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AT&T, Verizon reportedly hacked to target US govt wiretapping platform
- TriangleEdge 2y agoThe article didn't say but I'm guessing the target could of been JSI Telecom. I knew some people that worked for JSI ~10 years ago and the US govt used their platform in a handful of organizations.
- Hizonner 2y agoWell, that's what happens when you deliberately compromise your own infrastructure with "lawful intercept" back doors.
- Neonlicht 2y agoThe CCP doesn't need the backdoor. The US intelligence agencies have to do the whole masquerade of freedom and liberty.
- r721 2y agoOriginal WSJ story (unpaywalled): https://archive.is/RqwMQ https://archive.is/RqwMQ
- jeroenhd 2y agoTargeting wiretapping infrastructure may be a viable attack, but with how few details are available to the public, it's hard to estimate the impact. Just because a wiretapping platform was hacked doesn't mean any data was gathered, and if it really was, we don't know what kind of data. Thanks to mobile networks, information can be anything from live internet traffic to live location information of cars and phones. However, I suspect if someone did a hack that juicy, carrier SOCs would've noticed immediately. This type of infrastructure isn't exactly hooked up to a public IP address somewhere.
- OutOfHere 2y ago[flagged]
- Hizonner 2y ago> This type of infrastructure isn't exactly hooked up to a public IP address somewhere. Snort.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 2y ago<< few details are available to the public, it's hard to estimate the impact. Would it not be a good indicator that it may not be a great idea to begin with? << carrier SOCs would've noticed immediately. I want to believe that. I do. But the longer I live in corporate, the more I think that we are experiencing a serious competency problem across the board.
- yusyusyus 2y agoehh.. LI on routers has been (at least on one major vendor) designed to not be visible to end operators in the course of normal operation. there are ways to see it, but it involves either the actual LI mechanism or some esoteric debugs. And it probably wouldn't be obvious to SOCs if the implemented LI was legit or not. So, the question of competence or otherwise may be mooted by virtue of simply not having proper visibility.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 2y agoFair point. I do not know enough in that area to argue further.
- tguvot 2y agoin fqct, iirc, it might be even illegal to know what wiretaps are running on the system unless you are the one who process warrant or implement the wiretap. and in case wiretap falls under fisa, than this is classified information and a whole different can of worms
- hansvm 2y ago
- NelsonMinar 2y agoIt used to be the US government worked to secure American communications. But between these backdoors and the NSA losing control of exploits thanks to the Shadow Brokers, they do more now to undermine American security than protect it.
- immibis 2y agoYou misunderstood "American security" to mean "security of Americans" instead of the intended meaning "security of the American regime"
- mistrial9 2y agoyou are not wrong, but this has always been the case, from the earliest times. Similar problems with the institution of the military. It calls for moving past the initial indignation, and engaging somehow.. otherwise you get the government you deserved, as they say.
- diggan 2y ago> It used to be the US government worked to secure American communications. When was this? As far as I remember (but I'm not that old to be honest), it seems to mostly been about the US government making sure the government has secure communications, while the rest get to fend for themselves.
- ffujdefvjg 2y agoFend for themselves, and if they don't cooperate with the wishes of the TLAs they get legal trouble nobody could possibly afford. And if you end up in the secret FISA courts, you basically can't get legal representation because it's secret, or ever really talk about it. Also there's no real oversight for this stuff because it's that secret.
- 0xEF 2y agoNot to be that guy, but if you're going to drop conspiracy theories on HN, you need to cite your sources. Less hand waving and more fact checking.
- photochemsyn 2y agoSounds like another government-approved leak to a compliant corporate media outlet by 'anonymous sources'. I don't know why the relevant government agencies don't just issue a press release unless they're unusually embarrassed by this apparent security failure. The other possibility is the story is no more true than all those 'anonymous source' leaks about Iraq's (nonexistent) chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs from two decades ago. If we're not going to accept Seymour Hersch's anonymously-sourced claim that the US Navy was involved in the destruction of the Nordstream pipelines, why accept this claim at face value either? For an example of reporting of a major hacking incident not reliant on anonymous government sources, see the OPM hack: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/05/us/breach-in-a-federal-computer-system-exposes-personnel-data.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/05/us/breach-in-a-federal-co... Notably, the WSJ source report doesn't include any mention of reporters attempting to get official statements from the relevant US government agencies and being rebuffed. That smells like plausible deniability of the kind involved in the bogus Iraq WMD leaks.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago[flagged]
- phendrenad2 2y agoTech imitates life. Hyenas specialized in chasing lions away from their prey.
- olliej 2y agoHappily, this kind of attack would not compromise secure communication with government mandated "secure intercept" technology, because of magic fairy dust reasons :-/
- MassPikeMike 2y agoFrom the article: "if hackers gained access to service providers’ core routers, it would leave them in a powerful position to steal information..." Sorry for the newbie question, but isn't most internet traffic end-to-end encrypted, these days? So what information would the hackers, or for that matter the "lawful intercept" system , have been able to steal? I do see how accessing routers would let intruders launch malwares, spoof other sites for phishing attacks, etc.
- nashashmi 2y agoMeta data of how many packets are going between two parties, when its going, and who else is getting the data at the same time. It is like the pizza traffic story at 10 pm.
- eightysixfour 2y agoOn top of what you mentioned, they would have access to significant metadata, unencrypted traffic, and it is worth assuming that government agencies have the resources to acquire certificates and MITM high value information.
- hiatus 2y ago> have the resources to acquire certificates and MITM high value information. Isn't that mitigated by certificate transparency?
- ls612 2y agoFor WebPKI yes it should be.
- eightysixfour 2y agoObviously this all depends on your threat model at the end of the day, but if assuming a state level actor, I don’t think it is that far fetched to assume they can acquire the original certificate.
- davisr 2y ago
- CatWChainsaw 2y agoSo maybe surveilling everything everywhere at all times has its downsides, TLAs?
- neom 2y agoDoes it drive anyone else nuts when they throw in something related to the main article like this "Security researchers also found that the threat actor attacked hotels, engineering companies, and law firms in Brazil, Burkina Faso, South Africa, Canada, Israel, France, Guatemala, Lithuania, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Thailand, and the United Kingdom." but that isn't in the main article and they don't say where they got that information from?
- xyst 2y agoI hate how numb I have gotten to data breaches due to the incompetence of these companies. All of the major US cellular networks have all been hacked to a certain degree.