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Today, 9 November 2017, WikiLeaks publishes the source code and development logs to Hive, a major component of the CIA infrastructure to control its malware.
Hive solves a critical problem for the malware operators at the CIA. Even the most sophisticated malware implant on a target computer is useless if there is no way for it to communicate with its operators in a secure manner that does not draw attention. Using Hive even if an implant is discovered on a target computer, attributing it to the CIA is difficult by just looking at the communication of the malware with other servers on the internet. Hive provides a covert communications platform for a whole range of CIA malware to send exfiltrated information to CIA servers and to receive new instructions from operators at the CIA.
Hive can serve multiple operations using multiple implants on target computers. Each operation anonymously registers at least one cover domain (e.g. "perfectly-boring-looking-domain.com") for its own use. The server running the domain website is rented from commercial hosting providers as a VPS (virtual private server) and its software is customized according to CIA specifications. These servers are the public-facing side of the CIA back-end infrastructure and act as a relay for HTTP(S) traffic over a VPN connection to a "hidden" CIA server called 'Blot'.
The code shows how the CIA could impersonate Kaspersky Lab:
According to WikiLeaks, CIA used these fake certificates to impersonate existing entities including Kaspersky Lab. "The three examples included in the source code build a fake certificate for the anti-virus company Kaspersky Laboratory, Moscow pretending to be signed by Thawte Premium Server CA, Cape Town. In this way, if the target organization looks at the network traffic coming out of its network, it is likely to misattribute the CIA exfiltration of data to uninvolved entities whose identities have been impersonated," noted WikiLeaks.
Also at The Register (follow-up).
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday November 14 2017, @07:39PM (17 children)
Oh it most certainly is relevant. Looking scary is what is irrelevant. I get that you and the other people having cows lately are scared. It's a perfectly reasonable response. Letting your emotions control your mind though, that is the exact opposite of the meaning of the word "rational".
And the only two things your grandfather would have objected to would be the color (which is easily remedied) and the fact that a .223 round performs somewhat poorly for deer hunting. Everything else about the rifle is objectively better suited to hunting than the rifle he carried as a young man.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 14 2017, @07:56PM (6 children)
Does black hide residue better? I have heard of the rare pink AR-15, but that's it. Black, black, black...
I'd expect the norm to be camo, both regular and deer-hunter-orange.
I'd expect a wide variety of polished metals to be popular: chrome, titanium, silver...
Some bastard needs to make one mostly out of bright translucent plastic, with a white barrel showing through, and an orange tip. :-)
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Grishnakh on Tuesday November 14 2017, @08:17PM (5 children)
For military use, polished metals are out because they're too visible from a distance and can give your position away to the enemy. Matte black eliminates that problem. You could do camo, but that probably costs more, it probably wasn't available back when the M-16 was new (I see it now on hunter's guns, but I've only been seeing it in the last decade or so, probably because of improved paint technology--gun barrels get really hot), and the military probably doesn't want to mess with it because black is simple and works well.
For civilian use, they probably don't use polished metals on military-style rifles because then they wouldn't be military-style any more. Civilians buying military-style guns want everything to look "tactical", because they seem to think they're one day going to need to use those guns to shoot at alien invaders or zombies or something. Civilians who are into fancy guns get ones that aren't military-style (i.e. AR-15 derivative), and those frequently do have polished metals in places. There's a bunch of ultra-fancy (and expensive) shotguns with chrome or nickel plated barrels and hardware, dark walnut woodwork, etc. There's also nickel-plated handguns that'll blind you from the glare. I guess it just depends on what you're into: if you think you're going to have to fight off zombie hordes in 5 years, then a black AR-15 is going to be your gun of choice. If you're trying to impress people at the country club, then nickel-and-walnut is going to be your style.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 14 2017, @09:24PM
Well here is one that is not going to survive the zombie apocalypse! Matte black so as not to give your location away to zombies? The ones with rotten or missing eyeballs? Actually, the reflected glare is actually quite effective at repelling zombies. Thus the nickel-plate for the Country Club. I
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 14 2017, @09:43PM
A matter of taste, I know, but I do prefer AK series.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday November 14 2017, @09:57PM (2 children)
I'll let you in on a secret. Civilians who've always been civilians buy military-looking weapons almost exclusively because they look cool. Veterans, when they buy the civilian model of their service weapon, do so because they know the thing like the back of their hand.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday November 14 2017, @10:10PM (1 child)
> Veterans, when they buy the civilian model of their service weapon, do so because they know the thing like the back of their hand.
And/or they buy it because of the memories of who they were and what they did, when wielding that weapon was their identity.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday November 14 2017, @10:51PM
Some nostalgia there too, yeah.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday November 14 2017, @08:07PM (3 children)
> I get that you and the other people having cows lately are scared.
I was just drawing a parallel between two set of weapons designed for war, ending up in untrusted hands.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday November 14 2017, @10:23PM (2 children)
Right but you seem to be under the misapprehension that guns "designed for war" are more deadly than "ordinary" guns. They're not. Truth of the matter is, a good hunting rifle is better suited to a round of "snipe the innocent bystander" than an AR-15 ever will be. Why? Because they're heavier. Less muzzle movement during recoil, so it's faster to re-aim. There is precisely one thing on an M-16 (excluding automatic fire) that makes it any more dangerous than any other rifle: the bayonet mount. And that's not been used in any mass killings that I've heard of.
Most of the differences that make something an assault rifle? They're there because of conditions unique to war and offer little to no benefit to a civilian; even a wackjob, murderous civilian. Mud, sand, dirt resistance. Daily use for extended periods of time. The need to fire all night long without giving the barrel a chance to cool down. Lighter thus easier to carry over endless miles. Things like that. The differences make for a better service weapon but they don't make it any more deadly.
High capacity magazines are another matter but they're by no means unique to military-styled weapons. You can get a thirty round magazine for an ordinary deer rifle. M-16s by contrast, use a twenty round magazine. The military figured out long ago that the longer springs in the thirty round M-16 magazines wore out too quickly to be useful to them.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday November 14 2017, @11:03PM (1 child)
You seem to imply that there is no reason whatsoever why civilians should have access to derivatives of military weapons, since there is no benefit outside of a formal war zone. (grin, as he says)
> a good hunting rifle is better suited to a round of "snipe the innocent bystander"
If you're going for one target.
But "spray the churchgoers with 450 bullets in a few minutes" is a game that is unquestionably better played with those weapons that have been optimized to optimize the lethality of each soldier on the battlefield, even without mods to avoid the hassle of semi-auto.
To get slightly back on topic, the CIA/NSA code leaks similarly make script kiddies (and pros, local or foreign) a whole lot more dangerous than they would be without the big-budget weaponized hacks, which they now get without even a pretense of "semi-auto" conversion.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday November 14 2017, @11:42PM
No, I would never imply something like that. That presupposes that civilians need permission to own weapons.
Exactly the opposite. If you're aiming and going after multiple targets, a heavier rifle will always get you a higher kill count.
You're thinking full-auto. You can't spray with any kind of semi-automatic; no matter how scary it looks. You aim, fire into a crowd so densely packed that you literally can't miss, or miss with any semi-automatic weapon.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Tuesday November 14 2017, @09:19PM (5 children)
George Nelson: "Cows! I hate cows worse than coppers!" Delmar O'Donnell: "Oh, George... not the livestock."
Anybody using their scaredy-cat looking wanna-be soldier gun on cattle deserves to be hung. Just saying. And, you are not being rational, Buzzie. I suspect it is the ammosexual in you.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday November 14 2017, @10:27PM (4 children)
When I was about six years old, I asked my dad when cow season was. He got a good laugh out of that.
Just an FYI though: I own one firearm and have yet to put a single round through it since I got it. I'm more of a liberty-sexual.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Gaaark on Wednesday November 15 2017, @01:20AM (3 children)
Is that like Freedom Fries?
;)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday November 15 2017, @03:16AM (2 children)
Nah, I have a thing for that New York chick with the torch.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Wednesday November 15 2017, @09:00AM (1 child)
She's a legal immigrant, yet they never let her get past Ellis Island.
Discrimination against the French, I guess.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Thursday November 16 2017, @04:51AM
Now that I have learned that not only is The Mighty Buzzard not really a Native American, but that also he only owns one gun, that he has never fired? Oh My Gawd! What kind of anarchist right libertarian can you be with a questionable racial purity, but more importantly a lack of actual ammosexual orgasmic activity, shared with lots of other men, um, in a totally firearms and not at all gay way? I am just asking. Are you not a total fraud, TMB? A complete "internet" libertarian, all talk, and no ammo. I should have known. TMB's attempt to censor me just expose the fact that he has never fired his weapon. If he had, he would understand what I am talking about, instead of being taken in by the purveyors of right-wing homosexual homo-phobic propaganda.