The EU's Embassy In Russia Was Hacked But The EU Kept It A Secret (buzzfeednews.com) 56
The European Union's embassy in Moscow was hacked and had information stolen from its network, according to a leaked internal document seen by BuzzFeed News. From the report: An ongoing "sophisticated cyber espionage event" was discovered in April, just weeks before the European Parliament elections -- but the European External Action Service (EEAS), the EU's foreign and security policy agency, did not disclose the incident publicly. Russian entities are believed to be behind the hack, a source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told BuzzFeed News.
The EEAS confirmed an incident had taken place and, asked whether the EU's foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini knew about the incident, said that EEAS hierarchy had been informed. "We have observed potential signs of compromised systems connected to our unclassified network in our Moscow Delegation. Measures have been taken and the investigation is in progress -- at this stage we cannot comment further," a spokesperson said. According to the leaked document, the initial attack took place in February 2017 but it was only detected in April this year. An analysis of the hack found activity affecting at least two computers and concluded that information had been stolen. However, officials have no idea how much and exactly what kind of information was taken during the attack.
The EEAS confirmed an incident had taken place and, asked whether the EU's foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini knew about the incident, said that EEAS hierarchy had been informed. "We have observed potential signs of compromised systems connected to our unclassified network in our Moscow Delegation. Measures have been taken and the investigation is in progress -- at this stage we cannot comment further," a spokesperson said. According to the leaked document, the initial attack took place in February 2017 but it was only detected in April this year. An analysis of the hack found activity affecting at least two computers and concluded that information had been stolen. However, officials have no idea how much and exactly what kind of information was taken during the attack.
The EU has an embassy? (Score:2)
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The Bureacracy's Bureaucracy needs it's own embassy. I can't believe the people in Europe fund this nonsense.
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from wikipedia
"as part of the process of establishment of the European External Action Service envisioned in the recently ratified Treaty of Lisbon, on 1 January 2010 all former European Commission delegations were renamed into European Union delegations and till the end of the month 54 of the missions (marked with in the list above) were transformed into embassy-type missions that employ greater powers than the regular delegations. These upgraded delegations have taken on the role previously carried out b
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Part of the problem with Brexit, that will effect Great Briton is the fact after Brexit, they will need to renegotiate trade and other treaties with a bunch of countries.
One of the benefits of EU Membership is all these Countries can have a unified trading relationship and treaties with other countries.
Part of the friction that Brexit is cause, is the fact the Briton feels like they are powerful enough to do it on their own, and doesn't want any compromises to be made that will happen when you are part of a
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In reality is that Brexit Britain can't do trade deals with other countries without screwing itself.
If it does deals better than the EU ones, the EU will cut it off from its biggest market due to unfair competition.
But doing better deals is a pipe dream anyway. Other countries are just waiting for a weak and desperate UK to come begging for a deal.
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It can't? Well shit. Guess we'd better let the ye olde guys know that unless they get the oky from the supernational organization known as the EU, they can't do trade deals without fucking them up. No, you know what the problem is? You have political leaders who are invested in the EU and the power and privileges it grants them. Plain and simple this is elitism vs everyone else, and you're so in favor of it you simply don't get that the UK has had NO problems doing trade deals all on their own, and did
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you simply don't get that the UK has had NO problems doing trade deals all on their own, and did so for centuries.
It's one thing to get favorable trade deals when your navy rules the sea and is pointing gunboats at the local ruler (like in the case of Hong Kong). It's quite another when nowadays said ruler has nukes of his own to point back with.
The UK tried doing trade deals. The result was so scary they quickly tried to bury the results. Trump told them two days ago that the NHS would have to be opened up to US companies, just so they could experience the same lively healthcare system the US loves so much, as part of
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Considering the state of the NHS, and people dying in hallways because of lack of treatment. That could be a massive improvement. "falling back" on the WTO rules doesn't really mean much, since most trade deals only grant preferential status or agreements over various sectors. You also seem to forget that the UK has it's own nukes to point back, though why they'd use them in the first place is kinda silly.
You should expect a 2 or 3-way war breaking out between India and Pakistan currently and a limited n
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It can, however it is a lot of work and take a lot of resources. Where overall it may be more beneficial to have the EU do it.
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A great reason to exit the EU.
Who wants to trade under EU rules like that as a nation?
The UK can find its own way and set its own prices again. Like it did for many years before the EU was created.
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So you disagree with Trump and his arguments that trade deals the US has are "unfair" and favour other countries? It's completely fine that they give themselves big advantages over the US but e.g. having lower environmental standards and worker's rights, and then export all their cheap products and labour to the US?
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What the UK exports into the EU will have to meet EU standards
The UK is then free to "win" any trade it wants globally without asking the EU.
Should the UK have "cheap products and labour" then it can use that to attract investment.
All part of been a free nation again
Once the UK is out of the EU what happens to a EU "embassy" will be a question for the GCHQ and MI6
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Once the UK is free of the EU, the UK can export and import to any standard it wants.
What the UK exports into the EU will have to meet EU standards
That's a common misunderstanding.
Part of the single market is that all countries in it have to abide by fair competition rules on things like financial services, workers' rights, state aid, environmental protections.
If the UK wants to diverge from any of that, it will either get hit with tariffs or in the case of services just cut off completely from the EU.
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Hiding your problems doesn't solve them. (Score:5, Interesting)
While whenever there is a problem, our instinct is to keep it quite, as failure is shown as a sign of weakness. However keeping your problems quite, do not solve the problems, doesn't make sure it doesn't happen again, and causes outrage when it has been released much later after the fact.
For example when we hear about a single guy bringing down a Cloud infrastructure, Our gut reaction is, that guy is so getting fired. However Firing the cause of a single point of failure, isn't really a solution.
The better method is to do the following.
Report the problem
Put in the quick fix to get working again
Find root cause
Come with a solution that will prevent this root cause happening again
Implement such solution
Monitor its effectiveness.
Hacks are rarely the sole responsibility of any one guy.
IT Guy: There is a new version of security firmware. To install it the network will be out for 4 hours.
Bosses: We can't be down for 4 hours, plan for it during the next holiday
Finance: This new version costs us money, and we haven't been hacked yet so why are we spending money for an upgrade.
Shortly after they got hacked. and the IT Guy takes the brunt of the blame. The public goes, man they must of hired a stupid guy to manage their IT. While the truth was the full institution was setup to not care about security.
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It's normal not to disclose stuff like this publicly until after the investigation has determined if it was Russia or not. No point making incorrect allegations when you can just wait a little bit and be sure, especially when it's international relations.
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Also not always beneficial to alert the attackers that you're on to them.
Nice to have a few weeks or months to poison the well with misinformation not published in the regular media.
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it's also not normal to make a big deal about "compromised systems connected to our unclassified network"
if it was just some windows PC on normal internet connect LAN and some wank clicked on an infested porn site link.... woop de doo, who gives a shit?
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This is what I've always wondered. IP spoofing is pretty well known and easy to do, so even if it were the Russians, would they be so inept as to put their own fingerprints - or IP prints - on their activity, making them vulnerable to Western retaliation?
It's not hard for anyone who wanted to implicate them to have used a combination of VPNs and Russian IP addresses to make it look like a Russian hacking operation, even if the Deep State wasn't the one that actually did it
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There is a difference on saying our Embassy in Russia got hacked. vs our Embassy in Russian got hacked by the Russians.
However what is worse is saying we are in the EU are so good, that we don't get hacked, and are secure and fully in control. While that is the furthest from the truth.
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One can be wrong w/o the other being wrong. Just b'cos the foreign policy establishment is wrong on Russia doesn't imply that they're necessarily wrong on Iran. Like Russia has a government totally different from what it had when Brezhnev ran it. Whereas Iran has the same government it had in 1979: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was the president of Iran then, and became Ayatollah when Ayatollah Roohullah Khomenei died. Iran has always used the Shi'ites of the entire Middle East - from Afghanistan to Yemen to
newsworthy? (Score:2)
"compromised systems connected to our unclassified network"
so some windows PC got pwn3d? so what?
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Some academic would seek and then get approval to mention a project name 30 years later.
Reading about cyber security in real time that shows methods and the results of what was discovered?
No security service would allow that to be published in any way.
Declassification of real time cyber methods? Not many advanced nations allow that.
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" Obama completely ignored Russia hacking prior to the 2016 elections."
I doubt that. Wait and see. if that's provably true.
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I happen to think that Obama was right about Russia not being a threat. It's not Russia's fault that Obama had otherwise stupid policies in the Middle East (not that McCain was any better) - be it the ouster of Gaddaffi, supporting the Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt and opposing Gen Sisi when he replaced him, the Iran deal (the only positive out of that was making the Saudis seriously nervous enough to patch up their differences w/ Israel), or his virulent hatred of Netanyahu, causing him to interfere
Great Seal bug, the series? (Score:1)
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I'm having a premonition (Score:2)
the thread.... thousands of anons... defending Russia...
it's all so hazy