5 ms·

Hacking Team orchestrated brazen BGP hack to hijack IPs it didn’t own

152 points by Fjolsvith 11y ago

fractalcat 11y ago
Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9864152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9864152
belorn 11y ago
When a country hires mercenaries to server as an extra military or police force, what is the legal frame work for that? The Italian police hires a mercenary group to take down a target in Lithuania by breaking into a innocent third-party ISP, without a single document by any court.
- ahaproudowl 11y ago
  To me it shows a bit of naivety by the police force. Hopefully Inspector Montalbano was not in charge of this one. I think in economies where tech is slower to adopt into the mainstream agenda, abuses like this are seen as the digital equivalent of 'reasonable force'. Where there is no existing protocol, there will be fuzzy lines and abuses in order to justify bringing criminals to justice.
- gtufano 11y ago
  I don't think the role of Aruba (the Italian ISP involved) was the one of the innocent third-party ISP. IANAL, but as far as I know, there is no "secret court" that can ask them to do that. They did it not because of a break (or so I understand, I'll be happy to be mistaken) but, probably, "to keep the Man quiet". While understandable (to a point) this is definitely not what an "innocent third party" will do.
- toyg 11y ago
  From what I've read, they were actually trying to get back their own CNC server (which they had somehow lost access to), and the "third-party ISP" (Aruba) was co-operating with them. I agree that the Italian ROS (which is part of the Carabinieri, a military police force that ended up being the main Italian police force because of accidents of history and a local penchant for fascism) were heavy-handed, as they are all the time. For all our crying about NSA, European law enforcement agencies are typically much worse.
SnaKeZ 11y ago
Aruba should be boycotted for this
- pygy_ 11y ago
  You mean, by its peers, I suppose?
  - SG- 11y ago
    or its upstream vendors should drop them but I doubt they want to lose any money.
    - MichaelGG 11y ago
      Upstream vendors are the ones that should take flak for allowing the announcement. And they definitively should slap on policy restrictions on this ISP.
tinco 11y ago
"which Ars translated from Italian into English using Google Translate" Surely Ars Technica can spare $10 to have someone (on Amazon turk or fiverr or whatever) who actually speaks Italian and English to translate?
- psykovsky 11y ago
  Why pay if they can do it for free? You have any idea how much advertising they would need to show their users just to make those $10 back? ;)
- ohitsdom 11y ago
  I saw this complaint in Ars' comments as well, but I don't have a problem with using Google Translate. If there was any confusion or if the situation was very complicated, then sure, get an actual translator. But for a relatively straightforward situation that Google Translate handles pretty clearly, why bother?
  - jakobegger 11y ago
    Especially considering that Google Translate is instantaneous and every other solution takes at least 30 minutes.
  - anc84 11y ago
    Because this is what happened when I google-translated your comment to Italian and back: > I saw this complaint in the comments Ars' as well, but I have a problem with using Google Translate. If there was any confusion or if the situation was very complicated, then sure, get a real translator. But for a relatively simple Google Translate handles quite clearly, why bother? Note the "I don't have a problem" -> "I have a problem". You cannot rely on Google Translate and as a journalist, you should not be so stupid to do so.
    - tomjen3 11y ago
      But note that there is now confusion in the translation - his first sentence no longer corresponds to the second. Besides an italian translator could misread the statement and do the translation based on what he read, rather than what was written.
gambler 11y ago
BGP and DNS - I can't believe we're still using them. Other pieces of software and protocols definitely have their share of problems, but it's amazing that the two protocols that are so central to the Internet infrastructure are so deeply broken on the conceptual level. I'm really excited about Snow and CJDNS. (https://github.com/zrm/snow https://github.com/zrm/snow , https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns)

152 points by Fjolsvith 11y ago

Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9864152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9864152

When a country hires mercenaries to server as an extra military or police force, what is the legal frame work for that? The Italian police hires a mercenary group to take down a target in Lithuania by breaking into a innocent third-party ISP, without a single document by any court.

ahaproudowl 11y ago
To me it shows a bit of naivety by the police force. Hopefully Inspector Montalbano was not in charge of this one. I think in economies where tech is slower to adopt into the mainstream agenda, abuses like this are seen as the digital equivalent of 'reasonable force'. Where there is no existing protocol, there will be fuzzy lines and abuses in order to justify bringing criminals to justice.
gtufano 11y ago
I don't think the role of Aruba (the Italian ISP involved) was the one of the innocent third-party ISP. IANAL, but as far as I know, there is no "secret court" that can ask them to do that. They did it not because of a break (or so I understand, I'll be happy to be mistaken) but, probably, "to keep the Man quiet". While understandable (to a point) this is definitely not what an "innocent third party" will do.
toyg 11y ago
From what I've read, they were actually trying to get back their own CNC server (which they had somehow lost access to), and the "third-party ISP" (Aruba) was co-operating with them. I agree that the Italian ROS (which is part of the Carabinieri, a military police force that ended up being the main Italian police force because of accidents of history and a local penchant for fascism) were heavy-handed, as they are all the time. For all our crying about NSA, European law enforcement agencies are typically much worse.

SnaKeZ 11y ago

Aruba should be boycotted for this

pygy_ 11y ago
You mean, by its peers, I suppose?
- SG- 11y ago
  or its upstream vendors should drop them but I doubt they want to lose any money.
  - MichaelGG 11y ago
    Upstream vendors are the ones that should take flak for allowing the announcement. And they definitively should slap on policy restrictions on this ISP.

tinco 11y ago

"which Ars translated from Italian into English using Google Translate" Surely Ars Technica can spare $10 to have someone (on Amazon turk or fiverr or whatever) who actually speaks Italian and English to translate?

psykovsky 11y ago
Why pay if they can do it for free? You have any idea how much advertising they would need to show their users just to make those $10 back? ;)
ohitsdom 11y ago
I saw this complaint in Ars' comments as well, but I don't have a problem with using Google Translate. If there was any confusion or if the situation was very complicated, then sure, get an actual translator. But for a relatively straightforward situation that Google Translate handles pretty clearly, why bother?
- jakobegger 11y ago
  Especially considering that Google Translate is instantaneous and every other solution takes at least 30 minutes.
- anc84 11y ago
  Because this is what happened when I google-translated your comment to Italian and back: > I saw this complaint in the comments Ars' as well, but I have a problem with using Google Translate. If there was any confusion or if the situation was very complicated, then sure, get a real translator. But for a relatively simple Google Translate handles quite clearly, why bother? Note the "I don't have a problem" -> "I have a problem". You cannot rely on Google Translate and as a journalist, you should not be so stupid to do so.
  - tomjen3 11y ago
    But note that there is now confusion in the translation - his first sentence no longer corresponds to the second. Besides an italian translator could misread the statement and do the translation based on what he read, rather than what was written.

gambler 11y ago

BGP and DNS - I can't believe we're still using them. Other pieces of software and protocols definitely have their share of problems, but it's amazing that the two protocols that are so central to the Internet infrastructure are so deeply broken on the conceptual level. I'm really excited about Snow and CJDNS. (https://github.com/zrm/snow https://github.com/zrm/snow , https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns)