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If your threat model includes nation states, you are outgunned. A nation state can probably buy the building across the street if that's the value of hacking
by brudgers 2y ago
If your threat model includes nation states, you are outgunned.
A nation state can probably buy the building across the street if that's the value of hacking your system.
Of course there are almost certainly cheaper options,but that's the level of time and budget you are up against...teams of motivated and well resourced experienced professionals working against you full time.
- medo-bear 2y ago> If your threat model includes nation states, you are outgunned it is quite plausible that the target was a nation state sponsored entity, so fair game? its not like they did this to a local fish n chips shop
- mr_mitm 2y agoMaybe so, but in this case they made it easy for them [1]: > Upon examining those logs, Volexity found that in January and February, password-spray attacks had been carried out against this service and three accounts had been successfully compromised by an attacker. > ... > The Enterprise Wi-Fi network, however, did not require MFA and only required a user's valid domain username and password to authenticate > ... > While the Guest Wi-Fi network had been believed to be completely isolated from the corporate wired network, where the high-value targeted data resided, there was one system that was accessible from both the Wi-Fi network and the corporate wired network. Bad passwords, no certificate based network authentication or MFA, bad network separation. Basic stuff. [1] https://www.volexity.com/blog/2024/11/22/the-nearest-neighbor-attack-how-a-russian-apt-weaponized-nearby-wi-fi-networks-for-covert-access/ https://www.volexity.com/blog/2024/11/22/the-nearest-neighbo... (This should have been the referenced page IMHO.)
- myworkinisgood 2y agoHave you seen how much people struggle with getting on wifi when you include just include certificates, not even MFA on such security things?
- mr_mitm 2y agoI have not. It's an enterprise Wifi. Enroll all end points and authentication happens seamlessly. Zero user interaction, it literally cannot be simpler.
- phendrenad2 2y agoWhy is this always the top comment lol. Do you leave your door unlocked, because "if your threat model involves crowbars, you are outgunned"? Ironic that this comment was posted (yet again), because this time it seems like the hackers used the same "guns" as everyone else. What's interesting is that wifi is so hackable, when anyone with any cryptography knowledge knows that it needn't be. But it seems to me that we're all using less-than-secure locks so that the "good guys" can get in if needed.
- hulitu 2y ago> If your threat model includes nation states, you are outgunned. If basic security is not implemented, you have bigger problems. (backdoors in Cisco, Fortinet, Palo Alto Networks, skipping tests - Cloudstrike)
- brudgers 2y agoLike I said, there are almost certainly cheaper options. It would be unprofessional for intelligence professionals to do things to hard way. You are outgunned.
- rangestransform 2y agoWe should still try our best to secure everything against nation state actors, so that people who really need it (journalists, dissidents, security researchers, etc.) can blend into the crowd with regular consumer grade devices
- aaron695 2y ago[dead]
- rapjr9 2y agoBut then the source code of the nation states is hacked and anyone can pull off nation state style attacks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vault_7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vault_7 The nation states still have a money/people/breaking+entering advantage, but the cyberattack code is now something everyone has to protect against. Also some companies are important enough that they have to protect against nation state attacks, like pipeline operators, chemical plant operators, utilities, and telecom companies: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/22/us/politics/chinese-hack-telecom-white-house.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/22/us/politics/chinese-hack-... And criminals won't hestitate to use your family to blackmail you, so all the families of people with critical jobs need to be protect also, and their friends families, and...basically everybody.
- Toutouxc 2y agoIf your threat model includes states. The states being nation states or not is irrelevant.
- fulafel 2y agoThe nation state as a threat model adversary is kind of a weird abstraction. Does it include intrusive questions eg about social media asked by a border agent on your next trip abroad? Does it include getting your web browsing traffic collected up by the nine eyes spooks? Or does it mean a rich country is marshaling all its resources in a manhattan project grade effort to target you personally? In any case as in all things defense, you assume your adversary is to some extent rational and making attacks harder (more expensive, risky, opportunity cost, etc) improves the equation for you.
- moomin 2y agoIt _could_ mean any of those things, but in practice most APTs (this one included) seem to fit the profile of “Regular hackers doing this as a full time job”. Most seem to be five to ten people, probably just a small office somewhere. They can be extremely creative but they don’t seem to have extraordinary access to the machinery of state. And then you’ve got Stuxnet, which both clearly involved many more people than that, but also actual physical espionage.
- impossiblefork 2y agoIf you can't secure computers against state attackers, then you have to stop using computers and to simply talk in places where there are not phones, computers etc. If you're afraid about directional microphones out in the woods there are countermeasures for that too, but security is very possible even against the very most well-funded attackers. Furthermore, I don't think even internet-connected secure computers are so hard that they can't be built. Limit what you do, so that you can write the program short enough that you can afford to have theoretical guarantees-- maybe write it to run on a computer with Harvard architecture to avoid buffer overflows, and you can probably build one on an FPGA, even as a hobbyist. State attackers aren't magic.
- chgs 2y agoUntil state attackers pick up your developers kids and bring them home from school, and then nicely ask him to put in a back door.
- impossiblefork 2y agoBut how would they know how the developer is? This is the neat part of not putting things where people can find them out. Also, if you really keep it short, you can always check that he hasn't by reading it. You could also just never update it, and it let become ancient and well-tested.
- Spooky23 2y agoLots of espionage and surveillance within government and contractors. Lots of body shop contractors are fake people anyway. Pretty easy to imagine placing a compromised person in a low sensitivity area, then moving laterally.
- impossiblefork 2y agoBut why you hire consultants to solve core security problems? Furthermore, surely it would just be one guy who knows OS and FPGA stuff and another guy to check it? What I'm arguing for is that a sensible solution to security problems is to avoid complexity, so that things can be obviously secure. Carefully defined interfaces designed to be clear, impossible to misinterpret and which are designed to be parsed and implemented without doing anything requiring some kind of fiddly parsing that can lead difficulties, and small enough that someone can implement them in an afternoon; and then you combine that with a machine inherently robust to things like buffer overflows such as Harvard architecture type things, and it's easy even for a single engineer to program something like that up on an FPGA.
- ris 2y ago> A nation state can probably buy the building across the street if that's the value of hacking your system. So make them spend that money. Or, more likely, convince them to refocus on a cheaper target.