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'Vigilante Hackers' Strike Routers In Russia and Iran, Reports Motherboard (vice.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the Cisco-kids dept.

An anonymous reader quotes Motherboard: On Friday, a group of hackers targeted computer infrastructure in Russia and Iran, impacting internet service providers, data centres, and in turn some websites. "We were tired of attacks from government-backed hackers on the United States and other countries," someone in control of an email address left in the note told Motherboard Saturday... "We simply wanted to send a message...." In addition to disabling the equipment, the hackers left a note on affected machines, according to screenshots and photographs shared on social media: "Don't mess with our elections," along with an image of an American flag...

In a blog post Friday, cybersecurity firm Kaspersky said the attack was exploiting a vulnerability in a piece of software called Cisco Smart Install Client. Using computer search engine Shodan, Talos (which is part of Cisco) said in its own blog post on Thursday it found 168,000 systems potentially exposed by the software. Talos also wrote it observed hackers exploiting the vulnerability to target critical infrastructure, and that some of the attacks are believed to be from nation-state actors...

Reuters reported that Iran's IT Minister Mohammad Javad Azari-Jahromi said the attack mainly impacted Europe, India, and the U.S.... The hackers said they did scan many countries for the vulnerable systems, including the U.K., U.S., and Canada, but only "attacked" Russia and Iran, perhaps referring to the post of an American flag and their message. They claimed to have fixed the Cisco issue on exposed devices in the US and UK "to prevent further attacks... As a result of our efforts, there are almost no vulnerable devices left in many major countries," they claimed in an email.
Their image of the American flag was a black-and-white drawing done with ASCII art.

121 comments

  1. Undecided by Ensign_Expendable · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Part of me wants to cheer and the other part says things like this aren't helping.

    1. Re:Undecided by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Part of me wants to cheer and the other part says things like this aren't helping.

      The second part of you is correct. These actions are counter-productive. Russia and Iran both have closed paranoid cultures that play up their victimhood at the hands of the West. But that belief is not monolithic, and there are factions in both countries that want more openness, tolerance, and trust in the international system. These vigilante actions weaken these people while strengthening the paranoid hardliners.

      In fact, these actions play so smoothly into the hands of the hardliners, that we shouldn't dismiss the possibility that it is a false flag operation.

    2. Re:Undecided by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Cute.

    3. Re:Undecided by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Part of me wants to cheer and the other part says things like this aren't helping.

      The second part of you is correct. These actions are counter-productive. Russia and Iran both have closed paranoid cultures that play up their victimhood at the hands of the West.

      Government ordered cyber offensives designed to change the leadership of a country are an act of war.

      Acts of war cannot be ignored. That alone is a reason Trump should be impeached, since he is not doing his damn job. (If anyone can point to a real plan to stop this shit from happening again, or even serious progress...?)

      Now, do vigilante actions help? Probably not, since the scale is likely only big enough to be used internally as propaganda. A response, if given must cause enough pain that the aggressor is hesitant to do it again.

      The people that keep Putin in power, are likely the targets that must be convinced. Block all exports to their companies and subsidiaries. Block all imports to the same. Get others to do the same. Do everything you can to put severe pressure on Putin to back off. I'm fine if some of it causes problems with America, as long as the point gets made and understood.

    4. Re:Undecided by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Government ordered cyber offensives designed to change the leadership of a country are an act of war.

      Espionage and covert activities are a normal part of government relations. Saying Russian ads on Facebook are an "act of war" is absurd.

      Acts of war cannot be ignored.

      Why not?

      That alone is a reason Trump should be impeached, since he is not doing his damn job.

      Declaring war is a congressional responsibility.

      If anyone can point to a real plan to stop this shit from happening again, or even serious progress...?

      Here's my plan: Improve education in America so we have fewer people stupid enough to believe nonsense posted on Facebook.

    5. Re:Undecided by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 1

      Hit the nail on the head, did he?

      --
      Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
    6. Re:Undecided by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      The Western nations have been constantly meddling and interfering in other nations affairs for generations now. So when these target nations decide that enough is enough, and try to prevent this, people like you become the useful idiots for the meddlers and make claims of "closed paranoid culture" in an attempt to scaremonger and vilify.

      It's dishonest.

    7. Re:Undecided by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And how long are we supposed to wait for Russia, NK, Iran, or other similar countries to become more open?

      The world seems to assume that the US is powerless to stop other countries from conducting cyber attacks on the US. And the Russians and Iranian hacks represent amateur hour. Every thing they do gets immediately traced back to them.

      And here is something to think on. There have been no accusations hurled at the US for conducting cyber attacks on anyone. With the possible exception of the Stuxnet. And the Israelis had more to do with this than the US. After all someone had to enter one of Iran's most secure sites and plug in a thumb drive to kick off the going away party for all the operation centrifuge. Back in the late 80's the US allowed .Russia to steal an advanced control system. Russia took it home and installed it in one of Russia's main Siberian pipeline pumping station. To bad the stolen controller had been infected with a virus that eventually caused a major explosion that took out the pumping station but also a good chunk of the pipeline. The explosion could be seen from space. Contrary to popular opinion the US has a great deal of power in the world. All the US needs to do is exercise that power and stop apologizing for every perceived wrong in the world. Unfortunately for the world they have to deal with a President who is not afraid to unabashedly use US military and financial power. And Trump is so unpredictable that even US adversaries to worry about how much they can get away with. The US has become overly predictable over the last 25 years. If you are too predictable it becomes easier for any adversaries can tailor their actions around that predictability. And Trump has thrown both "adversaries" and "allies" into a tizzy and unable to make any substantial decisions because they do not know how the US will respond.

    8. Re:Undecided by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3

      And how long are we supposed to wait for Russia, NK, Iran, or other similar countries to become more open?

      As long as it takes. What is the alternative? War?

      As bad as they are, Russia, NK, and Iran are indeed becoming more open. A generation ago, all three were worse, at least for their own people.

      The world seems to assume that the US is powerless to stop other countries from conducting cyber attacks on the US.

      We are far from powerless, but our responses should be intelligent, proportionate, and carefully targeted. The main focus should be on making our own systems less vulnerable, rather than attacking others.

    9. Re: Undecided by mapkinase · · Score: 1

      Education IS propaganda. Depending on content, it's bad or dood propaganda.

      What you are saying is that we should counteract it with good propaganda, and, as ever, I nominate myself to determine what is good or bad.

      --
      I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
    10. Re: Undecided by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bullcrap. Maybe that is what your propaganda wants you to believe. Because 'education' has often been used as an euphemism for propaganda. It's certainly the narrative of some, that everything is an opinion and of equal value, no matter the evidence.

      But in the general sense education, which has existed since some ancient Greek had a good idea some 2400 years ago, does not teach you what to think but how to think for yourself. And if you learn to ask questions, want to see evidence and use basic logic to weight it all, you'll also be able to detect the propaganda that you may have heard during your education.

      Of course that's a very dangerous thing for certain institutions like governments, religion, or private corporations. Because these would like you to accept their statements as being an universal truth and don't ask questions. But that does not make it propaganda.

    11. Re:Undecided by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I really hope that the increased propaganda and trolling from Russia is indeed a sign of the Kreml's fear of actual Russian people starting to open up after all the shit that has happened between the West and their country in the last century. But unfortunately to the rest of the world, that doesn't have eyes in Russia it only makes it look like the Cold War is back. Or maybe it has never stopped and is getting more support again.

    12. Re:Undecided by William+Baric · · Score: 2

      As a Canadian, I'd say "paranoid culture that plays up their victimhood" narrative perfectly describes the post-9/11 USA.

    13. Re:Undecided by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As an online gamer I really wouldn't mind if Russians were gone from my servers with their terrible pings, because they must play on a server that's on the other side of the planet and their regular unwillingness to use a language everyone else understands as well.

      As a human, it would still be a shitty move if they were cut off from the rest of the world like that. And I don't think that they would take it lightly as well, because they really seem to passionately love their online games.

      But don't get me wrong. The parent you replied to was a moronic post.

    14. Re: Undecided by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't see so much territory controlled by the Red Army on Albion Online these days.

    15. Re:Undecided by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Setting the boundaries for acceptable behavior between countries using the guidelines / laws set by congress w/ the approval of the people is one of the major jobs of the president.

      If you go to work and someone comes up behind you and begins licking you on your earlobe. Do you ignore this or respond? If you ignore it then you acknowledge that you accept the behavior. If you respond, how do you respond what is the message? Do you encourage it, respond in kind, or reject the action? What would be your balance of words, force & threat of action? This is an area that is heavily nuanced, where leaders must rely on their advisors who specialize in these areas of expertise.

      That said there is no chance in this universe that America's current administration will ever do anything like this. W/ the sabotage they have been experiencing, it might be 3 or 4 more administrations before they are able to function coherently on foreign policy.

      How i wish my statements were hyperbole, instead of a simple laying out of the facts.......

    16. Re:Undecided by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh wow.. such insight! Such brilliance! Such nuance! You surely are wasting your talents posting such well thought out comments here on Slashdot! You appear to be a candidate for a cabinet position in the Trump whitehouse (or whatever you call it, it doesn't have a name).

      Please keep up the great work fuckwit!

    17. Re: Undecided by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      In a world where we have kindergarten teachers taking their classes out to join anti gun protests, and universities are holding classes on how to "eliminate whiteness," it's hard to argue that there isn't a propaganda component of American education.

    18. Re: Undecided by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      People can have agendas. Teachers are people. Therefore teachers can have an agenda. It's true, of course. That means that education CAN BE propaganda but not that education IS propaganda.

      Unfortunately learning to think for myself and discern between garbage and useful information did not happen until my college days. But there I had to because it was a required thing to move on in the hard science classes. That propaganda garbage with all the non sequitur, red herrings, tu quoque, ad hominem, false dichotomies, false equivalences, equivocations, cherry picking, slippery slopes, appeals to authority, appeals to consequences, arguments from ignorance (list is not exhaustive) that I've learned from watching talk shows on TV or politicians arguing with each wasn't helpful any more.
      Today I also know that some of the stuff the teacher in elementary, middle and high told me was garbage. They were biased against a lot of things. But ultimately it led to this - the ability to tell that it was garbage and not having to rely on someone else telling me it's been flawed or even outright falsified information.

    19. Re:Undecided by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You better save your attack vectors on net infrastructure until you really need them.

      But at least this shows the need to make sure that your devices are secured - or at least have a minimal exposure when it comes to administration interfaces.

    20. Re:Undecided by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      or have that war so you so have fewer people stupid enough to believe nonsense posted on Facebook.

    21. Re:Undecided by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      Government ordered cyber offensives designed to change the leadership of a country are an act of war.

      Espionage and covert activities are a normal part of government relations. Saying Russian ads on Facebook are an "act of war" is absurd.

      This is a red herring. Espionage might be a side effect of the present situation, given that some efforts were made to use secure russian communications to keep the US intelligence community from knowing what was being communicated between Russia and the Trump White house Source: http://www.businessinsider.com... But it isn't legal, and those caught are punished.

      But yeah - saying Russian ads on Facebook are the source of the concept of "Acts of war", and that we dumbass 'Murricans are only thinking of that as an act of war is bullshit. It discards everything else, and is worthy of a paranoid's conspiracy theory frame of mind. Cherry picking what supports one's argument and discarding the rest.

      But let's get onto Acts of war. That is the wrong term. What everyone is looking for is Casus belli, not specifically acts of war . There is a relationship, but not a direct tit for tat. A Casus belli can be just about anything. The Bush II administration declared a Casus belli on Iraq for non-compliance with the cease fire in the 1990-91 war. Lame, but an example. WW1 started with the Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria and was a Casus belli. No direct attack happened.

      Actual Acts of war are incidents like the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. No questioning that. A few have been manufactured, like the Gulf of Tonkin false flag operation. But still, there is a difference between the two, and Russia and a company in England didn't physically attack the US. Now since physical acts of war preceded the internet - there might be additions to Acts of war given that we and other countries have been stupid enough to put things like the power grid on the internet.

      But let's dig a little deeper.

      So now we get to the hacking of both the Republican and Democrat servers, but the systematic release of only the Democrat party information. https://www.snopes.com/news/20... Interestingly a Republican from Texas also broke this, then retracted it a few moments later - which in some cases indicates the veracity of the original statement. https://www.mediaite.com/onlin... But that's pretty interesting - I wonder why the Republican data wasn't presented? And if people think that the DNC's marginalization of Bernie Sanders was bad, they conveniently forget how actively Republicans worked to destroy moderate Republicans in order to replace them with ideologically pure candidates.

      So we have a really sketchy attempt to use Russian crypto equipment, selective hacked data disclosure, and an unfolding story of Russian money coming into NRA dark campaign campaign funds for the politicians they own, and more. Facebook is a blip on the screen, but disturbing on the whole because in some of the other countries it was involved in more violent activities.

      Regardless, the whole Facebook issue is that Cambridge Analytica was caught once, supposedly deleted the data, didn't, then used it and more data again, and as it turns out, are a really slimey organization. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... The shock of the whole thing was that it finally proved beyond doubt that Facebook is directly involved in the Cambridge Analytica malfeasance. That they will sell your data to organizations that are pathological in nature. That some people were naive enough to not think thair data would be used in such a fashion was hammered home.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    22. Re:Undecided by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      War might not be an alternative. It might be forced. The problem is - and the alt+Left in the U.S. and Europe should be aware next time they shut down a speaker with whom they disagree - is that when all opposition or even helpful criticism is censored, echo chambers get set up. And echo chambered people can whip themselves into war footing or oppression footing pretty quickly.

      So the next thing you know, Saddam invades his neighbour and there are wars in the region for the next twenty-five years. Hitler invades Poland and the war in Europe kills 56 million. The elite in Britain oppresses the colonies. And so on ...

    23. Re:Undecided by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The people that keep Putin in power...

      is Putin.

    24. Re: Undecided by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hey, free speech buddy. Don't like it, move.

    25. Re:Undecided by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      good thing those echo chambers aren't limited to one single political position.

    26. Re: Undecided by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm all for free speech on all sides. I'm just against teachers imposing speech on their students. You really think a 5 year old whose teacher takes the whole class out to protest for gun control is exercising free speech? To me it sounds more like the teacher taking free speech away from them.

    27. Re:Undecided by fufubag · · Score: 0

      You watch too much TV. Us "Westerners" are tougher than leather. But you won't ever get to find out, cause we're also smart. What can you do about us? We're living it up, life is a party and there's nothing you can do to bring us down. hahaha

    28. Re: Undecided by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Rather have the teachers doing it than their dumb ass parents

    29. Re:Undecided by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Russia doesn't have a closed paranoid culture, the United States does - and a dangerously propagandized one.

      Find that weapons of mass destruction in Iraq yet?
      Hey, I understand the US bombed Libya to "prevent a humanitarian crisis" - it's in civil war still, 4 years later..
      I keep hearing that Assad keeps gassing his own population, when he has a military and an airforce, why does he keep using the one weapon that gives the US the only excuse to bomb Syria?

      Americans are insane now. They believe the most ludicrous and childish lies, because your Nazi style government told you these lies.

      At least, I understand how Nazi Germany came into formation.

    30. Re:Undecided by Rakarra · · Score: 1

      Speaking of false flags...

    31. Re: Undecided by Rakarra · · Score: 1

      The parents are the parents. It is naturally their call, not the teachers'.

  2. Doing them a favor. by WolfgangVL · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This little circle-jerk just closed off viable attack vectors that could have been used in a real defense situation.

    Retaliation in 3...2....1.....

    --
    You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
    1. Re: Doing them a favor. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bingo.
      These little attention whores would have done us a favor by "fixing" the vulnerability on US systems and then just shutting the fuck up.

    2. Re:Doing them a favor. by schlumpf_louise · · Score: 1

      I came to Slashdot just now to see if anything was going on as we have had problems for the last few hours, websites such as channel4 and BBC keep becoming temporarily unavailable and some sites seem slow. Now I'm sure I'm not paranoid, maybe.

  3. Vigilante ? More like the NSA. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Don't kid yourselves, the baddest motherfuckers in the world of computers are employed by governments.

    Why ?

    Because they are often given the option of employment or imprisonment when they are caught fucking around.

    Anyone who thinks the shit has been pulled by some Cheeto-gobbling guy in a basement is naive as hell.

    1. Re:Vigilante ? More like the NSA. by Luckyo · · Score: 5, Interesting

      That's also why this is highly unlikely to be NSA. The folks doing intelligence work for government intelligence agencies don't fuck around like this. They go for the throat, and they go hard.

      And it's not like it's limited to US. In fact, one of the biggest complaints of FBI doing investigations of Russian for profit hackers was that almost every one they reported on to Russian authorities ended up being recruited for their intelligence apparatus.

    2. Re:Vigilante ? More like the NSA. by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Don't kid yourselves, the baddest motherfuckers in the world of computers are employed by governments.

      . . . when "The Pros" hack into a system . . . they don't tell anyone about it.

      . . . when "The Schmoes" hack into a system . . .they brag about it on Facebook.

      One of the oldest rules in the book is that you never let your enemy know that you have compromised them. That way, they will continue to expose valuable information that you can exploit.

      If you leave behind an email stating, "You've been hacked!" . . . that's game over for that exploit.

      There used to be an ancient joke that "spooky folks" would pass around, that went something like:

      "Did you hear the story of the greatest spy coup of all time . . . ?"

      "No . . . you didn't . . . and you never will."

      --
      Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
    3. Re:Vigilante ? More like the NSA. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The NSA would not execute such a poorly orchestrated attack for no gain, except to strengthen the attacked systems.

    4. Re:Vigilante ? More like the NSA. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hence the Russians getting so annoyed when the US wants to put one of its hackers on trial.

    5. Re:Vigilante ? More like the NSA. by cdsparrow · · Score: 1

      Hope these script kiddies have somebody to taste their food and open their mail for them. Assuming anything of worth was actually touched. If not, meh....

    6. Re: Vigilante ? More like the NSA. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Thank you for joining the Russians Not Pretending To Be Other Nationalities Club.
      We welcome new members.

    7. Re:Vigilante ? More like the NSA. by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      NSA likes to get in and stay in for decades. Hide and enjoy no crypto on the trusted side of a network.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    8. Re:Vigilante ? More like the NSA. by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 2

      I have read your rambling wall-o'-text 3 times.

      It made no more sense the third time than it did either of the first two. Which is to say, little or none.

      Some review of grammar and punctuation might enable you to *communicate* rather than merely *express*. Seriously.

      --
      Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
    9. Re:Vigilante ? More like the NSA. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sole troll spewing truly mindless bullshit .... can you take-a-crap without assistance ?

    10. Re:Vigilante ? More like the NSA. by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 1, Offtopic

      The Slashdot message centre informed me that there was a response to my post, but I see this isn't the case.

      --
      Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
    11. Re: Vigilante ? More like the NSA. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How do you know, Alexei?

    12. Re:Vigilante ? More like the NSA. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Correct.

      Now say you panic and download and install the new version/ emergency patch, containing new back doors and closing others that may be discovered You can't win heh?

      More scary is that new software is apparently lesser quality, more bloated, with fewer return code checks after a call - sheer lazy programming. the compiles include dead test/trace routines, and binary blobs of unreferenced crap, that could hide a payload.

      So far USA has indicated Heiwei and Kaspersky, but no American brandnames. Strange because there were a few CA/Certificate funnies, and Oracle Java certainly
      contains many CVE's that make it look the prime risk everywhere.

      If you are paranoid, daisy chain routers with a roll your own BSD box in series.
      Slamming fragmented packets to the floor is what you do.

    13. Re: Vigilante ? More like the NSA. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My n. me is iiivan and I am here to confirm the stupid theories of hildabeast and her bankster chum mies.

    14. Re:Vigilante ? More like the NSA. by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 1

      Whoever modded this Off-Topic is a fucking moron.

      --
      Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
    15. Re:Vigilante ? More like the NSA. by rtb61 · · Score: 1

      Proof reading would Indicate I give a fuck, rather than just having fun, except for the Puerto Rico bit, which I will repeat https://www.youtube.com/watch?..., Australia Puerto Rico volume 2, just more profitable, fuck off.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    16. Re:Vigilante ? More like the NSA. by Rakarra · · Score: 1

      The trolls have lots of mod points and get vindictive these days. You just have to shrug, ignore the mod totals you get (because they don't mean shit), and move on.

    17. Re:Vigilante ? More like the NSA. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ignore the mod totals you get because they don't mean shit

      Just like all of your comments.

      Hey, what goes around, comes around!

    18. Re:Vigilante ? More like the NSA. by Rakarra · · Score: 0

      ignore the mod totals you get because they don't mean shit

      Just like all of your comments.

      Hey, what goes around, comes around!

      Case in point! Oh well.

  4. Re:get ready by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    obviously you aren't one of the hackers as any hacker with half a brain knows you can't "test" this shit first as testing it results in a concerted effort worldwide to fix the hole and just reduces the possibility of a larger attack being successful. You are just some idiot kid that likes to take credit for things you don't understand.

  5. F yeah by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Alright! Thatâ(TM)ll show em.

  6. Valid targets now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    hope russia targets them for execution they are now valid combatants

  7. Right by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    These are vigilantes, not state actors claiming to be vigilantes.

    Only when Western infrastructure is hacked, state actors are to blame.

    1. Re:Right by johanw · · Score: 1, Troll

      Says who? Any script kiddy in the west that gets a website down is immediately refered to as "Russian state hacker", so don't be surprised when the Russians react the same.

  8. Correlation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Was there a corresponding dip in the number of comments on Slashdot (and every other online forum which touches on politics)?

    I expect the troll architecture is sufficiently distributed to cope with outages like this but it would be useful to look for a drop in bot posts if ever a major link to Russia, Iran etc goes down.

    1. Re: Correlation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Russia has a direct wireless link into hildas blood cleaning attachment. From that device they connect to the precious Ameriweb via WiFi.

  9. Re:get ready by ravenshrike · · Score: 2

    Ehhh, not entirely true. You could burn one set of exploits to to test response patterns, especially if you had other unknown hooks in both the systems you hit and at least some of the systems doing the cleanup. That requires you to have an entirely unrelated chain ready to go for part 2 of course. Course, this is relatively unlikely to be the case if a bunch of amateurs are behind it.

  10. 'Vigilante Hackers'? by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    Attacking two politically sensitive countries? There are no air quotes big enough....

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  11. Re:get ready by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    yeah because the bragging child from the OP appears to be a professional with well planned analysis...NOT. this has been done by a bunch a kids, could you use such a tactic to measure response, sure, but that is so unlikely in this case as to be laughable. Secondly the risk of such a method is it raises awareness of your targets, they update/patch/replace old equipment as they become paranoid.

  12. Re:get ready by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I agree. Also, if you infected a patch that they haven't installed yet, and you wanted to force them to update to install your exploit, hacking them like some punk script kiddie will probably do the trick. I mean, infecting updates would be difficult, but if you had that kind of exploit, this might be one way to execute it.

  13. If they had the technical skill to do this... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... they'd know the claims being made against Russia are bollocks.

  14. Stop blaming the Russians by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    Americans should stop blaming someone else for the result of their elections. Even if the Russians might have given a small attempt at it, to not accept that so many Americans willingly voted for the current president is hiding the head in the sand.
    The reality is that the current president acts and behaves like the stereotypical average American. Stop complaining and make work for a change!

    1. Re:Stop blaming the Russians by johanw · · Score: 2

      > to not accept that so many Americans willingly voted for the current president is hiding the head in the sand.

      I prefer to think that is was mostly a choice for the lesser evil.

    2. Re:Stop blaming the Russians by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Proud Trump voter here. Not the lesser of two evils. Grab em by the pussy 2020!!!

    3. Re:Stop blaming the Russians by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So proud you had to post as an AC.

  15. Patriotism is the last refuge by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... a group of hackers targeted computer infrastructure ...

    "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.", Samuel Johnson, 1775.

    While revenge and 'might is right' appeals to our underdog sensibilities, it must be remembered that the USA (and Russia) are the bullies on this planet; they do not have more rights because someone smacked them when they weren't looking. While we should all help to enforce the law, such self-righteous lone-wolf action results in the pizza-gate gunman. In this case, the crackers/hackers attacked the hardware directly. What happens when such vigilantes create a worm like StuxNet? Or worse, bio-hack a real virus and release it untested?

  16. Nice ASCII art by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I might take it to create a cool MOTD. Although, democrats will consider it a hate crime to have it pop-up when logging in.

    1. Re: Nice ASCII art by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Stfu you rightard snowflake.

      Keep blaming the democrats for your stupid mistakes.

  17. Re:Whiny democrats are the new McCarthyites by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Collusion with intent to aide a foreign government in election meddling is a fucking federal offense.

    trump republicans are the dumbest people in the world. I will enjoy watching the welfare collecting red state trailer trash drool and cry when trump is dressed in an orange jumpsuit and perp walked out of the white house.

  18. I blinked by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Does the US really have 67 states now?

  19. Why Announce Their Presence? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It sounds like they accomplished very little, other than some petty vandalism and flag-waving.

    If they actually wanted to do something, why not sit quietly, collecting data, until something actionable comes along? I bet there are enough plain text protocols that they could pick something up in a few months. Or occasionally man-in-the-middle traffic from a source they'd really like to see, and see how well people respond to crappy SSL violations? Or use it as a jumping off point to compromise more machines?

    They actually probably worsened things, since any U.S. intelligence gathering agency that was already on those systems, sitting quietly and observing, now has to contend with additional security due to them digitally chanting USA! USA! USA! and throwing bricks around.

  20. lol by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There is no proof of elections fraud from Russia
    False flag operation from CIA/NSA most likely.

    1. Re:lol by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Da, comrade! Smert Shpionam!

    2. Re:lol by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Typical response from someone with an IQ of 72.

  21. Dear TLAs and Trump by Snotnose · · Score: 1

    So, somebody broke the routers in 2 countries. We all know you know the holes used. We all know you aren't the only ones who know the holes used.

    Wouldn't it be nice if you could be pro-active for once and tell the router makers about all the holes you exploit?

    My bad. I understand your job is to fuck the other guy, even if the other guy can fuck us the same way.

    1. Re:Dear TLAs and Trump by slashdot_commentator · · Score: 3, Informative

      Wouldn't it be nice if you could be pro-active for once and tell the router makers about all the holes you exploit?

      Stupid, the router makers already know about the holes. They're just too languid in their response time to issue a patch. And even worse, admins and infrastructure managers are too slow to apply those patches and replace unpatchable (too old) machines.

      --
      There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
  22. ShanghaiBill, what you said seems reasonable. by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 2

    ShanghaiBill, what you said seems reasonable to me. For example, I recently had a very helpful discussion with a Russian immigrant here in the U.S. about the main Russian culture. I've had many discussions with Iranian immigrants. So I think I may have some basic understanding of those cultures.

    I'm surprised that other responses to your comment were so negative and so hostile.

    Hostile people: Be leaders. Don't be destructive. Use logic, not anger.

    1. Re:ShanghaiBill, what you said seems reasonable. by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

      I'm surprised that other responses to your comment were so negative and so hostile.

      Two of the responses were hostile, and were most likely written by the same AC. I don't think his comments were directed at anything I said, but rather at me personally. I seem to have attracted my own private little AC troll who follows me from discussion to discussion to fling insults, like "Trump-supporting-Nazi" (I didn't vote for Trump) and "treasonous faggot" (I am heterosexual). I actually find the attention to be quite flattering.

    2. Re: ShanghaiBill, what you said seems reasonable. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      When you say âoeI move on to something that does workâoe, what does âoeworkâ mean?

    3. Re:ShanghaiBill, what you said seems reasonable. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's cute that you think there's only one person that finds you to be an annoying karma whore.

    4. Re: ShanghaiBill, what you said seems reasonable. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      unintelligible post full of illegible non-ascii characters. must be an apple fanboiiii.

    5. Re:ShanghaiBill, what you said seems reasonable. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Keep in mind that people who migrate to the West are hardly likely to be representative of their countries of origin.

      If you speak to British ex-pats about Brexit you'll find nigh on 100% of them are against it, but that sadly doesn't change the fact that 52% of the population at home were ignorant little Englanders who voted for it because they hate foreigners despite being unlikely to have never had a single meaningful conversation with one.

      Unfortunately ex-pats, including those who had fought in various wars in service of Britain were barred from voting in the referendum, so ignorance (fed by Russian funding through people like Arron Banks who is married to a known Russian spy) won out.

      The only way you can get a true picture of how the broader population feels is to visit rural backwaters, because as with Putin, Ahmadinejad when he was about, and Brexit, all these things get their voterbase from the low-density but large area and high population backwaters where education and understanding of the world is low. If the support exists there, it doesn't matter what a few liberals that migrate West think if the dumbfuck backwaters of Russia, Iran, or little England or wherever just don't understand the problems they're causing - America is little different, you call it the bible belt and unsurprisingly that's also where the bulk of support for most of Americans worst ideas comes from too.

      The financial crisis made liberals a minority again, because it made it harder for kids to leave backwater dumbfuckistan and get an education, and so we've seen a rise of ignorance again, though it will ultimately wane as Western economies are growing again now, and people are beginning to realise how awful voting for the ideas and people who exploit the terminally dumb in backwater areas is. Russia and Iran are edge cases because they're keeping those backwaters perpetually poor through corruption even when their broader economies are growing.

      But ultimately it's pretty clear that the general direction of the world is towards liberalism, that's why you can do things like have sex before marriage now in the West without getting flogged - the liberal ideology is inherently tied to higher levels of education and average wealth across a population, so we either get smarter and wealthier and become more liberal, or we get poorer and stupider and someone else takes the intellect and wealth that comes with it instead. This is precisely why Hitler could never have won the war - when you've killed, pushed away, or otherwise caused harm to all the smart people, you've got no one left to give enough of a shit to build something like the atom bomb for you too.

      So how do you deal with a country like Russia where they're intentionally retaining a poor base to prop up the dictatorship? Well, we still don't need to go to war - but we can feed their own game, there's a fine line between keeping them poor enough to support you, and make them poor enough to rebel, and that's the dangerous game Putin is playing. There's a reason he just asked to stop the arms race he started in 2008 post-Georgia invasion, because he knows he can't afford to win it - he started it and we can easily win it, so it would make sense to see it through.

      This is precisely why most warfare is sanctions based now, people naively believe they don't work, but they brought Iran to the table, ever tougher sanctions have now finally brought North Korea to the table, and even Putin is begging now even if he tries to mask it behind a sudden about turn - look at the Skripal poisoning case, they kicked, and bitched and screamed, and moaned and made up 29 different theories as to why it wasn't them and who it was instead, and people called their bluffing knowing they were lying and expelled their diplomats and increased sanctions anyway, and guess what? Suddenly the Russian embassy in London has decided it's "high time" we have constructive talks. Funny that, when you're on the losing side and all your misdirection hasn't worked, you finally want

  23. They lost.. by wolfheart111 · · Score: 1

    that card :|

    --
    [($)]
  24. Must have OCD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Did anybody else get bothered by the one semi-colon in the ASCII flag? Noticed it immediately.

    1. Re: Must have OCD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      False flag attack, obvs.

  25. Useful idiots by comodoro · · Score: 1

    This is what Lenin called "useful idiots". People who believe propaganda and do dirty work for its creators. Were it the other way round, it would be considered hostile and criminal attack. If people just realized that there is no substantial difference from what they are doing, there would be much less warfare (probably).

  26. Dishonest and dangerous hypocrisy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The only proof we have of government-sponsored large scale cyber terrorism is that of NSA and CIA on the rest of the world. If the U.S. government gives its citizens the go-ahead to freely attack the rest of the world without repercussions, it will only escalate.

    After all, why should the countries of the world tolerate when you attack them? Of course they have to respond.

  27. ASCII art by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Their image of the American flag was a black-and-white drawing done with ASCII art.

    What really troubles me about this is the choice of image format used to save the screenshot of the ASCII art. Why are people still using JPEG for non-photographic images in 2018?

    --
    #DeleteFacebook
    1. Re:ASCII art by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Same reason people are using GIF for photographic images and video in 2018...

    2. Re:ASCII art by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Answer: The person is a Microsoft Windows user therefore not technically unsophisticated nor knowledgeable.

    3. Re:ASCII art by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

      Don't get me started about the current abuse of animated GIFs. Sometimes I view a page where there's a 50MB animated GIF instead of a 2MB video. People are insane and those making those technical decisions should lose their job.

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    4. Re:ASCII art by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Was the image format more irritating than the 67 stars?

    5. Re:ASCII art by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Didn't notice the 67 stars but I find the semicolon in the sixth stripe very irritating.

    6. Re:ASCII art by Galaxyunlock · · Score: 1

      why so much comment on this slash compare to others.

      --
      @galaxyunlocks
  28. Re: Whiny democrats are the new McCarthyites by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yeah Hillary, these deplorables should have their right to vote removed. Then you and your soviet of billionaires could finally bring eternal peace and happiness!!!!!!

  29. Fuck off with this neocon BS on a tech site .. by najajomo · · Score: 1

    "We were tired of attacks from government-backed hackers on the United States and other countries," someone in control of an email address left in the note told Motherboard Saturday"

  30. Fat american basement dwelling children VS FSB by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    vegas odds please?

  31. Re:Whiny democrats are the new McCarthyites by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Troll!

    Wow! The near universal support here for the DNC is very impressive, just like in all those dystopian novels and movies! Pretty scary! You fuckers just might win in November! God! I hope not! To see us sink back into that would be most tragic!

  32. Is the hacker from the future? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    After reviewing the ASCII-in-a-jpeg, I have to ask:

    Can anyone list the 17 states that were added to the union?

  33. How'd they get Cisco routers? by sabbede · · Score: 1

    Considering all the controls and export bans, I'm a bit surprised. Especially with Iran. I didn't think they were allowed to buy such devices.

  34. Sounds like CIA to me... by PortHaven · · Score: 1

    Vigilante hackers (or nation-state in disguise, with famed reputation of being behind the vast majority of cyberhacks of nation-states.)