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Cyber Firms Warn on Suspected Russian Plan To Attack Ukraine (reuters.com)
Jim Finkle, reporting for Reuters: Cisco Systems on Wednesday warned that hackers have infected at least 500,000 routers and storage devices in dozens of countries with highly sophisticated malicious software, possibly in preparation for another massive cyber attack on Ukraine. Cisco's Talos cyber intelligence unit said it has high confidence that the Russian government is behind the campaign, dubbed VPNFilter, because the hacking software shares code with malware used in previous cyber attacks that the U.S. government has attributed to Moscow. Cisco said the malware could be used for espionage, to interfere with internet communications or launch destructive attacks on Ukraine, which has previously blamed Russia for massive hacks that took out parts of its energy grid and shuttered factories. Head of Ukraine's cyber police said on Wednesday that the agency is aware of new large malware campaign, and that it is working to protect Ukraine against possible new cyber threat.
Ya think?
Actually, name one country that they aren't attacking.
So just how much damage was done in those "massive" previous attacks, and how long did it take to restore the power grid and factories? Was it worse than squirrels or a hurricane?
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
At what point can we just sever as much internet traffic out of Russia to the world? I know I'm massively oversimplifying that effort, but should there not be some sort of 'death penalty' against countries engaging in cyber warfare? China and some other smaller nations would likely keep connections which would make it hard to filter between Russian and Chinese communications, but any directly from Russia could be subject to either massive slowdown or complete blocking.
Cyber warfare seems to be becoming the new way to tax governments aside from climate change.
If Russia is trying to convince Ukraine to ally with Russia instead of the European Union, they are going about it in exactly the wrong way.
While Cisco and others are warning the sky is about to fall, I didn't see in the article as to which vendor the routers / storage devices belong to.
Nor any mention of how said malware got there in the first place.
Cisco ? Juniper ? What ?
Don't tell me the digital world is about to end, then leave off the details. :|
He'd give you the shirt of his back.
In English, the translation is "Department of cyber police." Serhiy Demedyuk is its head.
In the USA, Douglas Maughan is Director, National Cyber Security Division of the Office of Cyber Security & Communications. Try saying that fast five times.
How massive? So just how much damage is done when you're lying on the ground and someone kicks you in the face? How long did it take to recover from that? Was it worse than the other one kicking your crotch?
If not, let's imply that it's ok to be kicked in the crotch.
I see you aren't well versed in the topic of cyber security.
In a field full of abstractions, routing, rerouting, and what not, it isn't very easy to have conclusive proof of anything. All you really have is "this matches the fingerprint of what we have seen before from this group" and "the motivations exist for this group to be the main potential actor".
But keep requiring an impossible burden of proof if it helps sow doubt, Ivan.
The concern is that there are lots of political reasons to lie, and absent hard evidence, they can turn "uses off-the-shelf-malware and a tor exit node" into "high confidence." Basically, if we can't see the evidence ourselves, we should give an assessment from anybody with major government contracts zero confidence until we see direct evidence.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
See also the full Cisco Talos post, New VPNFilter malware targets at least 500K networking devices worldwide, which has all of the technical details, including all indicators of compromise (IOCs).
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
I haven't seen any evidence that they are attacking San Marino.
According to the article, Ukraine claimed the campaign was in preparation for an attack on Ukraine, not any security firm. Bit strange that the summary claims otherwise
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