International Monetary Fund Hit By Cyber Attack

DotNM writes "CityNews and other media outlets are reporting that the International Monetary Fund has been hit by a 'cyber attack.' They are withholding most of the details; however, it is known that the World Bank has shut down a 'link' between them and the IMF." Adds reader Hugh Pickens, "A cyber security expert told Reuters the infiltration had been a targeted attack, which installed software designed to give a nation state a 'digital insider presence' at the IMF. 'The code was developed and released for this purpose,' said Tom Kellerman, who has worked for the Fund. Bloomberg quoted an unnamed security expert as saying the hackers were connected to a foreign government — however, such attacks are very difficult to trace."

Comments

Social engineering and clickers

[jhoegl]

Not much info is given, but it looks like someone got an email, they clicked it and then got infected.

So the hack was really just an employee doing something.

Re:Social engineering and clickers

[WrongSizeGlass]

Must have been a "click my boobs to see them juggle" email.

This was the IMF so they probably clicked one of those 'Pay Day Loan' emails to check up on the competition ;-)

Re:Social engineering and clickers

[Errtu76]

mod this up to see my boobies

IOW, the Chinese

[gmhowell]

Bloomberg quoted an unnamed security expert as saying the hackers were connected to a foreign government — however, such attacks are very difficult to trace."

IOW, the Chinese did it, and everyone is too fucking scared to point the finger.

Re:IOW, the Chinese

[ThatsMyNick]

Or those pesky Russians, it cant be Americans obviously.

Re:IOW, the Chinese

[Anonymous Coward]

That's exactly what the guy responsible for the cyber attacks would say!

Re:IOW, the Chinese

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonsense, if the Chinese did it, that would have been an act of war. Don't you remember that fancy speech? Only choice is to blame Anonymous. The extra excuse for new laws is a bonus of course.

Re:IOW, the Chinese

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, but after seeing how the IMF and the World Bank basically actively keep the desperate state of Africa up, causing horrible wars and mass-starvation, just for the wealth of the "west",
I, for one, proudly proclaim, that anyone who tries to kick their asses for that cause, is a hero to me, and anyone who disagrees will be force-moved to Africa, and get a good luck wish from me. (Won't help him one bit though).

Luckily, I know most people here are pretty educated about such things.

P.S.: If it was China, which I disagree with, I don't think they did it for that cause though.

Re:IOW, the Chinese

[jpapon]

Ever been to North Korea? That much worse.

Re:IOW, the Chinese

[Pharmboy]

You have led a sheltered life if you have to ask that question. As phucked up as US foreign policy is, the US is still the lesser of all the available evils. At least here in the US, we can (and do) speak out about our policies. Try that in China.

Re:IOW, the Chinese

[lexsird]

Haha, I was wondering what "America has defaulted on its Chinese loans!" means? Does that mean we are going to be evicted? That is what CountryWide Loans did to me and my wife when we defaulted on our mortgage. "Whoopsie, catch you next month?" didn't cut is for us too many times. Doesn't Proverbs or something read "A borrower is slave to the lender?" and "Never a borrower or lender be?" I guess nobody played Monopoly either. Here's one thing about playing Monopoly, what happens when the big kid flips the board over and pounds you with your own Radio Flyer Wagon?

China: "USA...you land on Park Place, it has hotel, you owe me, I win!
USA: "grrrr...."
China: "you empty pockets NOW!"
USA: "You want wants in my pockets? Ok...here you go. BOOOOOOOOM, it's a thermal nuke from space! I guess you shouldn't try hacking us..lol."
China: "Jokes on you, we have nanobot and organic weapons we have been seeding you from Wal-Mart! You will all turn to zombies, we will rule the world!"
Australia: "Eastern Australia is attacking Western Australia...I need card, and I am strat moving all my armies to Siam....What?"
Britain: "I say old chap, you are playing the wrong game! It's Monopoly, not RISK."
Alfred E. Newman: What? Me worry?

Re:IOW, the Chinese

[drinkypoo]

At least here in the US, we can (and do) speak out about our policies.

The thing is, that is changing rapidly. People are now regularly being accused of terrorism for pointing out flaws and failures. If we allow this situation to worsen...

Re:IOW, the Chinese

[dbIII]

Sadly North Korea isn't much like China. Refugees flee North Korea to what looks to them like the free, peaceful and democratic utopia of China - that's how bad North Korea is from what little we can work out from the outside. I know someone from China that last heard from their North Korean relatives around thirty years ago when relations between the two countries broke down. It's a country that doesn't trust anybody and seems to be run right out of the pages from 1984.

*Foreign* government???

[Anonymous Coward]

> Bloomberg quoted an unnamed security expert as saying the hackers were connected to a foreign government
So this "unnamed security expert" sees the IMF as a (world?) government or as part of some (the american?) government.
Or what does the word "foreign" mean here?

foreign

[anonieuweling]

How can the hackers be foreign if we're the *international* monetary fund?

Re:foreign

[TheLink]

Many in the world view the IMF as the European arm[1] of the Western Powers. During the 1997 Asian financial crisis the IMF recommended actions (e.g. allow important/strategic local banks to fail or to be bought up by foreign companies) that the US and other western countries would not take in their own crisis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Asian_financial_crisis#IMF_Role

Those actions arguably weakened the countries more than they would have otherwise. One can compare those countries with Malaysia (which declined the IMF's "help" and "advice"). Some later spun the results as Malaysia not recovering as much but if the country doesn't crash as low naturally it doesn't rise back as much ;).

[1] With the World Bank being the US arm...

Re:Who am I to believe?

[Anonymous Coward]

You already lost the game, when you accepted belief instead of facts.
I, as a social engineer, would thrive on you, if I weren't on your side here.
Basically, you already did my job. All I would have to do, is feed you "news" about whatever reality I want you to believe in. Causing you to act, based upon that "reality". Resulting in whatever I want you to do. You'd even defend me against others, because your beliefs would be me.
Yes, "evil" just doesn't describe it anymore. And yes, that's why it's only acceptable for me, to do something good with it. (Like educate people about it.)

If you want to know what to think, look at this: Pierce’s cycle of scientific knowledge development.
Notice how it says "observation". Personal observation. And even that can deceive you. (Hence there are optical illusions and "magicans".)
But it's the best you've got. And rational thinking (logic is good, but they can't free you from emotions) does the rest.
Everything else, news, friends, books, me... are just external sources, and hence inherently can't give you any guarantees. You can choose to trust them. But then you also trust their agenda. As all they say, is for the purpose of that agenda. (That's not evil. It's just natural. Their agenda can also be something good to you.)

So make wise choices, and when in doubt, never ever "believe". :)

Re:Anonymous

[improfane]

I actually laughed out.

The most secure computer is one that is not on the internet or networked to other computers. I am surprised BSG preaches that to the mainstream. Or that never sleep with robots.

A BSG ship must be one that must be managed by a team of sysadmins. If you can't network you must have one physical computer per subsystem.

sudo /etc/init.d/hyperdrive restart
Password:
Core dump: Failed to restart, not aligned
Hint: Is antimatter callibrator powered and within frequency range?
vim /etc/hyperdrive.conf

Credit Cards

[jamesl]

Maybe the politicians will have to stop using their (our) national "credit cards" for a while. A few decades would be nice.

Re:Anonymous

[sqrt(2)]

Remember Stuxnet? it was deliberately designed to infect machines that were not connected to the internet by jumping aboard USB thumb drives. Just not being connected to the net isn't enough, although it certainly helps isolate you from the vast majority of the attacks an outside force could try. If that machine is in contact with any other machines, in any way, it's possible to be compromised unless even greater security measures are implemented.

So the most secure machine is one that is not networked with any other machines, and is not allowed contact with any other machines, even vicariously through sharing files.

Nevermind

[martin-boundary]

Nevermind, it turns out it was just Goldman Sachs trying to colocate their servers with the IMF computers...

America = world terrorist

[Colin Smith]

And Americans = terrorist supporters.

e.g.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NUDWQ0U7N8

How many countries has the USA invaded recently? Whether you are better or worse than someone else is irrelevant. This is what you are.

Re:America = world terrorist

[tick-tock-atona]

You have got to be fucking kidding me.

So it was all the elites who were dancing in the streets last month when the US executed Osama Bin Laden? You guys just don't get it. Pulling that kind of crap is exactly why everyone else in the world detests US foreign policy.

If you still can't see it, consider the arrest of Ratko Mladic the other day. Almost identical situation, except Mladic personally helped to execute at least twice as many people as died in the attack on the World Trade Centre, so you could say he is more evil than OBL. And he was arrested and taken to the ICC. He wasn't shot in the head and dumped in the ocean, because that is not how civilised societies deal with criminals.

The way the US public cheers the fact that their government can and does execute anyone in the world with no due process, and is perfectly entitled to invade any country they don't like makes me feel physically ill.

Re:America = world terrorist

[Life2Short]

While I support a reliance on the rule of law in theory, your example points out the exception. The breakup of Yugoslavia resulted in a war that dragged on for 10 years. Over 100,000 people died as a result, over a third of them innocent civilians. The European community, particularly Britain, France, and Germany, were incapable of halting an atrocity-filled war on their very doorstep. For all we know the war would still be going on today if the Americans hadn't stepped in and stopped it.

While you understandably decry American cowboy diplomacy, let's face it: without the big Yankee stick you'd be getting your news from Pravda. If you honestly think that would be preferable to the world situation now, I will leave you to think longingly on what might have been.

And as a parting shot with regard to Mladic, don't you ask yourself, "Why is this guy crawling out from under his rock now?" Let's not confuse political expediency with justice...

It's a rotten and unjust world, let's hope we can make some improvements. But don't ever kid yourself that bureaucrats in Brussels will be able to do the job all by themselves.

Re:America = world terrorist

[BasilBrush]

First of all, if its on youtube it must be the truth.

6 vets, one now a professor of law. All named, so you can google them and find references in any number of news agencies. You can't just shrug it off as "it's on youtube".

Third, it is possible this kind of thing happens, just like when terrorists use human shields to protect themselves, planting evidence to make it look like a civilian, and other such events.

So if named vets are saying it happens, and you are admitting it may well happen, what's your point? And why are you calling the OP a troll? Because you don't want to hear stuff about the US army that makes you uncomfortable?

IMF actions have caused deaths

[Cato]

One example is that the IMF stopped Malawi from stockpiling grain, and many people died of starvation as a result:

"... when in 2001 the IMF found out the Malawian government had built up large stockpiles of grain in case there was a crop failure, they ordered them to sell it off to private companies at once. They told Malawi to get their priorities straight by using the proceeds to pay off a loan from a large bank the IMF had told them to take out in the first place, at a 56 per cent annual rate of interest. The Malawian president protested and said this was dangerous. But he had little choice. The grain was sold. The banks were paid.

The next year, the crops failed. The Malawian government had almost nothing to hand out. The starving population was reduced to eating the bark off the trees, and any rats they could capture. The BBC described it as Malawiâ(TM)s âoeworst ever famine.â There had been a much worse crop failure in 1991-2, but there was no famine because then the government had grain stocks to distribute. So at least a thousand innocent people starved to death.

Extracted from http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-its-not-just-dominique-strausskahn-the-imf-itself-should-be-on-trial-2292270.html

Other examples: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Monetary_Fund#Impact_on_access_to_food

Re:IMF actions have caused deaths

[JamesP]

Incompetent governments blaming it on someone else. Oldest trick in the book.

And btw, defaulting is not an option. The ONLY reason the US dollar still stands is that the US NEVER defaulted.

Re:IMF actions have caused deaths

[rubycodez]

We've essentially defaulted, just by the equivalent of someone in debt getting more credit cards to "pay" their bills, in a pile of self-referential paper pyramid scams with no basis in real wealth . To speak of "the full faith and credit of the United States" is such a farce, the U.S. is beyond bankrupt with liabilities far exceeding the ever-shrinking assets.

Re:IMF actions have caused deaths

[rubycodez]

The Democrats had control and did nothing but continue the "retarded" Republican agenda. Obama might as well be named Bush the 3rd. Besides our insane military spending, there are other longer term obligations that would have to be curtailed too. But I agree with the core of your argument, we could easily pay off the debt if our lawmakers were rational. But instead, they are in the pockets of large corporations including the banking cartel, defense contractors, fossil fuels, etc. so this will not happen. Instead we will collapse economically.

Re:IMF actions have caused deaths

[rubycodez]

Our total obligations are many time GDP, despite the usual old saw you are trying to invoke that only considers "national debt". The nations that are coming to power and that will soon surpass the U.S. in every way have already lost faith in the USA and have begun the move away from the U.S. dollar and U.S. debt holding. More and more countries will lose faith in the dollar and move from U.S. securities and use of the dollar. We are losing, via outsourcing and globalization, the ability to generate real wealth, to add value to real things. Instead our assets are increasingly of the paper kind (stocks, bonds, securities), intellectual property (for the making of real things made offshore), services (necessary as a fraction, but unsustainable if too large a portion). I'm giving a warning as a old fart, the good ship USA is tits up and taking on water, it is going down.

Define "foreign"?

[Shoten]

This is the IMF. What's a foreign government, in that context...Martians?

Why not a company?

[johanw]

Why would a large organization always mean a country? Why not a large bank that wants to know in advance how much risk is really involved in lending money to Greece? Goldman-Sachs has been rumbeling in that area more than enough already.

Re:Anonymous

[GIL_Dude]

Actually Stuxnet has been analyzed pretty well and would have attacked Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 - no autoplay required. Remember the purpose of placing a USB key in one of these machines is to copy data from / to it because the machines aren't networked and the data has to be analyzed. In this case, a couple of zero day vulnerabilities were utilized that caused Windows to get infected by just opening the folder. Mark Russinovich did a nice, digestible 3 part write up on it that starts here: http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2011/03/30/3416253.aspx.

Re:300 quatloos on the insurgent

[Dunbal]

I believe it was called "international jewry".

Re:Anonymous

[elsurexiste]

Which indicates that the systems were running Windows XP which is the only OS out there with the autorun "feature". If you're using a Windows OS to run critical industrial facilities then you really deserve to be hacked and have your facility shut down. This system was never intended to do that.

If you want a secure setup use a decent Unix variant to run your servers; you can even have them accessible from the outside if you know what you're doing.

That is false, I'm afraid.

A guy at IBM did an online presentation about that. Ubuntu, by default, comes with thumbnail generation activated by default when you insert a USB drive (no autorun, though). After that, he took advantage of a few shortcomings of PDF and video which, combined with this default conf, escalated his privileges all the way to root. Lost the video link, maybe other /.ers may help.

Conclusion: the choice of OS is not, by itself, a security measure. Servers running Windows can be secure, as you said, if you know what you're doing. I agree with you on that: don't put amateurs to manage your servers, be them Unix-like or Windows.