> Attacking a hospital is a war crime, Strictly speaking, if people we don't like attack a hospital it's a war crime; if we do it, it's an accident. > so how is it not terrorism? Murdering civilians during a war is a war crime; that doesn't mean murder automatically equals terrorism outside of war.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoCome on. Blowing up a hospital is a crime, and arguably terrorism. Disabling the hospital and systematically preventing it from treating patients is a lesser thing. But still arguably terrorism if done intentionally. And yes, it matters if an enemy or friend does it. That's so obvious to not merit discussion.
- uhs-employee 6y agoThe hospital chain I work for was hit with ransomware last month. Door locks, time clocks, and photocopy machines still worked, but all computers were down. We use paper records, but it was frustrating and inconvenient. We're not allowed to pay due to laws. Corporate started slowly building us a brand new, but terrible, network 5 weeks after the old one went down. Definitely caused a little staff burnout, but not more than corporate's relentless attempts to extract additional profit from us at the expense of our patients and our wellbeing.
- Medicalidiot 6y agoWe had our computers go down for ~12 hours one day. Paper charts came out, which was a massive undertaking. I could not imagine my system being down for 5 weeks.
- TheBobinator 6y agoIf they treat you like an ATM machine, you treat them as such. 40 hr weeks, go home, and DGAF. Patients dieing because people don't work 80hr weeks? Why are you working for such a shit management team? That's management's problem. Don't like it? Quit. Really don't like it? Name and shame. It's unfortunate we live in a day and age that kind of thinking is necissary but it is. Burnout in the middle of a pandemic can get you killed.
- jariel 6y agoTerrorism is almost, but probably not exactly the right word, but it's 'of that level of concern'. If Hospitals nation-wide are under attack, it's a massive national security issue. We need to figure out some kind of new way to secure general purpose devices - and also - there needs to be much more investment in thwarting and retaliating against these people. If some random hackers and do this - imagine how badly and quickly a foreign state actor with deep pockets could shut things down.