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One of the things that I think is going on here is that there is a bias (and for very good reason) towards Russia and other Eastern European countries due to th

by afreak 13y ago

One of the things that I think is going on here is that there is a bias (and for very good reason) towards Russia and other Eastern European countries due to the number of malicious activity encountered from the likes of malware and security attacks. However, one thing that everyone should keep in mind is that Russians do not "shit where they eat". It is not very common for any Russian group to specifically target people within their own borders as that would bring upon a lot of attention. It is 100% likely that their connections are being monitored and 100% likely that a dossier is being built on reporters and officials visiting the country, but it is 100% for sure that they're not being specifically targeted with malware. If they are, the person initiating the attack is going to find themselves in a lot of heat. Engel's Wikipedia article is quite fluffy on that note: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Engel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Engel

tomphoolery 13y ago
That's really interesting. I assumed a lot of this "hacker fear" was due to the fact that a lot of these "professional" hackers happen to exist in Russia and Eastern Europe, there have to be a few who are just not that good and do it for fun or internet points. Wouldn't imagine the professionals to be caught up in this mess, as I'm sure they have more lucrative things to work on, but maybe a younger hacker or hacker group might step up and try to fuck around? This is, of course, assuming all of this is being perpetrated by regular civilians, not the Russian government. Seems that a "dossier built on reporters and officials" would be more interesting to a government rather than a hacker group, don't you think? Is the Russian government being accused of/watched for this kind of shit?
- mkempe 13y ago
  During ethnographic research on security perceptions in business environments, we found that most Americans in the IT domain imagine hackers to be evil foreigners -- usually Russian or Chinese. A similar research program across Europe showed the total absence of such projections in the mind of IT security professionals. It all came back to me as I watched the American media in the last few weeks, bringing a number of negative stories on Sochi and Russia -- much more so than in the European media I monitor.
  - smsm42 13y ago
    Is this baseless? I.e. it is known that both China and Russia (together with other ex-USSR space) has extensive and flourishing cybercrime economy, and enforcement there in that area is very weak. So I wonder for a random victim of cybercriminal what is the chance the latter is indeed a foreigner? Also I assume the research was done before Snowden revelations, where it was known that foreign governments engage in cyberwarfare, but there was not known US government does the same and the US government denied it does. Reinforcing the image of the threat as the foreign one.
judk 13y ago
Interestingly. Snowden's revelations showed that the US govt does hack journalist computers.

by afreak 13y ago

tomphoolery 13y ago

That's really interesting. I assumed a lot of this "hacker fear" was due to the fact that a lot of these "professional" hackers happen to exist in Russia and Eastern Europe, there have to be a few who are just not that good and do it for fun or internet points. Wouldn't imagine the professionals to be caught up in this mess, as I'm sure they have more lucrative things to work on, but maybe a younger hacker or hacker group might step up and try to fuck around? This is, of course, assuming all of this is being perpetrated by regular civilians, not the Russian government. Seems that a "dossier built on reporters and officials" would be more interesting to a government rather than a hacker group, don't you think? Is the Russian government being accused of/watched for this kind of shit?

mkempe 13y ago
During ethnographic research on security perceptions in business environments, we found that most Americans in the IT domain imagine hackers to be evil foreigners -- usually Russian or Chinese. A similar research program across Europe showed the total absence of such projections in the mind of IT security professionals. It all came back to me as I watched the American media in the last few weeks, bringing a number of negative stories on Sochi and Russia -- much more so than in the European media I monitor.
- smsm42 13y ago
  Is this baseless? I.e. it is known that both China and Russia (together with other ex-USSR space) has extensive and flourishing cybercrime economy, and enforcement there in that area is very weak. So I wonder for a random victim of cybercriminal what is the chance the latter is indeed a foreigner? Also I assume the research was done before Snowden revelations, where it was known that foreign governments engage in cyberwarfare, but there was not known US government does the same and the US government denied it does. Reinforcing the image of the threat as the foreign one.

judk 13y ago

Interestingly. Snowden's revelations showed that the US govt does hack journalist computers.