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A wiper attack paralyzed the Iranian train system
- CoolGuySteve 5y agoIt really feels like we're starting to enter an era of internet privateers. "Sure you can shake down anywhere, as long as they're not on friendly terms with your own sovereign territory."
- arminiusreturns 5y agoIt makes me wonder if official writs of marque will make a comeback in the future cyberpunk dystopia we all are building?
- edoceo 5y agoPirates License! Neat. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_of_marque https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_of_marque
- Laforet 5y agoI'd say this is a throwback to the 90s when cybercrime was more about satisfying personal curiosities and convictions (however misguided they might have been) rather than demanding ransom from hospitals and school districts.
- beloch 5y agoThat's an apt analogy. It makes one wonder how many of these ransomware organizations are connected to their respective local governments, ready to be put to work should an open conflict arise. It also makes one laugh at what we have been calling internet "piracy" to date. Individuals copying, cracking, and distributing software bears almost no resemblance to organized "crews" deploying professionally written malware ("ships") for monetary gain in ways that can harm hundreds or thousands of innocent bystanders in the process.
- azernik 5y agoThat is, to a certain extent, how the Russian hacking ecosystem works. From a wide pool of domestic criminals targeting domestic targets, some of them attack countries Russia is having problems with, in the knowledge that they won't be prosecuted for that.
- alisonkisk 5y agoData wiping (deletion) attack, not windshield wiping attack. Strange to call vandalism/terrorism "epic troll".
- detaro 5y agoThat's the IT security industry for you, way to many people there love to play to that "never grown up/out of script-kiddy morals" stereotype.
- ByteJockey 5y agoI feel like vandalism could count as a troll, at least in the original sense of some action taken to provoke an emotional reaction. Say, for example, spray painting something that would make a particular politician mad along a parade route that they're going to be taking. It might be a non-central example, but I think it belongs in the category.
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoIt's a troll because they gave out the number of Ayatollah Khamenei's office as the passenger complaint number.
- tasogare 5y agoAlso strange not to mention potential state actor. Each time an attack in carried on US targets there is a premade list of countries from which it supposedly come, and here nothing.
- Syonyk 5y agoWe can't get chips in anything resembling reasonable quantity. Computer security is a joke. The hardware and software is too complex to analyze, too complex to reason about, too complex to secure even if you could. All you can do now is wait for either attackers or researchers to find a hole, patch it, and hope the patch works (see "Windows Print Spooler" for how that sometimes doesn't work). And the concept of "Hey, maybe we can do things without x86 processors running Windows" is never discussed. Do train networks actually need full on Windows workstations, or can they work on things like microcontrollers? The conversation isn't even being had. But we've got problems from complexity created to solve the problems from the previous wave of complexity, running on top of complex hardware that's trying desperately to be fast enough to run the ever-more-complex software that... largely does about the same things we did 20 years ago, just far less efficiently. I don't see a good path forward here. :/
- matthewmorgan 5y agoDoesn't this same complexity prevent an all-consuming virus?
- Syonyk 5y agoIt doesn't seem to be. Simpler, more straightforward systems to reason about (both hardware and software) are easier to secure.
- meowface 5y agoMakes it take more effort; but, no, definitely doesn't prevent it.
- askvictor 5y agoI would have thought that a diversity of systems/OSes would prevent an all-consuming virus (much like in the biological world)
- VortexDream 5y agoAs soon as a system becomes a target, it doesn't matter if it's an entirely bespoke system that only runs on Iranian trains. You might avoid being accidentally targeted by automated exploits, but that doesn't mean your system is secure or secure enough to avoid something like this.
- aazaa 5y agoI feel dumb not knowing what a "Wiper" is, especially with that headline and the odd writing style of the article (the term "epic troll" gets thrown around a lot and is not what I'd expect to come from a security research org). It turns out to be what it sounds like: > A wiper is a class of malware whose intention is to wipe the hard drive of the computer it infects. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiper_(malware) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiper_(malware)
- brundolf 5y agoI've never heard the term before either. At first I was wondering how a viper snake had performed an epic troll on the Iranian train system... and then I re-read and pictured a windshield-wiper. I couldn't figure out the real meaning before clicking the link.
- roxaaaane 5y agoI am on your side when it comes to infosec naming things, for short history there has been some big attacks by Wiper type malware in the past most notably TV5, South Korea (Winter Olympics 2018),SONY, ARAMCO 2017 there's also some samples currently targeting the Tokyo Olympics
- neilv 5y agoSpoilers, and a tangent I find interesting... Viper/Wiper was the punchline for an animated TV miniseries/sequence of GI Joe. (For non-USians: GI Joe was a US weekday after-school TV militainment and merchandizing franchise targeted at children. Which, from the perspective of an adult who grew up watching that as a kid, feels fascinating.)
- canadianfella 5y agoWhat spoiler?
- grifball 5y agoYeah I've been following malware for a while and this is the first time I've heard of a Wiper. I guess it's like ransomware without the ransom
- SkyMarshal 5y agoI've never heard the term "wiper", and thought at first that some hackers had made all the train windshield wipers go haywire, stopping rail transport as a result.
- LadyCailin 5y agoIf that were the case, I agree, that would actually be a pretty epic troll. This is just cyberterrorism.
- harry8 5y agoDid I miss something? Was this terror? Were people injured or killed and hence fearful? Politically motivated sabotage seems like a more accurate description with the footnote that computers were used (cyber!). But I guess people have been using "terrorist" to mean anything the government doesn't like. So it's fair to keep using it for a foreign government that also may not be liked itself. I'm sure some consider opposition to the Iranian regime just and noble, which I guess I do on some level suitably restrained. Much as I do for opposition to my own government. Would Ghandi be a terrorist under the modern definition for his campaigns of civil disobedience sabotaging the system?
- ummonk 5y agoAs with the cyberattacks on US pipelines earlier this year, this is not an epic troll, but rather terrorism.
- TheAdamAndChe 5y agoThis attack could be considered terrorism, but not the pipeline attack. Terrorism is the act or threat of violence to further political goals. There was nothing political about the pipeline attacks, it was just a ransomware company looking for a payout.
- smhost 5y agoIt was remarkable how quickly U.S. media accepted the "it wasn't terrorism" line after years of going on about how the Russians are the most comically evil superterrorist masterminds who are destroying the fabric of blah blah.
- sudosysgen 5y agoI mean, it can both be true that it wasn't terrorism, and that the mainstream media was wrong by blaming everything on russian superterrorist masterminds. We both know that media narratives don't have to be fully cromulent.
- smhost 5y agoI personally don't care whether it was or wasn't terrorism. Either way, you and I are never going to know (barring a Russian whistleblower). I was just commenting on the bizarre and coordinated behavior of the U.S. media.
- morpheos137 5y agoSee also the Notre Dame fire in 2019. Immediately the media "decided" that it was a simple accident rather than arson or even something else like a small meteorite that could have been easily lost in the wreckage.
- 5y ago
- sickcodebruh 5y agoI feel obligated to remark that “Hack ‘Em All” could be as much a Metallica reference as Pokémon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_%27Em_All https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_%27Em_All
- dhosek 5y agoMy understanding of the sanctions regime is that it's not legal to sell software to Iran, so how do they get Microsoft Windows in the first place? Is the country running on pirated software?
- roxaaaane 5y agoWell yes actually, it's pretty common I've worked on government systems (not Iran but close and not embargoed) that uses pirated Windows, Office Suite.
- kristofferR 5y agoPretty much. The US has banned Iran from joining WTO 22 times, so Iran has reciprocated by not caring about IP violations at all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_in_Iran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_in_Iran
- aaron695 5y agoIsrael believes Iran struck ship in response to cyberattack on train system https://www.timesofisrael.com/tv-israel-believes-iran-struck-ship-in-response-to-cyberattack-on-train-system/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/tv-israel-believes-iran-struck... Two ship crewmen, a British and Romanian national, died in Thursday night’s attack off the coast of Oman on the oil tanker Mercer Street, a ship operated by Zodiac Maritime, a London-based company belonging to Israeli tycoon Eyal Ofer. Israeli and American officials have said it was apparently carried out by suicide drones that hit the ship. The report further said Iran was also hoping to raise insurance costs for ships with ties to Israel.
- Nemrod67 5y ago"The report further said Iran was also hoping to raise insurance costs for ships with ties to Israel." that is scary smart in our current World... we will definitely see these kinds of attacks more often I think. Imagine what a modern super-corporation with funds like Apple could do.
- failwhaleshark 5y agoRemember a time when all a virus did was display "Your PC is now Stoned!"?
- shmerl 5y agoTrolling Khamenei with this reminded me how in "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress" the resistance was trolling the Warden (who represented the oppressive Authority on Luna) using the central computer (Mike) with rogue calls, making him lose sleep.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- londons_explore 5y agoWhy would anyone design an attack with a whole load of human readable batch filed when they could make the whole thing a single .exe file? It smells to me like the architect of the design wasn't a strong programmer, so got teams to develop the components as seperate programs and then assembled them himself with batch scripts and self extracting rar files. I would have done the same when I was 13 years old and new to programming.