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FBI Seizes Control of Russian Botnet (thedailybeast.com)
The Daily Beast reports that the FBI has seized control of a key server in the Kremlin's global botnet of 500,000 hacked routers. "The move positions the bureau to build a comprehensive list of victims of the attack, and short-circuits Moscow's ability to reinfect its targets," writes Kevin Poulsen. From the report: The FBI counter-operation goes after "VPN Filter," a piece of sophisticated malware linked to the same Russian hacking group, known as Fancy Bear, that breached the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign during the 2016 election. On Wednesday security researchers at Cisco and Symantec separately provided new details on the malware, which has turned up in 54 countries including the United States.
VPN Filter uses known vulnerabilities to infect home office routers made by Linksys, MikroTik, NETGEAR, and TP-Link. Once in place, the malware reports back to a command-and-control infrastructure that can install purpose-built plug-ins, according to the researchers. One plug-in lets the hackers eavesdrop on the victim's Internet traffic to steal website credentials; another targets a protocol used in industrial control networks, such as those in the electric grid. A third lets the attacker cripple any or all of the infected devices at will.
VPN Filter uses known vulnerabilities to infect home office routers made by Linksys, MikroTik, NETGEAR, and TP-Link. Once in place, the malware reports back to a command-and-control infrastructure that can install purpose-built plug-ins, according to the researchers. One plug-in lets the hackers eavesdrop on the victim's Internet traffic to steal website credentials; another targets a protocol used in industrial control networks, such as those in the electric grid. A third lets the attacker cripple any or all of the infected devices at will.
He'll shut this FBI operation down immediately. Putin is not going to be happy and the last thing Trump wants is an upset boss.
I think Fancy Bear comes in through the data pipes, so you'll need a firewall to stop them. Which I think means you have to get firewire first? I've been thinking about having the IT out to install it, I already have a propane tank so it shouldn't cost too much? I shut my computer off at night but I know that a really good hacker could just turn it back on and get in.
Give a boy a gun and you arm him for a day. Teach him how to make a gun, and the whole metaphor breaks down.
Captain Ahab was so utterly consumed by hate that he was ready to lose everything, his ship, his crew, his own life, just as long as he killed Moby-Dick.
Similarly, conservatives are so completely and utterly infused and consumed by their hatred of liberals that they are ready to sacrifice everything, their country, their family, the future of their planet and their children, for every opportunity to piss-off and otherwise hurt that damn liberal white whale.
The claim (by Donald Trump and others) is that Hillary Clinton approved a deal giving a Russian company named "Rosatom" 20 percent of our uranium.
But that's not true. The Clinton State Department had no power to veto or approve the Rosatom transaction, AKA "Uranium One". It could do neither. Here’s how it does work.
Uranium One is the name of a South Africa-based mining company.
Back in 2007 it merged with "Urasia Energy" based in Canada. And in 2010 the mining arm of the Russian nuclear agency Rosatom, bought controlling interest in the company. Among other places, that mining company had operations in Wyoming that amounted to what the Nuclear Regulatory Commissions or the NRC said was at the time was about 20% uranium production capacity in the U.S.
By law, when a foreign company wants to buy ANYTHING with potential national security implications, an interagency committee of the federal government must approve it. The committee was given a broad mandate under President Reagan to advise the president on foreign investment transactions.
That committee is called CFIUS (Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States). It includes nine department heads. The Secretary of the Treasury is the chair person. The rest are the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, Commerce, Defense, State and Energy, plus the Office of U.S. Trade Representative, and the Office of Science and Technology Policy. That’s CFIUS. The nine department heads all approved the sale of Uranium One.
It was unanimous - not a Hillary Clinton approval.
Also, the State Department wasn't even represented by Hillary Clinton at CIFUS. The Assistant Secretary of State, Jose Fernando, represented the State Department on CFIUS, not Hillary Clinton. And Jose Fernando stated that Clinton never intervened.
Further, neither Secretary Clinton nor the committee as a whole could stop any deal of this kind, even if they wanted to.
The committee members evaluate the sale of anything potentially related to national security.
By law, if just one member objects, the president and only the president can veto such a transaction. No committee member of the nine objected.
The whole "Uranium One" accusation is predicated on the charge that "Secretary Clinton approved the sale". She did not, and more to the point, she couldn't because the as Secretary of State, she didn't have the power to do that.
This whole "Clinton gave away our uranium" thing is just plain bullshit.
Go ahead, think whatever you like. Don't take my word for it. These are the facts and you can verify all of them by spending a minute or two on Google.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
> The DNC did not at any time turn over the affected servers to the FBI or anyone else, as one might expect for such a serious crime as was alleged.
The DNC coordinated with the FBI and federal intelligence agencies and provided everything they requested, including copies of DNC servers," Watson said. She added that the copy contains the same information as the physical server.
So it is technically correct the DNC didn't turn over the physical hardware, but they provided a image of everything on the servers. "Everything Requested."
For a tech forum, you'd expect people here to not repeat obvious bullshit political points like "The DNC didn't hand a server over to the FBI" given:
1. Real tech people know that the FBI wouldn't need the original server, they could easily work from a ghosted image, or might even be able to do what they need to do with supervised access.
2. Real tech people know that plopping a critical server out of commission and handing it over to a third party where it would become unreachable and unusable would kill the entity relying upon it.
But no, this bullshit that the DNC did something wrong by not closing itself down the moment it discovered it got hacked and making it impossible to continue to operate by doing something completely unnecessary for the FBI somehow keeps being repeated here over and over again.
And you wonder why the left and centrists and, well, pretty much who isn't an eye-swivling Trumpist, is pretty much convinced that Russia's IRA has a fair number of its trolls posting to Slashdot.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.