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US Military Publicly Dumps Russian Government Malware Online (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: This week, U.S. Cyber Command (CYBERCOM), a part of the military tasked with hacking and cybersecurity focused missions, started publicly releasing unclassified samples of adversaries' malware it has discovered. CYBERCOM says the move is to improve information sharing among the cybersecurity community, but in some ways it could be seen as a signal to those who hack U.S. systems: we may release your tools to the wider world. On Friday, CYBERCOM uploaded multiple files to VirusTotal, a Google-owned search engine and repository for malware. Once uploaded, VirusTotal users can download the malware, see which anti-virus or cybersecurity products likely detect it, and see links to other pieces of malicious code.
One of the two samples CYBERCOM distributed on Friday is marked as coming from APT28, a Russian government-linked hacking group, by several different cybersecurity firms, according to VirusTotal. Those include Kaspersky Lab, Symantec, and Crowdstrike, among others. APT28 is also known as Sofacy and Fancy Bear. The malware itself does not appear to still be active.
One of the two samples CYBERCOM distributed on Friday is marked as coming from APT28, a Russian government-linked hacking group, by several different cybersecurity firms, according to VirusTotal. Those include Kaspersky Lab, Symantec, and Crowdstrike, among others. APT28 is also known as Sofacy and Fancy Bear. The malware itself does not appear to still be active.
And here it is. The excuse.
So we constantly heard about how if Russia is doing mean things on the internet, then where is the proof? Why don't they show us?
Now they do, and it's "But America does it too!!!!!!!111111".
If you haven't been paying attention, America's intelligence agencies have been getting their dirty laundry publicly posted online for about a decade thanks to the combined efforts of Assange, Russia, and Snowden. I don't think "Imagine if Russia did it too" is really much of a threat, when, well, that's exactly what they've been doing to weaken the US political for the last 10 years so that idiots like you can deflect from the growing problem of malicious online actions by Russia.
Well done you fucking useful idiot for doing Putin's job for him. The US is both responding in kind here to Russian aggression AND proving their case, this is a good thing because we can now see it's not just made up speculation for the sake of getting more funding or some other conspiracy theory, though I'm sure the hardcore Putinistas will still claim it as such.