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Chinese Spies Reportedly Behind Massive Marriott Hack (cnet.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: A Chinese intelligence-gathering effort was behind the massive Marriott hotels data breach that exposed the personal information for up to 500 million people, the New York Times reported Tuesday. The hackers are believed to have been working for China's Ministry of State Security, the Times reported citing sources who had been briefed on the investigation's preliminary results. The revelation emerges as the U.S. Justice Department is preparing to announce new indictments against Chinese hackers working for the intelligence and military services, the Times reported.
The hotel chain revealed last month that it had discovered that hackers had compromised the guest reservation database of its Starwood division, whose brands include Sheraton, W Hotels, Westin, Le Meridien, Four Points by Sheraton, Aloft and St. Regis. Marriott said some of the stolen information also included payment card numbers and expiration dates. Private investigators involved in a probe into the breach had previously discovered hacking tools, techniques and procedures that were used in earlier cyberattacks that have been linked to Chinese hackers.
The hotel chain revealed last month that it had discovered that hackers had compromised the guest reservation database of its Starwood division, whose brands include Sheraton, W Hotels, Westin, Le Meridien, Four Points by Sheraton, Aloft and St. Regis. Marriott said some of the stolen information also included payment card numbers and expiration dates. Private investigators involved in a probe into the breach had previously discovered hacking tools, techniques and procedures that were used in earlier cyberattacks that have been linked to Chinese hackers.
I expect professional spies to _not_ get caught or detected when doing such things. Breaking in is something amateurs can do today, but doing it without leaving evidence is something else.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
>> Chinese hack the shit out of the US again
But how can we blame the Russians?
China, Russia, 9-11 oh my.
The CIA can fake the fingerprint origin of a hack to make it look like it came from a foreign agent hacker or country.
Naa, they ask some random orange used car salesmen personality who he wants to be blamed...
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
In the past it's been attributed to finding strings in the local language of the hackers. Strings in malware binaries, temporary files/directories used to exfiltrate data etc.
Hopefully it wasn't just an IP address.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I feel like a state actor such as China would have the resources to simply get someone hired into a position at Marriott who could have access to the data.
This is what happens when you adequately reward your developers. America needs to start paying people just as adequately to fight this.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I expect professional spies to _not_ get caught or detected when doing such things. Breaking in is something amateurs can do today, but doing it without leaving evidence is something else.
Thay R SecRet Agert James Wong 07 was da spy whor broke in. He say, "I got to braheak in to the Americanr hortel chairn."
He's known as Wrong Way Wong in the intelligence commurnity. He thought Mariott was same as Trump hortels.
Not only do Chinese make shit stuff, they have shit spies.
They view things on a slant. They're arguments are full of chinks. And their women are constantly caught sideways.
Remember the OPM hack from a few years ago? All that data on the names of people working for the US Government in the wind? Now, imagine if you could somehow collate that database with another one that contains the travel records of around half a billion people. Unless working under cover they're going to have loyalty programs just like any other frequent traveller, and knowing even partial travel records of potential foreign agents could prove extremely useful if you were, say, trying to confirm which of all those people on OPM's books were just the routine military/contractor chaff vs. the wheat of the real operators and where they've been.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
If you cannot safeguard customersâ(TM) data, it should be a jailable offense to take, gather, request, or accept, or store customersâ(TM)s data. Itâ(TM)s become abundantly clear that NO ONE can safeguard customer data, therefore it should be regarded as contraband for all businesses. Any business that wants, for example, to issue loyalty cards, should only be allowed to do so provided there is NO connection with the individual with the account. Account username policy would be âoeyour account login is your loyalty card number; safeguard this, because we have no way to restore if you lose it, because we are LEGALLY PROHIBITED from keeping any data on you. Period.â
If I started a company, this is how it would behave. Why, you ask, loyalty cards? Thatâ(TM)s not really quite what they would be, but theyâ(TM)d be analogous to them, but not connectable to any person.
So if you hacked somehow into my company database, you wouldn't know whose data you had.
Also, for every real account in the database, thered be about a thousand fakes. Good luck figuring out anything useful from all the fake data. :-)
So... they leveraged an NSA hoarded hack right?
It is hard to sort out who in every case but in aggregate it's safe to say china, N. Korea, and Russia appear to abuse the internet. So affected countries should cut off all access from IPs in those countries on certain days of the week. Say Friday for Russia, thurdsay for china and wednesday for N. Korea. While some people in those countries will manage to use proxies to evade the block it's going to be a grand annoyance and reminder. It will tie bussiness productivity to state policies on both state sponsored hacking and winking acceptance of pirate hacking. If Aliexpress or Some Semiconductor company can't transact bussiness with a US or european market 1 day a week it's going to hurt.
And by one day a week it gives room to increase or decrease the weekly timeout.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Well, given the number of senior government officials who stay at Mariotts when traveling, it's clearly not at all important. Yes, the Chinese have the ability to use that information to time their maneuvers.
Yes but it's easy to leave Chinese or Russian (or the language of whatever country is on the current agenda) text in a binary, but a serious actor would strip executables of that kind of debugging info or language, and whenever possible, remove the binaries from the system afterwards.
Ok, and now tell us what's so important about past booking information in a damn hotel, and why China would want to get it, and of course, what _ACTUAL EVIDENCE_ there is. Because right now it's just more of the usual from the American propaganda outlets: whimsical accusations, with nothing to back them up.
USA (and affiliate) spies must have already had the same information. In a way the Chinese (or whoever really was behind the hack) just equalized the situation.
Likely neither gathered it in a fully legal way (it's not exclusively USA laws that apply worldwide).
If you want to make a powerful argument that the USA shouldn't be running the internet, then you do this kind of stunt.
That forces apple apps to understand when a site does not support utf8, to then not use it. --->> (TM)
How can hackers not be omnipotent? They are hacking! And they have hacks!
All products produced in China now get 100% tariffs and arrest Chinese nationals suspected of spying and hacking. Remove most favored nation status and tell the Chinese government war will be declared.
it's the CIA
Maybe these were the same Chinese spies that planted the chips in Super Micro servers. Who would doubt a reputable source like Bloomberg?
It does seem like the Boogey Man from China has been inflated over the last two years. What could be causing that?
No, they left a file with Winnie The Pooh jokes. Foreign servers are the only place they can do that without facing the consequences.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Nice shilling. Worst case? I want to time the attack when senior government leaders are away from their offices and staffs, particularly if I have already infiltrated the communications infreastructure and plan to shut it down. Bureaucrats are notoriously unwilling to take the initiative, so if I can predict when the senior leaders are mostly gone, I'm golden.
More likely, it's to do the same thing, but instead of invasion they're timing smaller actions. Yes, your puppeteers have been waging economic warfare against the west for the last 2 decades. The last 4 American presidents didn't do a damn thing about it, because they were beholden to the bankers, but this one isn't.
Why would you believe a government that scammed you a trillion dollars by falsifying claims of Iraq WMDs, that was shown to spying on China, their own "friends", and you, and that hijacked a hostage for negotiation just last week?
Not to mention finding which ones might be engaging in hotel-based extramarital activities that make them ripe for blackmail.
Well, let us all know when it happens, and don't forget the pictures of the China men who done it. Right now, you've got your head in the clouds and you're seeing yellow men everywhere you look.
They can ALREADY CONFIRM it from those security clearance records they stole along with over 25 million personnel records (latest actual number as released from the gov't) and the fingerprint records: those having security clearances --- especially upper-level type clearances --- but no security clearance file at the OPM obviously received theirs with another agency (as in CIA, NSA, DIA, etc.).
Camping under a bridge has its perks. Today is/was cleanup day in Everett WA! https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
But I was told Russia is the source of all evil. Why not Russia?
What does Marriott have that a government would want to steal? They're a hotel chain, not a defence contractor or research company.