Chinese Espionage Tool Exploits Vulnerabilities In 58 Widely Used Websites (therecord.media) 23
A security researcher has discovered a web attack framework developed by a suspected Chinese government hacking group and used to exploit vulnerabilities in 58 popular websites to collect data on possible Chinese dissidents. From a report: Fifty-seven of the sites are popular Chinese portals, while the last is the site for US newspaper, the New York Times. In addition, the tool also abused legitimate browser features in attempts to collect user keystrokes, a large swath of operating system details, geolocation data, and even webcam snapshots of a target's face -- although many of these capabilities weren't as silent as the exploits targeting third-party websites, since they also tended to trigger a browser notification prompt.
Named Tetris, the tool was found secretly uploaded on two websites with a Chinese readership. "The sites both appear to be independent newsblogs," said a security researcher going online under the pseudonym of Imp0rtp3, who analyzed the Tetris attack framework for the first time in a blog post earlier this month. "Both [sites] are focused on China, one site [is focused on China's] actions against Taiwan and Hong-Kong written in Chinese and still updated and the other about general atrocities done by the Chinese government, written in Swedish and last updated [in] 2016," the researcher said. According to Imp0rtp3, users who landed on these two websites were first greeted by Jetriz, the first of Tetris' two components, which would gather and read basic information about a visitor's browser.
Named Tetris, the tool was found secretly uploaded on two websites with a Chinese readership. "The sites both appear to be independent newsblogs," said a security researcher going online under the pseudonym of Imp0rtp3, who analyzed the Tetris attack framework for the first time in a blog post earlier this month. "Both [sites] are focused on China, one site [is focused on China's] actions against Taiwan and Hong-Kong written in Chinese and still updated and the other about general atrocities done by the Chinese government, written in Swedish and last updated [in] 2016," the researcher said. According to Imp0rtp3, users who landed on these two websites were first greeted by Jetriz, the first of Tetris' two components, which would gather and read basic information about a visitor's browser.
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Don't get mad, get even (Score:5, Interesting)
Copy their techniques and hack back. Publish Xi's & Putie's evil despot decision memos so the world can see how dicky despots are.
It's damned time we fire back and stop being a door mat.
Extra points if we make Xi's screen saver Winnie the Poo. [youtube.com]
Double points if we admit to it: "Yes, we Poo'd your screen. F us, and we F back. Deal."
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> where do you think they got the basis for these tools in the first place?
Probably mostly Russia and Israel.
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Or maybe we just stop doing business with a communist country that has stolen so much from us?
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The problem is that China is practically subsidizing consumer goods by having de-facto factory slaves, and shutting that down will make our prices go up, and the perpetrator will lose elections. Look how often and hard Presidents are blamed when gas prices bounce high.
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Its pretty clear these tools are intended at local targets. I'd argue its not clear whether its a government de-anonymizing toolkit or a hacker doxing toolkit.
I'm a little puzzled as to why it was uploaded to some websites, I just cant imagine the MMS (å½å®éf) (or for that matter the NSA, MI5, ASIO or FSS etc) doing that, which is tilting me towards it being just shitty hackers. But who knows how the MMS thinks, theres such a cloud of propaganda from both sides around them.
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Oh f**** goddam it Slashdot, why wont you catch up to two decades ago and support unicode. The jumbled up characters there where the chinese name of their security agency, roughly "Guoanbu" in the english alphabet"
Is it about time to remove Russia and China from (Score:4, Interesting)
the Internet?
Dropping some BGP routes and DNS entries would be easy, and reduce the strain on the Internet.
If their citizens have an issue with it, they can take it up with their governments.
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Many companies, especially retailers, buy a lot from Chinese companies....
So blocking them from the Internet would stop the flow of money to China, and the cost of temporary supply chain disruptions. Sounds like a net benefit to humanity.
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at the cost of temporary supply chain disruptions.
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Is it about time to remove Russia and China from the Internet?
This is actually something that they would want and would both benefit from.
If their citizens have an issue with it, they can die at the hands of their governments.
This is what you really meant.
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Vulnerabilities is [sic] 58 websites! (Score:2)
Some of us would say "in", not "is", but none of us would accuse Slashdot editors of being good at their jobs.
"Is"... (Score:1)