State Governments Warned of Malware-Laden CD Sent Via Snail Mail From China

Security reporter Brian Krebs writes: Several U.S. state and local government agencies have reported receiving strange letters via snail mail that include malware-laden compact discs (CDs) apparently sent from China, KrebsOnSecurity has learned. This particular ruse, while crude and simplistic, preys on the curiosity of recipients who may be enticed into popping the CD into a computer. According to a non-public alert shared with state and local government agencies by the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC), the scam arrives in a Chinese postmarked envelope and includes a "confusingly worded typed letter with occasional Chinese characters."

CD?

[TechyImmigrant]

I would have to schlep upstairs to the only computer I have that has a CD drive.

What's worse is that it's running windows, so it would be pwned instantly.

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[account_deleted]

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[eneville]

I disconnected the power to it a long time ago. They're still useful. Magazines still put them on the covers, and if you buy music then you probably don't want the mp3, I've not seen flac files on sale, despite today's bandwidth being fine to cope with wav.

IQ Filter?

[shankarunni]

Sounds like one.

AOL CDs

[frdmfghtr]

Did the CD say "AOL" on it?

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[The Original CDR]

Does your computer have a built-in cup holder?

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[account_deleted]

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[account_deleted]

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[rtb61]

I seriously do use CDs or DVDs as coasters, why not. Currently resting by alkalised hot cocoa http://www.alkalizedcocoa.com/ [alkalizedcocoa.com] (reduced sugar and well you are drinking the actual ground bean, so nourishing) on a SUSE Professional 8.2 DVD not out of hostility but memories. CDs and DVDs make great coasters, washable, some are quite attractive, would likely drive the fault correction on a drive insane if you tried to read it though.

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[Obfuscant]

Wrong continent. It says "COL".

I guess the ole USB trick is passe now...

[QuietLagoon]

Too many people have caught on to dropping infected USB drives in parking lots? https://www.schneier.com/blog/... [schneier.com]

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[account_deleted]

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[AHuxley]

Penetration testers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] did that for years.
The NGO, charity worker who was "friends" with the boss. With a USB drive to show a short movie of some project.
Ready for any computer.

Russia Russia Russia

[bwd777]

Can't we just say they were from Russia?

Okay?

[Murdoch5]

You create a VM in Virtual Box or KVM, you install Windows on it and open the disk in the VM on Linux, now you're fine. It's not hard to get around something this simplistic.

Re: Okay?

[Laszlo Kerekes]

Virtual box.org

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[antdude]

"Unable to retrieve http://virtual/ [virtual] box.org/: Host not found" --yourmom

I know exactly how this happened.

[jetkust]

Man finds CD. Asks a random person. "What is this?". "It's a CD.", they reply. "What do I do with it?" "You Play it." "With What?" "A CD Player"

4 hours later, man arrives at Best Buy and asks geek squad where he can purchase a CD player. He leaves with a $1500 laptop and an external drive.

3 hours later he manages to boot into Windows 10. He places the CD into the drive as instructed. After 4 more hours he is able to get into File Explorer. He clicks on all the files but keeps getting errors. Realizing something was wrong, he calls the help line. The number was included in the readme.txt.

The support technician spoke English, but had a heavy accent. It was a back and forth process but after about 3 and a half weeks they had everything squared away. When the updated CD arrived to his house, they remoted into his computer and installed it for him just to make sure there were no hiccups.

The man came away refreshed. He would definitely do business with them again. In fact, he was so satisfied with the experience he shared the CD with everyone he met (but never used the laptop again).

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[anegg]

Your scenario sounds unlikely. You made no mention of the Windows Technician scam call he would receive from India, during which the caller would gain access to the machine and clear out all of the Chinese malware to avoid competition. It also neglects to add in enough delay caused by the random Microsoft Windows 10 updates and reboots interrupting the Chinese "support technician" and the Indian "Microsoft Technical Support" caller.

I once bought a Chinese USB drive which contained

[cryptogranny]

I once bought a Chinese USB drive which contained a virus. It was new and unpacked, from transend or some other brand, rubber case. Found it after manual mounting under Linux.