Ultra secure cybersecurity company hacked

[AtW]

Arrest Put1ns money that he keeps in accounts of his multiple very well known frontmen - each hack to cost 2-3 bln dollars, until he runs out of money.

Pretty good start on deterring hostile activities, then it can be escalated if necessary.

[rogerfederer]

Looks as if this is finally hitting the news, although it is absent from the UK sections and focuses on the USA.

Thing is, UK public sector and private sector have SolarWinds used across a lot of important infrastructure, including in finance and in, what is deemed, 'critical infrastructure'.

The solarwinds website has been updated to remove boastful customer lists, but this is just a handful of customers:

SolarWinds Customers

Acxiom

Ameritrade

AT&T;

Bellsouth Telecommunications

Best Western Intl.

Blue Cross Blue Shield

Booz Allen Hamilton

Boston Consulting

Cable & Wireless

Cablecom Media AG

Cablevision

CBS

Charter Communications

Cisco

CitiFinancial

City of Nashville

City of Tampa

Clemson University

Comcast Cable

Credit Suisse

Dow Chemical

EMC Corporation

Ericsson

Ernst and Young

Faurecia

Federal Express

Federal Reserve Bank

Fibercloud

Fiserv

Ford Motor Company

Foundstone

Gartner

Gates Foundation


General Dynamics

Gillette Deutschland GmbH

GTE

H&R; Block

Harvard University

Hertz Corporation

ING Direct

IntelSat

J.D. Byrider

Johns Hopkins University

Kennedy Space Center

Kodak

Korea Telecom

Leggett and Platt

Level 3 Communications

Liz Claiborne

Lockheed Martin

Lucent

MasterCard

McDonald’s Restaurants

Microsoft

National Park Service

NCR

NEC

Nestle

New York Power Authority

New York Times

Nielsen Media Research

Nortel

Perot Systems Japan

Phillips Petroleum

Pricewaterhouse Coopers

Procter & Gamble


Sabre

Saks

San Francisco Intl. Airport

Siemens

Smart City Networks

Smith Barney

Smithsonian Institute

Sparkasse Hagen

Sprint

St. John’s University

Staples

Subaru

Supervalu

Swisscom AG

Symantec

Telecom Italia

Telenor

Texaco

The CDC

The Economist

Time Warner Cable

U.S. Air Force

University of Alaska

University of Kansas

University of Oklahoma

US Dept. Of Defense

US Postal Service

US Secret Service

Visa USA

Volvo

Williams Communications

Yahoo


....and that is less than a hundred of the 18,000 customers that were vulnerable.

[Hobosapien]

Looks as if this is finally hitting the news ...

Aye:

US cyber-attack: US energy department confirms it was hit by Sunburst hack

US nuke agency hacked by suspected Russian SolarWinds spies, Microsoft also installed backdoor

Maybe this is why Microsoft seem keen to get on the linux train (from linux layer in Windows to linux based servers in Azure, and that's just the publicly released stuff/news this year), better security by default.

Makes one wonder how deep that rabbit hole goes if the hackers have had months to do their thing before the sleeping giants discovered the intrusion.

Oh well, there should be plenty of contract work for those with the right skillset to help clean up the mess. For the rest of us, we can recommend they just rip out all the IT infrastructure and start again. Only way to be sure is to nuke it from orbit.

[Paddy]

In my own experience, most hacks are internal or done by disgruntled ex-staff

[quackhandle]

In my own experience, most hacks are internal or done by disgruntled ex-staff

Indeed, have none of them ever watched Mr Robot?

qh

[Old Greg]

Deter?

Perhaps the US could send some digestive biscuits to the Kremlin and ask nicely? Short of continued tangible threats and action I don't know what deterrence would work. The main issue now is that if the US intelligence agencies receive authorization to disable many Russian core infrastructure assets, then it seems they may be able to reciprocate. One thing Russia doesn't have is good infrastructure and a plan B or C. I feel sorry for the people living there, having visited myself. It's a tuliphole, even in Moscow, unless you are well connected and rich. I'm only glad that nowhere in developed countries do we see such misinformation and poverty as they see in Russia. The average age of male death says all we need to know.

Throughout the world at transit interconnects, within carrier networks, traffic is monitred by UK's GCHQ and the USA's NSA. When the Russian government state they aren't a part of a hack, well, that part is difficult to dispute. However it is absolutely possible to prove that the packets used to complete the hack came from Russia. Given that multiple VPNs and TOR will have been used, it is a more complex task to piece the information together - but piece the intelligence agencies will and it will be demonstrable that the Russian government was involved in this, if that is indeed the case.

China has a flourishing private sector and I do not believe they would wish to have tit-for-tat attacks, especially towards private sector businesses. What does Russia have? I can count the tech and products I've used from Russia on one hand. Well, on one finger actually.

It's about time that the west considers cutting off Russia from the internet once the evidence is in on this longer term hack that has ocurred. Given most fair countries own the transit points and interconnects it seems the only way to resolve Russia behaving rogue. They are a fossiel fuel powerhouse, but that is it. They don't have much to offer other countries, the food is extremely poor and the populace seem happy to accept it being this way. A few years hard labour on the Russian government seems fair enough.

Sanction Russia to stop them using Visa, MasterCard and other international payment systems.

[Hobosapien]

In my own experience, most hacks are internal or done by disgruntled ex-staff

Well, when the main password was (presumably they've now changed it) apparently "SolarWinds123" () they only have 2FA to overcome and an inside job (either corrupt, duressed, or disgrunted staffer) makes that simple.

I guess with clown world we're now into the realm of top Trump password complexity. Though 'covfefe' was a tad harder to break than 'MAGA2020'

[AtW]

Sanction Russia to stop them using Visa, MasterCard and other international payment systems.

Oil and gas embargo until NATO inspectors are allowed to inspect all Russian IT systems to be satisfied that not a trace of data was kept, plus guilty extradited for trials up to the top chain of command.

[Old Greg]

Oil and gas embargo until NATO inspectors are allowed to inspect all Russian IT systems to be satisfied that not a trace of data was kept, plus guilty extradited for trials up to the top chain of command.

Wong time of year for a gas embargo. Need to wait until March.

[AtW]

Wong time of year for a gas embargo. Need to wait until March.

No, it's great time - reserves are full and plenty of liquid gas are around the world, demand will fall in March - best part is that the way Russian gas production works is that if you stop it then you are fecked.

Gasprom is Put1ns personal money too.