Decade-Old Espionage Malware Found Targeting Government Computers

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Decade-Old Espionage Malware Found Targeting Government Computers

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday March 20, 2013 @09:28PM from the protect-ya-neck dept.

alancronin writes "Researchers have unearthed a decade-long espionage operation that used the popular TeamViewer remote-access program and proprietary malware to target high-level political and industrial figures in Eastern Europe. TeamSpy, as the shadow group has been dubbed, collected encryption keys and documents marked as 'secret' from a variety of high-level targets, according to a report published Wednesday by Hungary-based CrySyS Lab. Targets included a Russia-based Embassy for an undisclosed country belonging to both NATO and the European Union, an industrial manufacturer also located in Russia, multiple research and educational organizations in France and Belgium, and an electronics company located in Iran. CrySyS learned of the attacks after Hungary's National Security Authority disclosed intelligence that TeamSpy had hit an unnamed 'Hungarian high-profile governmental victim.'"

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How many of these could be out there? by dunkmark · 2013-03-20 21:50 · Score: 1

It is possible that any number of threats could be out in the wild. How would we really know?
1. Re:How many of these could be out there? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-20 23:17 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  How would we really know?
  
  Which part of "Microsoft product" did you not understand?
2. Re:How many of these could be out there? by poofmeisterp · 2013-03-21 02:52 · Score: 1
  
  It is possible that any number of threats could be out in the wild.
  How would we really know?
  Apparently the same way the governmental bodies did. Wait. LOL
3. Re:How many of these could be out there? by Medievalist · 2013-03-21 04:18 · Score: 1
  
  I say we take off and nuke the place from orbit.
  It's the only way to be sure.
decade long op!? by TaoPhoenix · 2013-03-20 22:11 · Score: 5, Interesting

That's rather disturbing - that the best defense that money can buy failed to pick up a spy op for an entire decade!! I don't even know what to make of this news. Do you SysAdmin types out there have some input? Wouldn't you have noticed suspicious activity *sometime* sooner than a decade?

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1. Re:decade long op!? by erroneus · 2013-03-20 22:32 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Suspiscious based on what criteria?
  1. We aren't allowed to use open source and so we have to "trust" every 'signed binary' which executives and leaders want to use. If we could use open source, we could at least read the source and even compile it to ensure the source we read was the binary which was compiled.
  2. When the malware doesn't do "harm" to anything, the symtoms of malware are non-existant. No pop-up ads, no unusual crashing (see note about being unable to use open source... the 'other' operaitng system crashes often enough for inexplicable reasons that no one suspects malware as the cause any longer) and when a commonly used utility program which performs remote access is used, how can it be detected as malware?
  Arguably, that it was proprietary and commercial software which was exploited is pretty disturbing. But at the same time, that software makers (and other device and product makers, and service providers too) frequently enter into deals with government to spy on people is unfortunately very common. That the "white-hat" (heh, I accidentally typed "white-hate"... apropos?) nation called the USA has compromised global communications with Echelon and more recently with the much celebrated NSA wiretapping, does not help matters.
  I think no one appreciates the value of trust. Once it's lost, it's lost. What amount of trust in government... any government... may have existed, it is gone for most of us. The unenlightened? Well... they still watch MSM (mainstream media, I have come to know these initials). What hope have they against that?
2. Re:decade long op!? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-20 23:04 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  the 'other' operaitng system crashes often enough for inexplicable reasons that no one suspects malware as the cause any longer)
  - would like to know what OS is this, cause my windows 7 install is rock-solid since I installed it on 2011...
3. Re:decade long op!? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-20 23:52 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  The initial argument was invalid. Just because something does not crash means absolutely nothing security-wise. HP-UX was long considered a "rock-solid" operating system until sombody discovered you could crash entire HPUX servers by sending an "oversized" ping packet from a random Windows machine.
  Stuxnet was possible because Windows security is abysmal.
4. Re:decade long op!? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-21 01:59 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  The 90s called,
  Did you warn them?
5. Re:decade long op!? by erroneus · 2013-03-21 02:19 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  I'll respond to this but not to the others.
  That YOUR instance works great is fine. My instance also works flawlessly. The problem is often blamed on "third party software." Great. While the actual cause may actually be third party software as is demonstrable by the removal of (or omission of in a system reload) that doesn't escape the fact that the OS itself is vulnerable to 3rd party software crashing the OS. This is a kind of important rule of a good OS not to be vulnerable to 3rd party software causing it to crash.
  And here's a great example of what I mean: In the past, I have had my laptop running Linux fail. The video chip failed. But I had applications and processes running in the background which I didn't want interrupted. So what did I do?
  I was able to SSH into the machine which was STILL RUNNING despite the fact that the video was completely out. I was able to monitor the progress of the software and shut it down without problem, then shut down the computer as well. I was hoping it was some sort of [proprietary] software glitch in the driver, but alas, the video chip had died and I could get no video from the display or from the VGA port. The machine had to be replaced.
  Now I ask you this. If this were Windows, would a video driver failure, especially one which started as a hardware failure, do you think the machine would have continued running or do you think the whole machine would have been taken down with it? (Rhetorical question, we all know the answer.) So now I point out that if other OSes can withstand hardware failures by crashing only the affected components (in this case, my X session was killed and the applications running under X also killed) why doesn't Windows? And if the OS on common PC hardware is capable of this level of resilience, why is Windows not? I get that speed and power and blah-blah-blah are imporant... on DESKTOP machines. But the problem is that Microsoft took a desktop OS and uses it as a server OS. Arguably, you can say that's not true -- the NT kernel was intended to be used for servers and stuff like that. Okay great. It still falls short. Drivers live in ring-0 and they don't (all) need to be running there.
  I have argued this point numerous times with the same failing arguments presented. At the end of the day x86 hardware, when running a properly engineered OS, can compartmentalize all peripheral devices to the point that a crash on any given controller or whatever, will not crash the whole OS. I have experienced this often enough in Linux to know this works nicely. (I once had a vmware guest running Linux and had the storage fail... the damned thing kept running and when I SSH'd into the machine, it showed me HDD controller failures and stuff. It was pretty awesome.) So once again, WHY NOT WINDOWS?! Why can 3rd party software, whether they are drivers or applications, crash the damned OS?!
6. Re:decade long op!? by endus · 2013-03-21 03:29 · Score: 1
  
  Because there's not really a great financial incentive to make the changes. The OS works well enough for what it is. The OS works well enough to garner pretty good market share. It could be better, but its pretty stable...stable enough to do its job.
  It all comes down to money in the end.
7. Re:decade long op!? by endus · 2013-03-21 03:55 · Score: 1
  
  1.) You aren't allowed to use open source software because there's often no support or "community" support for it. With closed source products you can also require the company selling the software to have an independent code review done and (depending on your clout) provide some version of the results to you for review. If you could use open source, you would cost an enormous amount of money doing code review on someone else's code. No one wants to spend the money to do this, because it would only prevent a tiny minority of compromises.
  If you "trust" all the software you install, whether it's open or closed source, you have already lost the battle.
  2.) The symptoms of this malware would be readily apparent. TeamViewer traffic was picked up and flagged by default in the last signature based IDS I had access to. Why do you think it's impossible to install malware on open source products? Are you going to do a complete code review every time a new version or patch comes out? Are you running HIDS software on every single machine in your organization to prevent modification of the binary after its installed? What are you doing to prevent phishing and spear-phishing attacks which are the means that most attackers use to get a foothold in an organization and have been for more than 40 years now?
  Your notion of "trust" is wide eyed and unrealistic. Security must be layered and standardized. It also must be practical, effective, financially reasonable, and comprehensive. This notion of open source software as the magic bullet that would have prevented this is incredibly silly.
8. Re:decade long op!? by erroneus · 2013-03-21 05:01 · Score: 2
  
  interesting you think their market share is due to sufficient quality.
9. Re:decade long op!? by endus · 2013-03-21 06:17 · Score: 1
  
  Not really. Your implication is that your opinion on the matter trumps what companies spending millions and millions of dollars believe is valuable.
  Most enterprises run both Windows and open source operating systems these days. They do this because each is better suited to different tasks, not because of some ideological crusade.
10. Re:decade long op!? by endus · 2013-03-21 06:34 · Score: 1
  
  My response is that of an engineer who has run into multiple instances where open source software was tried in enterprise scale implementations and there were serious issues which we were not able to get a resolution for. Posting a message about performance problems with an agent running on domain controllers for an 80,000 node network and hoping that someone will eventually get around to fixing it is not what most companies consider, "support". They are looking for someone's feet to hold to the fire. Not that that model works 100% of the time, either (I'm looking at you Cisco!), but for the most part it does. It also provides a company with (some) assurance that the project isn't going to just die and leave them in the lurch.
  Meanwhile, I continue to see heavy use of open source operating systems which are supported by various vendors in areas where it makes sense to use them. Sometimes commercial closed source products work better, sometimes they don't.
  There has been a failure (in some areas, but not others) to respond to what the market has asked for with open source products. In many cases this is probably because the originators of the project really aren't seeking worldwide market domination, which is an extremely laudable way of going about things. In others, it's because the community doesn't acknowledge what is important, or isn't aiming to accommodate certain levels of implementations. Writing products for small to medium businesses is a lot easier than writing them for titanic enterprises. There's nothing wrong with making that distinction, and there's nothing wrong with leaving those markets for closed source projects to jump on.
  What there is something wrong with is making the decision an ideological black and white choice and ignoring the requirements of the project completely.
11. Re:decade long op!? by erroneus · 2013-03-21 08:35 · Score: 1
  
  Microsoft is a convicted monopolist. It was shown not only that they abused their monopoly position, but pulled numerous tricks to get there. You are either new to IT or you've been smoking something. Everyone should know Microsoft's history by now.
12. Re:decade long op!? by endus · 2013-03-21 10:27 · Score: 1
  
  You're obviously very young or have worked for smaller companies, which is why you think that their status as "convicted monopolist" makes any difference to anyone. If their products didn't fill a need which there was not a better product available to fill, trust me, they wouldn't retain the business they do.
  No one cares about ideology or even ethics. What they care about is making money. Windows fits into some big but very specific niches, and it performs that role extremely well. That's why it's still around.
  That's also why it's been pushed out of certain segments of the market: because it *doesn't* do certain things very well. The key is the evaluation of the requirements of the project to determine what is the best fit.
  Working in security, I deal with it all, all the time. I would say that operating system is probably the least important factor in judging the success of an implementation. One company I worked for had a network that was divided in half. Half the network was the officially supported infrastructure and included both windows and linux. Windows was 100% of the desktop infrastructure, and a mixture of OSes powered the server infrastructure. It worked amazingly. It accommodated extreme-novice users, who had way more important things to worry about than what OS was on their desktop, extremely well. Once they got their patching routine down, it was surprisingly resistant to worms and viruses. It was actually extremely impressive.
  Then there was the other side of the network which ran from datacenters in closets and servers under peoples desks. It was a mixture of windows and linux and I would say a solid 60% of it was dismally run. Constant compromises and virus infections. Extreme resistance to common sense security precautions. Blatant outrage when servers were taken offline because they were affecting other life-and-death critical machines, etc. No patching at all. A complete lack of understanding of what they were even running, much less what version. I could go on and on.
  The point is, shitty administrators make for shitty implementations regardless of OS. Good administrators make for good implementations, regardless of OS. Good administrators choose the best tool for the job and use it. Shitty administrators are ideologues who will force a tool to do a job that it's not that good at.
13. Re:decade long op!? by whoever57 · 2013-03-21 17:18 · Score: 1
  
  You're obviously very young or have worked for smaller companies, which is why you think that their status as "convicted monopolist" makes any difference to anyone. If their products didn't fill a need which there was not a better product available to fill, trust me, they wouldn't retain the business they do.
  And you don't understand the concept of monopoly abuse. There were few "better products" because Microsoft used its monopoly power to suppress them. Microsoft did not make products that were better than the competition, instead, they used illegal means to prevent the competition from developing and releasing competing products.
  
  --
  The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
14. Re:decade long op!? by endus · 2013-03-22 01:49 · Score: 1
  
  And you don't understand the concept of monopoly abuse. There were few "better products" because Microsoft used its monopoly power to suppress them. Microsoft did not make products that were better than the competition, instead, they used illegal means to prevent the competition from developing and releasing competing products.
  So, go make a better product then.
  I saw a fair number of products in process that may have provided a better experience in particular areas, but none that seemed to have the same goals as Windows had in mind. OS X is a pretty good example on the desktop. In some contexts it is a better product, but it's not enterprise focused.
  We can cry foul all day, but that's the way life goes. Move forward.
Re:Stupidity knows no bounds. by SuricouRaven · 2013-03-20 23:00 · Score: 1

They probably used a patched version that doesn't put the icon there.
Poland? by Jacek+Poplawski · 2013-03-20 23:00 · Score: 1

Is this country Poland?
A strong push for open source in government by Morgaine · 2013-03-20 23:40 · Score: 1

I suspect that as more malware and backdoors are discovered in systems used by government, the penny will begin to drop more frequently. Closed source is incompatible with security, by definition, since you cannot validly trust what you cannot see.
Companies have the luxury to risk their security by placing their trust in a corporation and in closed source brands, and to pay the price of failure. But governments do not have this luxury, because failure compromises the security and sovereignty of a nation.
The push for open source in government will be gaining impetus in the years ahead as more national infrastructure becomes networked and the security risk becomes evident. Each report of espionage malware found is just another data point highlighting the insecurity of closed source systems.
It's a reasonable guess I think that government perceptions are changing because of this, and open source is slowly becoming non-optional.

--
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
1. Re:A strong push for open source in government by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-20 23:54 · Score: 1
  
  I suspect that as more malware and backdoors are discovered in systems used by government, the penny will begin to drop more frequently. Closed source is incompatible with security, by definition, since you cannot validly trust what you cannot see
  Bullshit. Open or closed source has no direct bearing on the ability of an attacker to infect a binary. Open source provides more eyes on a given bug or problem, but once compiled and running its the exact same problem.
  The article mentions use of a modified signed binary. So tell me how open source is going to remedy that? Unless you're recompiling from scratch (your entire tool chain, plus dependencies) on each launch, you're just as fucked as the next guy. Are you going to checksum the binary in memory each time a method is called? Are you going to encrypt/decrypt on each call? What's to stop an attacker from modifying your checksum code in the same manner as CD checks on games are trivially broken?
  The only thing open source is really going to do for you is ensure that if you compile from source, the attack didn't originate from that source. So what?
2. Re:A strong push for open source in government by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-20 23:55 · Score: 1
  
  Your reasoning is based on the implicit assumption that governments have information security as their highest priority. I can tell you that MONEY trumps all of that. Commericalware plus commercial firewalls and other "security solutions" entail more money, more scope for kickbacks to uniformed and civil politicians.
  That's why your reasoning is entirely faulty.
3. Re:A strong push for open source in government by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-21 00:37 · Score: 1
  
  The fact it's open source IS (or can be) the pathway. If it's a small piece of software that does a specific function that's not of use to many people, your million eyeballs shrink rapidly. And what you're left with (IMO) is a handful of eyeballs thinking "I don't have the time/skills for this, it's open source, I'm sure someone will have looked over it" while no one actually does. Or someone auditing the code but not the stuff around it, or maybe the code as distributed is clean and will compile into a clean and functioning binary, but the scripts around it actually add some malicious steps if certain criteria are met. Open source isn't a magic bullet.
4. Re:A strong push for open source in government by jader3rd · 2013-03-21 02:21 · Score: 2
  
  With open source you can check for the existence of such pathways, easily.
  Your statement kind of assumes that every little shop can afford someone so deeply intimate with C++, and every known security hole that it is "easy" for them to check. It is certainly not easy for the vast majority of places to crack open the source code and go "oh look, a hole!".
5. Re:A strong push for open source in government by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-21 02:27 · Score: 1
  
  We're talking binaries here. A running binary is a running binary, no matter the philosophy behind creating it
  All binaries are not created equal. A binary made from open source code cannot have direct support for a deliberate backdoor nor blatantly obvious security holes because they would show up...
  You're assuming that anyone bothers to look for vulnerabilities in the source. This is only guarantied to be true if you do so yourself (and have the skills to do it effectively).
  In the real world this means "open source is more secure" is as useless an attitude as "security through obscurity".
6. Re:A strong push for open source in government by endus · 2013-03-21 03:43 · Score: 1
  
  Most companies don't have the resources to do really good code review on their own software, much less on every piece of software that comes in the door. The government has (unfortunately) many more resources, and they also have the clout to get source code or request independent code reviews on software which they buy. Actually, independent code reviews and penetration testing are becoming a part of most customer contracts now anyway, even between two regular businesses.
  Support. That's why companies and government agencies choose closed source. Open source products which you can get support for can usually get a decent foothold. Open source products for which there is no support or "community" support won't be able to become as widely adopted. It's really not this complex ideological war.
  I have no idea why the comments in this article are so focused on open source. Well, yes I do, it's Slashdot....but this breach could have been prevented or detected any number of ways. I've seen suspicious TeamViewer traffic in IDS consoles before. Why were these agencies not implementing basic security controls?
  Using open source software isn't the magic bullet to prevent compromises. Even in closed source environments phishing and spearphishing are widely used to gain a foothold on a network. This technique is suddenly impossible because of a financially impractical code review procedure for every piece of software that comes in the door? C'mon.
  The answer to these compromises is the same as it's always been. Layered security, standardized procedures, visibility into network traffic and systems, preventing employees from installing non-supported non-auditable remote access software, monitoring and auditing, etc. If these agencies somehow have the resources to do code review on every piece of software in their environment then, sure, that's an awesome layer to add to the process...but it's an expensive layer and one that addresses a problem that isn't a big risk in the grand scheme of things.
Windows only ... by dgharmon · 2013-03-21 00:12 · Score: 1

"The attackers relied on a variety of methods, including the use of a digitally signed version of TeamViewer that has been modified through a technique known as "DLL hijacking" to spy on targets in real-time." link

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AccountKiller
Re:Do YOU mean "this other operating system"? by myowntrueself · 2013-03-21 01:20 · Score: 4, Funny

Please, just cut to the chase and tell us how MyCleanPC will fix everything for us.

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In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.