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  1. #1
    Thailand Expat misskit's Avatar
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    Russia Behind Hack of Treasury, Commerce: WaPo

    Russian government-backed spies hacked into the U.S. Treasury and Commerce departments, the Washington Post reported Sunday. The hack, first reported by Reuters, was serious enough that the National Security Council had to be briefed, according to that outlet.


    According to the Post, the group—referred to as APT29 or Cozy Bear by cybersecurity experts—is working with SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence agency. Earlier this week, the paper reported that APT29 was the group behind a hack on FireEye, a top U.S. cybersecurity firm.


    “The United States government is aware of these reports and we are taking all necessary steps to identify and remedy any possible issues related to this situation,” John Ullyot, a National Security Council spokesperson, told Reuters.




    BREAKING: a highly sophisticated hacking group has stolen emails from Treasury Department and Commerce's NTIA. Other USG agencies are believed to be breached by same group through similar technique.


    Hacking operation is so serious that NSC had a recent emergency meeting
    — Chris Bing (@Bing_Chris) December 13, 2020


    The agency within the Commerce Department that was hacked was said to be the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which is in charge of advising the president on telecommunications issues. According to Reuters, those briefed on the matter fear that other government agencies could have been hacked as well.


    “We can confirm there has been a breach in one of our bureaus,” a Commerce Department spokesperson said in a statement, according to the Wall Street Journal's Dustin Volz. “We have asked CISA and the FBI to investigate, and we cannot comment further at this time.”


    https://www.thedailybeast.com/us-tre...rs-report-says

  2. #2
    Thailand Expat helge's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by misskit View Post
    a highly sophisticated hacking group has stolen emails
    And leaving name and address ?

    Hmm

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    Nearly a week after the US government announced that multiple federal agencies had been targeted by a sweeping cyber attack, the full scope and consequences of the suspected Russian hack remain unknown.


    Key federal agencies, from the Department of Homeland Security to the agency that oversees America’s nuclear weapons arsenal, were reportedly targeted, as were powerful tech and security companies, including Microsoft. Investigators are still trying to determine what information the hackers may have stolen, and what they could do with it.

    Donald Trump has still said nothing about the attack, which federal officials said posed a “grave risk” to every level of government. Joe Biden has promised a tougher response to cyber attacks but offered no specifics. Members of Congress are demanding more information about what happened, even as officials scrambling for answers call the attack “significant and ongoing”.

    Here’s a look at what we know, and what we still don’t, about the worst-ever cyber attack on US federal agencies.

    What happened?
    The hack began as early as March, when malicious code was snuck into updates to a popular software called Orion, made by the company SolarWinds, which provides network-monitoring and other technical services to hundreds of thousands of organizations around the world, including most Fortune 500 companies and government agencies in North America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

    That malware in the updates gave elite hackers remote access to an organization’s networks so they could steal information. The apparent months-long timeline gave the hackers ample opportunity to extract information from many targets, including monitoring email and other internal communications.

    Microsoft called it “an attack that is remarkable for its scope, sophistication and impact”.

    Who has been affected so far?
    At least six US government departments, including the energy, commerce, treasury and state departments, are reported to have been breached. The National Nuclear Security Administration’s networks were also breached, Politico reported on Thursday.


    Dozens of security and other technology firms, as well as non-governmental organizations, were also affected, Microsoft said in a statement Thursday. While most of those affected by the attack were in the US, Microsoft said it had identified additional victims in Canada, Mexico, Belgium, Spain, the United Kingdom, Israel and the United Arab Emirates.


    “It’s certain that the number and location of victims will keep growing,” Microsoft added.

    Who is responsible for the attack?
    While the US government has not yet officially named who is responsible for the attack, US officials have told media outlets they believe Russia is the culprit, specifically SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence outfit.

    We must act as if the Russian government has control of all the networks it has penetrated
    Thomas Bossert, writing in the New York Times
    Andrei Soldatov, an expert on Russia’s spy agencies and the author of The Red Web, told the Guardian he believes the hack was more likely a joint effort of Russia’s SVR and FSB, the domestic spy agency Putin once headed.

    Russia has denied involvement: “One shouldn’t unfoundedly blame the Russians for everything,” a Kremlin spokesman said on Monday.


    The infiltration tactic involved in the current hack, known as the “supply-chain” method, recalled the technique Russian military hackers used in 2016 to infect companies that do business in Ukraine with the hard-drive-wiping NotPetya virus – the most damaging cyber-attack to date.

    What information has been stolen, and how is it being used?
    That’s remains deeply unclear.

    “This hack was so big in scope that even our cybersecurity experts don’t have a real sense yet in the terms of the breadth of the intrusion itself,” Stephen Lynch, the head of the House of Representatives’ oversight and reform committee, said after attending a classified briefing Friday.

    Thomas Rid, a Johns Hopkins cyberconflict expert, told the Associated Press that it was likely that the hackers had harvested such a vast quantity of data that “they themselves most likely don’t know yet” what useful information they’ve stolen.

    What can be done to fix the networks that have been compromised?
    That’s also unclear, and potentially very difficult.

    “Removing this threat actor from compromised environments will be highly complex and challenging for organizations,” said a statement from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa) on Thursday.

    One of Trump’s former homeland security advisers, Thomas Bossert, has already said publicly that a real fix may take years, and be both costly and challenging.

    “It will take years to know for certain which networks the Russians control and which ones they just occupy,” Bossert wrote in a New York Times op-ed on Wednesday. “The logical conclusion is that we must act as if the Russian government has control of all the networks it has penetrated.”

    “A ‘do-over’ is mandatory and entire new networks need to be built – and isolated from compromised networks,” he wrote.

    How has Trump responded?
    As of Friday afternoon, the US president had still said nothing to address the attack.


    The Republican senator and former presidential candidate Mitt Romney has criticized Trump’s silence as unacceptable, particularly in response to an attack he said was “like Russian bombers have been repeatedly flying undetected over our entire country”.

    “Not to have the White House aggressively speaking out and protesting and taking punitive action is really, really quite extraordinary,” Romney said.

    How has Biden responded?
    So far, there’s been tough talk but no clear plan from the president-elect.

    “We need to disrupt and deter our adversaries from undertaking significant cyberattacks in the first place,” Biden said. “We will do that by, among other things, imposing substantial costs on those responsible for such malicious attacks, including in coordination with our allies and partners.”


    “There’s a lot we don’t yet know, but what we do know is a matter of great concern,” Biden said.


    Could this attack have been prevented or deterred?
    “What we could have done is had a coherent approach and not been at odds with each other,” said Fiona Hill, a Russia expert and former Trump National Security Council member, to PBS NewsHour this week, criticizing conflict and dysfunction within the Trump administration and between the US and its allies on Russia-related issues.

    If “we don’t have the president on one page and everybody else on another, and we’re working together with our allies to push back on this, that would have a serious deterrent effect”, Hill said.

    Other cybersecurity experts said the federal government could also do more to simply keep up to date on cybersecurity issues, and said the Trump administration had failed on this front, including by eliminating the positions of White House cybersecurity coordinator and state department cybersecurity policy chief.

    “It’s been a frustrating time, the last four years. I mean, nothing has happened seriously at all in cybersecurity,” said Brandon Valeriano, a Marine Corps University scholar and adviser to a US cyber defense commission, to the Associated Press.

    What options does the US have to respond politically to this kind of attack?
    Some experts are arguing that the US government needs to do more to punish Russia for its apparent interference. The federal government could impose formal sanctions on Russia, as when the Obama administration expelled Russian diplomats in retaliation for Kremlin military hackers’ meddling in Donald Trump’s favor in the 2016 election. Or the US could fight back more covertly by, for instance, making public details of Putin’s own financial dealings.

    But, as the Guardian’s Luke Harding pointed out, cyber attacks are “cheap, deniable, and psychologically effective”, and Biden’s options for responding to Russia’s aggression are limited.

    “The answer eluded Barack Obama, who tried unsuccessfully to reset relations with Putin. The person who led this doomed mission was the then secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, herself a Russian hacking victim in 2016,” Harding wrote.

    What are other potential consequences of the hack?
    SolarWinds may face legal action from private customers and government entities affected by the breach. The company filed a report with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday detailing the hack.

    In it, the company said total revenue from affected products was about $343m, or roughly 45% of the firm’s total revenue. SolarWinds’ stock price has fallen 25% since news of the breach first broke.


    Moody’s Investors Service said Wednesday it was looking to downgrade its rating for the company, citing the “potential for reputational damage, material loss of customers, a slowdown in business performance and high remediation and legal costs”.
    What we know – and still don’t – about the worst-ever US government cyber attack | Hacking | The Guardian

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  5. #5
    Thailand Expat Backspin's Avatar
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    Another story that presents zero evidence just like Iraq WMD's

    But hey let's start a war with a nuclear power. Right Cujo
    Last edited by Backspin; 19-12-2020 at 09:03 PM.

  6. #6
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
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    FireEye have explicitly stated that they are monitoring the attack and have not attributed it to anyone yet.

  7. #7
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    Donald J. Trump
    @realDonaldTrump





    The Cyber Hack is far greater in the Fake News Media than in actuality. I have been fully briefed and everything is well under control. Russia, Russia, Russia is the priority chant when anything happens because Lamestream is, for mostly financial reasons, petrified of..

    ....discussing the possibility that it may be China (it may!). There could also have been a hit on our ridiculous voting machines during the election, which is now obvious that I won big, making it an even more corrupted embarrassment for the USA.


  8. #8
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by helge View Post
    Donald J. Trump
    @realDonaldTrump





    The Cyber Hack is far greater in the Fake News Media than in actuality. I have been fully briefed and everything is well under control. Russia, Russia, Russia is the priority chant when anything happens because Lamestream is, for mostly financial reasons, petrified of..

    ....discussing the possibility that it may be China (it may!). There could also have been a hit on our ridiculous voting machines during the election, which is now obvious that I won big, making it an even more corrupted embarrassment for the USA.

    I wouldn't expect the retarded, bald orange loser to understand anything about this attack, but it is notable that he's doing his best to protect the boss.

  9. #9
    Thailand Expat Backspin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by harrybarracuda View Post
    I wouldn't expect the retarded, bald orange loser to understand anything about this attack, but it is notable that he's doing his best to protect the boss.
    Fact is, the media is hyping Russia.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Backspin View Post
    Fact is, the media is hyping Russia.
    How is that a fact? what did I miss?

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    Yes, I bet the Ruskies are hard at work on social media playing it down for muppets like skidmark to swallow and regurgitate.

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    Trump downplays government hack after Pompeo blames it on Russia
    Secretary of state is first in administration to point to Russia but Trump attacks media over reports

    Not long after Mike Pompeo became the first member of the Trump administration to blame Russia for wide-ranging hacks of US government agencies and private companies which have sent Washington scrambling to fill the breach, the president sought to play the hack down.

    In response, one senior congressional Democrat accused Trump of “another scandalous betrayal of our national security”.

    “The Cyber Hack is far greater in the Fake News Media than in actuality,” Trump tweeted on Saturday morning. “I have been fully briefed and everything is well under control. Russia, Russia, Russia is the priority chant when anything happens because [US media] is, for mostly financial reasons, petrified of discussing the possibility that it may be China (it may!)”

    The hack targeted widely used software made by SolarWinds, an Austin, Texas-based company. On Friday night, speaking to the rightwing talk radio host Mark Levin, Pompeo placed blame squarely on Russia.

    “This was a very significant effort,” he said. “I think it’s the case that now we can say pretty clearly that it was the Russians that engaged in this activity.”

    Regardless, Trump chose to tag his secretary of state and director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe in another tweet that contained another baseless claim of electoral fraud in the presidential contest he lost to Joe Biden, but which he has not conceded.

    “There could also have been a hit on our ridiculous voting machines during the election,” Trump wrote, “which is now obvious that I won big, making it an even more corrupted embarrassment for the USA.”

    At the same time, the New York Times reported that at the White House on Friday, Trump suggested installing the attorney and conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell as a special counsel investigating voter fraud. Citing two anonymous sources, the Times said aides including Rudy Giuliani, who has led attempts to overturn the election result, pushed back on the idea.

    Regarding the SolarWinds hack and Trump’s attempt to play down links to Russia, Adam Schiff, the California Democrat who chairs the House intelligence committee and led impeachment proceedings against Trump, said: “Another day, another scandalous betrayal of our national security by this president.

    “Another dishonest tweet that sounds like it could have been written in the Kremlin. Another obsequious display towards Putin. And yet another reason that Trump can’t leave office fast enough.”

    Pompeo did not immediately respond to being undercut by his boss. But in speaking to Levin, he said: “I’m sure some of it will remain classified. But suffice it to say there was a significant effort to use a piece of third-party software to essentially embed code inside of US government systems and it now appears systems of private companies and companies and governments across the world as well.”

    The Kremlin denies involvement.

    On Saturday, a security research blog by Microsoft said a second hacking group, different from the suspected Russian team, also targeted SolarWinds products.

    “The investigation of the whole SolarWinds compromise led to the discovery of an additional malware that also affects the SolarWinds Orion product but has been determined to be likely unrelated to this compromise and used by a different threat actor,” the blog said.

    A SolarWinds spokesman told Reuters: “It remains early days of the investigation.”

    Earlier this week, as security teams attempted to limit damage from the hacks, critics pressed for Trump to speak out.

    Speaking to SiriusXM radio, the Utah Republican senator and former presidential candidate Mitt Romney said: “What I find most astonishing is that a cyber hack of this nature is really the modern equivalent of, almost, Russian bombers reportedly flying undetected over the entire country.

    “In this setting, not to have the White House aggressively speaking out and protesting and taking punitive action is really, really quite extraordinary.”

    Asked about Romney’s remarks, Pompeo said: “I saw this in my time running the world’s premier espionage service at the CIA. There are many things that you’d very much love to say, ‘Boy, I’m going to call that out,’ but a wiser course of action to protect the American people is to calmly go about your business and defend freedom.”

    US-Russia ties have been strained by issues ranging from conflicts in Syria and Ukraine to allegations of interference in US politics, specifically the 2016 election and in favour of Trump, which Moscow also denies. At a news conference on Thursday, Vladimir Putin said he hoped Biden would help resolve some issues in relations between Moscow and Washington.

    The state department said on Saturday the US was halting work at consulates in Vladivostock and Yekaterinburg, citing safety and security issues at facilities where operations had been curtailed because of Covid-19. The decision did not affect Russian consulates in the US, the department said, but the closures will leave the embassy in Moscow as the last US diplomatic mission in Russia. It is unclear if the closures will happen before 20 January, when Biden takes office.

    Speaking to Levin, Pompeo said: “We have lots of folks that want to undermine our way of life, our republic, our basic democratic principles. Russia is certainly on that list … You see the news of the day with respect to their efforts in the cyber space. We’ve seen this for an awfully long time, using asymmetric capabilities to try and put themselves in a place where they can impose costs on the United States.

    “So yes, Vladimir Putin remains a real risk to those of us who love freedom.”
    Trump downplays government hack after Pompeo blames it on Russia | Mike Pompeo | The Guardian

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cujo View Post
    Yes, I bet the Ruskies are hard at work on social media playing it down for muppets like skidmark to swallow and regurgitate.

    Why the fuck would Russia do this ? Does it want more sanctions and hostility from the US ? There is no fucking way in hell Russia did this.

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    Russia is antagonistic towards the U.S. you muppet.
    They would love to see the U.S. fall.

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    ...Pompeo the Rotund says it was Russia and not related to money diverted from cyber security to build tRump's wall...

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cujo View Post
    Russia is antagonistic towards the U.S. you muppet.
    They would love to see the U.S. fall.
    Quote Originally Posted by tomcat View Post
    ...Pompeo the Rotund says it was Russia and not related to money diverted from cyber security to build tRump's wall...
    Yawn...

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    Quote Originally Posted by Klondyke View Post
    Yawn...
    Have you noticed that fewer and fewer people think you worthy of even a response than these days, Klongick?

    I'm sure the Russian troll factory is happy with your daily output, but when an indoctrinated lunatic like OhOh gets even more responses than you do it's probably time to give up on this forum and try elsewhere.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cujo View Post
    Yes, I bet the Ruskies are hard at work on social media playing it down for muppets like skidmark to swallow and regurgitate.
    How much do you want to bet that a serious US official will cast doubt in the claim that Russia did this in 2-3 months from now ?

    Because that's exactly what happened with the Afghanistan bounty story. It was bullshit made up by the shreaking Russia hawks at the 2 main papers , Wapo and NYT.

    Russia knows that the US is insane and in a crazy mood. They wouldn't provoke like this for no reason.

  19. #19
    Thailand Expat Backspin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by tomcat View Post
    ...Pompeo the Rotund says it was Russia and not related to money diverted from cyber security to build tRump's wall...
    Pompeo is like having Dick Cheyney as sec of state and you morons are cheering him on. A full blown imperialist cvnt who lies as much as Trump does.

    You support nuclear powers playing chicken with each other over unverified storys in the newspaper. This is so retarded that I expect a US general will speak up sooner than they did with bounty-gate.

    If the US said that Russia has crossed too many lines and therefore we are going to take Crimea by military force , you chickenhawks would say "go for it!"

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    You're a fucking idiot.
    The only senior official who'll come out and say it wasn't Russia will be someone closely aligned to trump who as we know is Putin's bitch.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cujo View Post
    who as we know is Putin's bitch
    Why always - when anything goes wrong - has to be of somebody's bitch (at the end of the day the next one will be Xi's bitch?)?
    How pitiful for such strong country...

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    Quote Originally Posted by Klondyke View Post
    Why always - when anything goes wrong - has to be of somebody's bitch (at the end of the day the next one will be Xi's bitch?)?
    How pitiful for such strong country...
    Well maybe it's not always, just in the case of Trump.
    But maybe we should phrase it differently.
    How about 'in Putins pocket'.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Backspin View Post
    Fact is, the media is hyping Russia.
    Yes, more likely it is Peru, right?

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    Journalists, pundits & officials are in an outbidding contest to make the most hysterical, alarmist, over-the-top anti-Russia pronouncements.







    @thehill





    "This is virtually a declaration of war by Russia on the United States and we should take that seriously.”

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cujo View Post
    You're a fucking idiot.
    The only senior official who'll come out and say it wasn't Russia will be someone closely aligned to trump who as we know is Putin's bitch.

    The last time this fucking happened, it was bounty-gate. Same as this. New York Times or Wapo makes the story. Pompeo gets everyone riled up about it. Then a few months later, some adults disclose that it was pure BULLSHIT

    April 2020
    Pompeo Says He and Military Warned Russia on Bounties for Killing U.S. Troops

    The secretary of state’s acknowledgment came as a new detail surfaced about the intelligence that led to the C.I.A. assessment.


    July 9, 2020

    By Ken Dilanian, Courtney Kube and Carol E. Lee
    WASHINGTON — A growing chorus of American officials have said in recent days that the intelligence suggesting Russians paid "bounties" to induce the Taliban to kill American service members in Afghanistan is less than conclusive.



    General Scott Miller, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, did not think "the reports were credible as they dug into them."

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