US Charges Russian Hackers Behind NotPetya, KillDisk, OlympicDestroyer Attacks (zdnet.com) 33
The US Department of Justice has unsealed charges today against six Russian nationals believed to be part of one of Russia's most elite and secretive hacking groups, universally known as Sandworm. From a report: US officials said all six nationals are officers in Unit 74455 of the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), a military intelligence agency of the Russian Army, DOJ officials said today. Under orders from the Russian government, US officials said the six (believed to be part of a much larger group) conducted cyber-attacks on behalf of the Russian government with the intent to destabilize other countries, interfere in their internal politics, and cause havoc and monetary losses. Their attacks span the last decade and include some of the biggest cyber-attacks known to date: Ukrainian Government & Critical Infrastructure (between December 2015 to December 2016), French Elections (April and May 2017), Worldwide Businesses and Critical Infrastructure (aka NotPetya; June 2017), PyeongChang Winter Olympics Hosts, Participants, Partners, and Attendees (December 2017 through February 2018), PyeongChang Winter Olympics IT Systems (aka Olympic Destroyer; 2017 through February 2018), Novichok Poisoning Investigations (April 2018), and Georgian Companies and Government Entities (a 2018 spearphishing campaign targeting a major media company, 2019 efforts to compromise the network of Parliament, and a wide-ranging website defacement campaign in 2019.)
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this is what too many Tom Clancy books does to a brain
Re: Instead of ceremonial prosecutions (Score:1)
Except most of what he's talking about is true and literally was written about because it happened.
Well done one line dismissal though, he achieved it without trying to debunk the accuracy of what he said directly because you can't.
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I don't dispute that they can do all that (and have done so many many times) if the conditions are favorable and the targets fit particular qualities, but to portray it like a videogame where the CIA just deletes arbitrary people at will and the only cases in which they don't is because it generates favorable political optics is pure Tom Clancy armchair expert bullshit. There's a lot more detail omitted in order to fit such a facile view of how this stuff works.
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There's a lot more detail omitted in order to fit such a facile view of how this stuff works.
Right, sometimes it's not the CIA that kills them, it's the military. It's not all shadowy poisonings, sometimes we just drone strike a wedding.
Throughout its history the CIA has been involved with coups and assassinations. If people have such a view of the CIA, it's the CIA's own fault. Sure, it's naive, but it's not baseless.
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Yep, the CIA is the government mafia for big business. Most of those governments overthrown was so US business interests could take over or control key industries like oil and sugar.
Re:Instead of ceremonial prosecutions (Score:5, Insightful)
"Instead"? You do know that people/organizations can do more than one thing at once, right?
I would think that preventing further foreign influence should be a priority, among other things.
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I would think that preventing further foreign influence should be a priority, among other things.
Then why isn't Lying Rudy in jail for continuing to spew [businessinsider.in] Russian disinformation [businessinsider.com]?
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How about dealing with all of the domestic problems we're currently facing?
Ransomware attacking hospitals is what I would define a a major domestic problem. It's even considered a major problem in the UK, not a misdemeanor like home invasion.
Immediately the hackers (Score:1)
So, they've been charged. Now what? (Score:1)
Re:So, they've been charged. Now what? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not likely these six will be extradited to the US or anywhere else. The US can't even get an American extradited for alleged crimes.
A well educated Russian wanting to emigrate or travel to the US (or a nation that has an extradition treaty with the US) is not unheard of.
Sure these individuals are unlikely to be arrested, but Russian recruiting will be more difficult if IT professionals worry that they're giving up their future ability to travel to much of the world.
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Charging individual soldiers in the military? (Score:2)
Hmm... So they were part of Russian military. They were ordered to do this. Now the US is charging individuals for the action of the state? What's wrong with this picture?
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Nothing. Happens all the time in the spy business. If you break the law, it doesn't matter who "ordered" you to do it.
(Maybe unless you can prove you were forced to do it by someone pointing a gun at your head, IDK, IANAL, etc.).
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Let's be a whole lot more accurate.
They were charged, with charges that will never have to be defended in a court of law and they know that. They could have secret warrants to catch the people, instead they make a public announcement, TO GAURANTEE those people will never be arrested and those crap charges will not get torn apart in court.
LIAR, LIAR PANTS ON FIRE. If those charges were in any way true or serious, they would have issued an secret warrant and tried the draw out the individuals, or simply all
complete waste of taxpayer money and time (Score:1)
so some shit for brains Federal prosecutor, who as a group, are notoriously power hungry, completely unethical, and have a long and rich history of malicious prosecutions, decides to bring charges against some GRU agents.
1. any asshole prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict anyone for anything. The old saying is that you can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich.
2. there is ZERO chance any of the GRU agents are ever brought to US custody. I guarantee that Putin and friends give all of these guys i
The Hypocrisy (Score:5, Insightful)
> no country has weaponized its cyber capabilities as maliciously and irresponsibly as Russia
Most of the individuals are charged due to their involvement with the development of the NotPetya malware. Most of the financial damage was caused by the NotPetya malware attacks.
NotPetya used the EternalBlue, EternalRomance and Mimikatz exploits to to perform the attacks.
EternalBlue and EternalRomance having been identified, developed, weaponised and irresponsibly leaked by the United States' own NSA.
The most damaging malware attacks are widely seen as being WannaCry and NotPetya. Both driven by EternalBlue. A vulnerability that the USA government discovered and sat on for five years, weaponizing it only to have the weapon fall into the hands of North Korea and Russia.
The hypocrisy of describing other countries as irresponsible!
What happened? (Score:2)
In my days, teenage kids were hacking on their own will, not just following some government orders...
Look at my left hand! (Score:3)
That's it... keep ignoring the right one, and fix your attention on THIS one. It's the oldest magic show trick in the book.
When Meuller's team could dig up nothing on Trump even after Trump made all his people cooperate in the investigation (more so than any administration in history), Meuller's team indicted a bunch of Russians, many of whom may not even exist. There's really no point in doing it other than to pump the news media full of another round of Russia! news stories, since nobody thus indicted would ever come to the US and risk arrest, and no chance Russia would ever allow them to be nabbed if they actually do exist and actually are agents, just as the US would not willingly allow members of the CIA to be arrested by Russia (or fill in any other pair of hostile countries if you prefer). There's no doubt that the Russians have some hackers and some bad intentions, but is that connected to this is any way, and since when has any nation effectively stopped another's spying and sabotaging with goofball domestic criminal charges of persons not in the country?
On the other hand, we have these things that the DOJ actually could get to the bottom of, if it wanted to:
1. The FISA warrant applications used against the 2016 Trump campaign are now known to have been fraudulently obtained (an actual well-established federal crime which has damaged the government's credibility in national security cases), and we even know who signed-off on them, so little "investigation" is needed before finding the criminals - but the DOJ just has not been able to get to the bottom of it.
2. Somebody got his/her hands on at least a portion of the taxes of the President of the United States and leaked them to the press. The person[/s] involved is clearly in the US and probably is/are emploed by the federal government. Somehow, the DOJ just cannot crack that case.
3. The FBI got Hunter Biden's laptop almost a year ago, and sat silently on it through the entire 2020 Democratic primary campaign as Joe Biden knocked-off Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders (among others), and now that the contents are leaking out and damaging Biden we can clearly see that the FBI helped rig the primaries against the left, just as they did in 2016. Somehow, the DOJ just has not been able to figure out who did this and why, even though the list of their own employees who had access is quite short.
Of course, if they really care about national security threats, they could look to see if any wrong-doing took place over the past couple of decades as vast swaths of American tech manufacturing was shipped off to China - everything from computer chips to pharmaceuticals. This has made Americans and the American government far more vulnerable than ever before, and should at least be studied. Just think of all the other domestic badness the DOJ actually could get to the bottom of with suspects that would indeed see the inside of a courtroom if they were only willing to try...
Charging people who may not even exist, but who will never see the inside of any court in either event, is nothing more than distraction and CYA magic.
I realize somebody reading this may think I'm a Trump fanboy, but I'm not. In nearly every case where I defend the guy my concern is for deeper principles, and my concern is doubled by the fact that people doing wrong (and setting insanely bad precedents) are getting away with it PRECISELY because half of the country is blinded by rage against the orange man. We will, as a nation, survive 4 (or 8) years of Trump, but may not be able to endure the bad actions people are deploying to "get him" which might be becoming the new normal for some in the bureaucracy. Set the Trumpster aside and apply the pattern to anybody you WISH was in the office. If this was happening to ANY other president the outrage would be bi-partisan and the folks doing wrong would not get away with it. Unfortunately, this tolerance on the part of Trump haters for anti-Trump actions by bad actors in our governm
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When Meuller's team could dig up nothing on Trump even after Trump made all his people cooperate in the investigation
Stop [factcheck.org]. Right [lawfareblog.com]. There [cbsnews.com].
I realize somebody reading this may think I'm a Trump fanboy
Yes, because you are parroting his lies like a useful idiot. If you're not a Trump fanboy, you're just a massive tool.
Nice try (Score:2)
For all the bluster and handwaving, Mueller found no collusion [apnews.com] between Trump and Russia. While Mueller and his team made plenty of wild statements about being unable to prove Trump innocent, and suspecting obstruction, NO prosecutor EVER has the job of proving ANYBODY innocent - that's not how the system works! People are either declared "guilty" or "not guilty" and in normal circumstance where the prosecutor is not playing political games, prosecutors either nail somebody as "guilty" or they shut up, leavi
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"For all the bluster and handwaving, Mueller found no collusion between Trump and Russia."
That is not what the report said. Learn to read.
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well, I have to admit... (Score:2)
You make a very well-reasoned, cogent, and logical argument stuffed full of objective documented facts.
[facepalm]
Let me guess: you use all your mod points flagging any posts you do not agree with as "-1 Troll" in the hope nobody will see them, because you actually are unable to refute them.