SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
On Friday, representatives of the notorious hacking entity known as Fancy Bear failed to appear in a federal court in Virginia to defend themselves against a civil lawsuit brought by Microsoft.
As the Daily Beast first reported on Friday, Microsoft has been waging a quiet battle in court against the threat group, which is believed to be affiliated with the GRU, Russia's foreign intelligence agency. For now, the company has managed to seize control of 70 domain names, but it's going after many more.
The idea of the lawsuit, which was filed in August 2016, is to use various federal laws—including the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), and American trademark law—as a way to seize command-and-control domain names used by the group, which goes by various monikers, including APT28 and Strontium. Many of the domain names used by Fancy Bear contain Microsoft trademarks, like microsoftinfo365.com and hundreds of others.
In June 2017, Microsoft asked the judge to issue a default judgement in its favor, since the individuals behind Fancy Bear have not made themselves known. According to the Daily Beast, Microsoft and its lawyers have made several attempts to serve the unknown "John Does" via e-mail. According to the Daily Beast, those e-mails have been opened dozens of times and were equipped with a tracking beacon. Microsoft's lawyers have also conveniently posted all the court documents on a public website, inviting the defendants to contact them via postal mail, e-mail, or even fax.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @11:14PM (5 children)
How do you enforce a court judgement if you don't even know who they are?
What does the court judgement even do?
>crowdstrike
Yeah, I'll take that with a megaton of salt.
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Wednesday July 26 2017, @11:28PM (3 children)
You get the domain registrar to hand over the domain name.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Wednesday July 26 2017, @11:37PM
Hello, Namecoin!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Thursday July 27 2017, @12:42AM
Why does this strike me as a trick you can use exactly ONE Time, before they start registering elsewhere?
And is turnabout fair play here?
When the Russian Government starts seizing Microsoft names, at least we will have confirmation of who Fancy Bear was.
But does that help anyone when some Magistrate in France decides they want to use the same tactic?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @12:50AM
So a game of whack-a-mole? I don't see why the supposed group can't just rename itself multiple times or even subcontract their work to obfuscate their trails through multiple fronts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @05:21AM
For a minute I was like "What the heck does MS have against fancy "beer"?"