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WikiLeaks Dump Reveals CIA Malware That Can Sabotage User Software (bleepingcomputer.com)
An anonymous reader writes: "While the world was busy dealing with the WannaCry ransomware outbreak, last Friday, about the time when we were first seeing a surge in WannaCry attacks, WikiLeaks dumped new files part of the Vault 7 series," reports BleepingComputer. This time, the organization dumped user manuals for two hacking tools named AfterMidnight and Assassin. Both are malware frameworks, but of the two, the most interesting is AfterMidnight -- a backdoor trojan for stealing data from infected PCs. According to its leaked manual, AfterMidnight contains a module to "subvert" user software by killing processes and delaying the execution of user software. Examples in this manual show CIA operatives how to kill browsers every 30 seconds to keep targets focused on their work, how to delay the execution of PowerPoint software with 30 seconds just to mess with their targets, or how to lock up 50% of PC resources whenever the user starts certain software. Basically, the CIA created nagware.
...that Wikileaks never seems to publish any russian or chinese state cyber security leaks. Now either security is particularly bad in the US security services compared to russia and china, which means information is easy to get hold of, or someone in wikileaks has a rather anti-US agenda. I know which I'd lay money on.
To all those who keep looking forward to the year of Linux in the desktop - don't. The status quo is excellent. You can run Linux in the desktop without any problems and without much effort, if you want to, to do just about everything that you need and want. As long as Windows maintains its stranglehold, the bad guys and three letter government agencies world over will focus their efforts on Windows, leaving Linux desktops alone. The time has come to understand that the dominance of Windows in the desktop is a blessing to those of us who wish to run Linux in the desktop. We do not want for Linux to rule in the desktop, we want for Windows to carry on taking the heat. Fortunately, the asinine efforts behind Gnome and KDE (and the fading Unity) almost guarantee that Windows will remain the desktop of choice for the masses. And that is a very good thing for the rest of us.
I'm not sure about other readers, but one of the things I've noticed is that as time passes, so more and more potentially useful software becomes "chatty" - in other words software that we'd normally trust to do "what it says on the tin" and nothing else has suddenly sprouted a great deal of extra activity.
This makes it much harder to spot suspicious activity on "ordinary" machines.
Now, we have to accept that there is a great deal of "free" software available today (firewall software like ZoneAlarm, anti-virus software like AVG) which offer both free and paid-for versions, but for which the free-to-use editions "phone home" an extraordinary amount of data about your PC. You get what you pay for.
But when your OS is the worst offender, (W10), when your video driver maintains a running commentary (nVidia), when almost any piece of software on your computer believes that it has the need or right to "phone home", it becomes orders of magnitude more difficult to understand when something suspicious might be happening with your computer. I recently had to re-install a Windows 10 machine for a friend of mine; after applying a 3rd-party firewall utility and configuring it to block all outbound traffic until it had been positively vetted, I was absolutely stunned by the number of different packages that claimed the need to "phone home".
I am sure there are many legitimate reasons for this to happen [such as checking for updates]. However, the current state of affairs seems to be stacking the odds against the average user. It's a bit like the tic-tac-toe ending to Wargames: the only way to avoid losing is to not play the game... and the only way to avoid having your PC pwned is to not have a PC in the first place.
OK, that's a [small] exaggeration. But it illustrates the point. #Depressing.
This could also be yet another "look over here, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" scenario. Do not fool yourself, all of the world's intelligence communities has been doing this for decades of influencing the masses with carefully orchestrated information dumps. Because they know most people prefer the ignorance is bliss mentality. I bet you still consider the DNC staffer was the victim of a botched robbery, right?
All of this is the classical "Divide and Conquer" rules of war that has been going on for centuries. They have successfully implemented the first phase by dividing the country in half. What would the next step be?
More importantly, who is the they in the equation?