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from the malware-is-malware-no-matter-who-controls-it dept.
US officials: Kaspersky "Slingshot" report burned anti-terror operation
A malware campaign discovered by researchers for Kaspersky Lab this month was in fact a US military operation, according to a report by CyberScoop's Chris Bing and Patrick Howell O'Neill. Unnamed US intelligence officials told CyberScoop that Kaspersky's report had exposed a long-running Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) operation targeting the Islamic State and Al Qaeda.
The malware used in the campaign, according to the officials, was used to target computers in Internet cafés where it was believed individuals associated with the Islamic State and Al Qaeda would communicate with their organizations' leadership. Kaspersky's report showed Slingshot had targeted computers in countries where ISIS, Al Qaeda, and other radical Islamic terrorist groups have a presence or recruit: Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, Jordan, Turkey, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The publication of the report, the officials contended, likely caused JSOC to abandon the operation and may have put the lives of soldiers fighting ISIS and Al Qaeda in danger. One former intelligence official told CyberScoop that it was standard operating procedure "to kill it all with fire once you get caught... It happens sometimes and we're accustomed to dealing with it. But it still sucks. I can tell you this didn't help anyone."
This is good malware. You can't expose the good malware!
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(Score: 4, Interesting) by bob_super on Thursday March 22 2018, @07:21PM (3 children)
1) why do they admit that it was theirs, and describe the way they were using the virus?
2) was that program actually working? If you're gonna tell us, and tell the bad guys to be paranoid, should you be bragging that the thing was helping?
3) who's getting extradited for computer breaches inside a foreign sovereign state ?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by number11 on Thursday March 22 2018, @07:39PM
This. Normally, they would deny it, even if there is overwhelming evidence, or have no comment. They are admitting it for a reason. The story is not that they did it, of course they do stuff like that. The story is that they admit it.
Why? I don't know. To attack Kaspersky? To attacking security researchers in general, at least the ones that they don't control? To encourage the scum who want backdoors in everything? To draw attention away from something else? To obliquely brag that they'd gotten away with it for years? To get adversaries to shift to a different communication channel, which has already been compromised?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by zocalo on Thursday March 22 2018, @07:44PM
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 3, Informative) by RamiK on Thursday March 22 2018, @08:30PM
Well, according to the new judicial standard [theintercept.com], a measured response in this case would be bombing a small, American-owned, warehouse in the US.
compiling...