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China Security

Hackers Behind Breach at Hotel Group Marriott Left Clues Suggesting They Were Working For Chinese Government Intelligence Gathering Operation, Report Says (reuters.com) 41

Marriott said last week that a hack that began four years ago had exposed the records of up to 500 million customers in its Starwood hotels reservation system. Private investigators looking into the breach have found hacking tools, techniques and procedures previously used in attacks attributed to Chinese hackers, Reuters reported, citing three sources who were not authorized to discuss the company's private probe into the attack. From the report: That suggests that Chinese hackers may have been behind a campaign designed to collect information for use in Beijing's espionage efforts and not for financial gain, two of the sources said. While China has emerged as the lead suspect in the case, the sources cautioned it was possible somebody else was behind the hack because other parties had access to the same hacking tools, some of which have previously been posted online.
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Hackers Behind Breach at Hotel Group Marriott Left Clues Suggesting They Were Working For Chinese Government Intelligence Gather

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  • Russian hackers (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mschaffer ( 97223 ) on Thursday December 06, 2018 @10:32AM (#57759534)

    What is the probability that they were just Russian hackers pretending to be Chinese hackers?

    • They are both bad actors, just turn off all internet connections to the US from Russia on Thursdays and China on Fridays. And keep expanding the time-out one day a week till the problem goes away. Sure it won't stop hackers from working through other countries, and their would be workarounds with proxies in other countries, but the colossal inconvenience of it as collective punishment for the whole country will spur the state-sponsored attacks to become too costly.

      The internet is already heading for Balka

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by Anonymous Coward

    Didn't we read about NSA tools that drop Chinese and Russian "clues" into binaries to provide false attribution.

    If anything those groups are smart enough to not leave those traces, so this was likely the NSA doing this by my logic.

  • So what's with all of the brouhaha? I don't get it. By the way, What's In Your Wallet? ....specifically the credit card numbers, their expiration date, and CVV code.
  • "That suggests that Chinese hackers may have been behind a campaign designed to collect information for use in Beijing's espionage efforts and not for financial gain, two of the sources said."

    Wouldn't it be easier to just buy the data from Marriott?

    If it's someone "looking to cash in" on the data, what are an additional 500 Million (guessing that there is a whole lot of repeat customers in this data set) records worth?

    Used to be hard to get enough information for single credit cards, nowadays you would prob

    • I think you are hitting upon something here. What is more affordable: hyper-competency and outright owning the rest of the world in technology or propaganda and the appearance of p0wning everybody?
  • 'Clues' were probably left intentionally.
  • Their security guy stayed at a "Holiday Inn Express" last night.... I guess we all now know why...

  • The naughty hackers left electronic tools and devices back and the investigation has determined that they were all 'made in China'.

Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man -- who has no gills. -- Ambrose Bierce

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