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> Abdine has come up with a plausible theory—that one hacker first exploited CVE-2018-18472 and a rival hacker later exploited the other vulnerability in an att
by eqvinox 5y ago
> Abdine has come up with a plausible theory—that one hacker first exploited CVE-2018-18472 and a rival hacker later exploited the other vulnerability in an attempt to wrest control of those already compromised devices.
Excluding straight vandalism, I can't really come up with another reason for the reported sequence of events. Presumably the first attacker wanted to build a botnet (which is actually something they can draw profit from), and a competitor wanted to prevent them from doing that.
Otherwise — again, excluding straight vandalism — what is the benefit of wiping the devices? Having your preexisting botnet target/scan and exploit these devices isn't free. What else could they have been trying to gain?
- tyingq 5y agoWatching the world burn. There are plenty of examples of worms/viruses that bring no benefit to the creator. I know you said "excluding", but it's popular. Alternatively, some misguided "white knight" idea. Maybe the factory reset turns off the "open to the internet" setting.
- sigzero 5y agoYup, some people just want to see the world burn.
- shadilay 5y agoIncompetence probably, there's really no downside when experimenting with others' devices (aside from legal).
- dannyw 5y agoA put option on WD stock? Realistically speaking, you are probably going to be able to hide ~$100-$250k of put earnings, especially if you have a trading history and it's not the only thing you trade. That can be a considerable payout.
- frakkingcylons 5y agoI think the bigger question is whether the attack will actually move the stock in the direction you want.
- dannyw 5y agoOk, buy the same number of puts and calls, so your exposure is to volatility (vega). This way, it can move in any direction and you'd benefit, and it's very unlikely a big scary hacking event (covered by the financial press) wouldn't increase volatility of a stock.
- pydry 5y agoBizarrely it doesnt seem to have: https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/wdc https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/wdc
- tedunangst 5y agoThe stock market just doesn't care about the same things HN thinks are ultra critical.
- throwaway09223 5y agoYup. I learned long ago that having an insider's perspective doesn't necessarily help me predict where the market will move. An expert's perspective can certainly be helpful, but if market prices are set by non-experts (or, experts in other fields) then it may just lead to consistently wrong answers per the tenets of keynesian economics.
- tgragnato 5y agoOr the botnet was DDoSing, and someone decided they had enough. (it would not be the first time)
- oneweekwonder 5y agoreminds me of the time(2018) outdated MikroTik routers got patched by a grey-hat[0]. [0]: https://www.zdnet.com/article/a-mysterious-grey-hat-is-patching-peoples-outdated-mikrotik-routers/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/a-mysterious-grey-hat-is-patch...
- frombody 5y agoWhat I don't get is why are people directly connecting these devices to the internet? The logs in the article show these devices being accessed from the internet. There have been many people in this forum mentioning how their data is gone, and I'm doubting most of the people here are directly connecting their devices to the internet .. which makes me feel like there is something more going on.
- 5555624 5y ago> What I don't get is why are people directly connecting these devices to the internet? Because they want to access their data from anywhere or at least like the idea of doing that and it's under their control, not the Google or Microsoft cloud.
- charwalker 5y agoThey don't trust or can't afford the monthly cost of _Drive cloud solutions so go with the home based solution. They still want the web access for pulling up photos for grandma or something. WD has (had?) credibility in non tech circles so these would sell well.