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posted by chromas on Monday March 26 2018, @06:22AM   Printer-friendly
from the miner-outbreak-of-crypto-cents dept.

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow3941

A poisoned version of MediaGet, an all-in-one BitTorrent client developed in Russia, was used to offload malicious cryptocurrency miners. According to research from Microsoft, the application helped to kick off the Dofoil campaign that targeted hundreds of thousands of computers. Mediaget says that the issue has been fully resolved at their end.

Source: https://torrentfreak.com/microsoft-poisoned-torrent-client-triggered-coin-miner-outbreak-180315/

"Our continued investigation on the Dofoil outbreak revealed that the March 6 campaign was a carefully planned attack with initial groundwork dating back to mid-February," the Windows Defender team said today in a new report.

Microsoft alleges hackers broke into MediaGet's infrastructure, and sometimes between February 12 and 19, attackers managed to replace the official MediaGet installer with one that also included a backdoor.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 26 2018, @06:30AM (16 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 26 2018, @06:30AM (#658251)

    It's amazing to me that Google hasn't poured a few billion into make a Linux-based operating system that Just Works.

    Maybe it's too late.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Monday March 26 2018, @06:33AM (3 children)

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Monday March 26 2018, @06:33AM (#658253) Journal

    It's amazing to me that Google hasn't poured a few billion into make a Linux-based operating system that Just Works.

    They have. It's called Android.

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 26 2018, @06:45AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 26 2018, @06:45AM (#658256)

      Even if you neglect the binary blobs without which nothing runs, the AOSP is a total joke. The last I tried, not even the alarm clock app worked. And, that doesn't even begin to cover the quirks of various service providers, such as Google's own Project Fi.

      Indeed, even the alternative "ROMs" out there are riddled with hackish crap that approximate or illegally re-appropriate Google's proprietary, trashy "Play Services" in order to get running even a slightly useful system.

      Forget that. The underlying system is complete garbage in its design. It took the primitive nature of Unix permissions and then made it dumber. Imagine that!

      GODDAMNIT

      I'm so tired of you and your ilk pissing on my boots and telling me its raining. Android SUCKS. It's not even close to what the OP meant, and you know it.

      • (Score: 1) by anubi on Monday March 26 2018, @06:52AM

        by anubi (2828) on Monday March 26 2018, @06:52AM (#658261) Journal

        This is the kind of stuff when its developed with Capital in mind.

        What we need is a work of art, not a work conceived as a wishlist enforcement agent.

        --
        "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 26 2018, @12:50PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 26 2018, @12:50PM (#658397)

      He said "...that just works", not "that snitches on you and anything close to you"

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 26 2018, @06:50AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 26 2018, @06:50AM (#658259)

    No.. some other country will.

    Its gotta happen.... its like a steel plant whose steel can't be trusted. Sooner or later, other people will get fed up enough to set up their own steel plant and make their own steel, because ours has so many "backdoors", and cannot be trusted holding anything. Most of us are too ignorant to find and fix the leaks. Hell, most of us apparently don't even know how to use a screwdriver. But we know who's playing in tonight's game.

    This will have to be done by a nation of an educated populace, fed up with another nation using ignorance to enforce their wish-lists of debt/usury and artificial monopoly.

  • (Score: 1) by knarf on Monday March 26 2018, @06:54AM (1 child)

    by knarf (2042) on Monday March 26 2018, @06:54AM (#658263)

    There are plenty of Linux distributions which 'just work', at least as well as Windows, that is not the point. There is only one Windows while there are many Linux distributions, this is both a weakness - in that it gets harder to target 'Linux' given the slipperiness of the term - as well as a strength - from wristwatch to supercomputer, you'll find a suitable Linux distribution.

    • (Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 26 2018, @07:05AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 26 2018, @07:05AM (#658266)

      I use Linux, virtually exclusively, and I'll be the first to tell you that it's a total fucking mess.

      I'm telling you that as someone who has spent time deep in the source code, and who thought 20 years ago that it would end up blossoming into something great.

      There is no a suitable distribution for nothing. If Linux ever works on something, then it's because it's using binary blobs that will one day not be updated, and then you'll be stuck with some ancient junk, grinding and gnashing your teeth, and yelling at the clouds, wondering where your life went.

  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday March 26 2018, @06:55AM (7 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday March 26 2018, @06:55AM (#658264) Journal

    It's called ChromeOS [wikipedia.org].

    https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/12/15269470/idc-gartner-chromebooks-pc-market-growth [theverge.com]
    https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/27/as-chromebook-sales-soar-in-schools-apple-and-microsoft-fight-back/ [techcrunch.com]

    New Chromebooks support Android apps, and there could be more convergence between the two if Google continues to pursue Fuchsia [wikipedia.org].

    --
    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 26 2018, @07:12AM (5 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 26 2018, @07:12AM (#658268)

      Everything is done with the Chrome browser or extensions for it gotten through Google's own prison walled garden.

      X Windows has been replaced with some hand-craft thing. The only way to do anything useful with ChromeOS is to disable security features and enable the Developer Mode, just so you can SSH into a real machine to get work done. Or, you can experiment with some Linux distribution that will require a sketchy firmware patch and, as always, have some horribly broken support in the long run.

      We need open hardware.

      We need systems that can be programmed in confidence from the ground up, without having to beg and plead our overlords for "support".

      • (Score: 1, Offtopic) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday March 26 2018, @08:10AM (3 children)

        by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Monday March 26 2018, @08:10AM (#658288) Homepage Journal

        And she uses her Android phone for audiobooks.

        --
        Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
        • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 26 2018, @08:41AM (2 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 26 2018, @08:41AM (#658296)

          Nothing more.

          • (Score: 1, Offtopic) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday March 26 2018, @10:24AM (1 child)

            by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Monday March 26 2018, @10:24AM (#658336) Homepage Journal

            Would you use a butter knife to cut down a tree?

            What's your take on using a chainsaw to spread Jam on your toast

            --
            Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
            • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 26 2018, @01:43PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 26 2018, @01:43PM (#658414)

              Would you use a butter knife to cut down a tree?

              That depends on how high I was.

              What's your take on using a chainsaw to spread Jam on your toast

              That depends on how bad my munchies are.

              Do you have any non-drug related questions?

      • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Tuesday March 27 2018, @04:57AM

        by darkfeline (1030) on Tuesday March 27 2018, @04:57AM (#658842) Homepage

        Everything is done with the Chrome browser or extensions for it gotten through Google's own prison walled garden.

        Chromium OS and Chromium are both open source. Google goes through great lengths to develop the open source versions. You can build Chromium OS and install it on any reasonably common and reasonably modern computer. Chromium OS is basically Gentoo with a heavily customized set of packages. A handful of key Chrome OS developers are/were Gentoo developers.

        Basically, you're spouting shit.

        X Windows has been replaced with some hand-craft thing.

        I believe that was done for speed. A Chromebook boots to the graphical login screen in less than a second; you can't do that with a traditional Linux/X stack.

        The only way to do anything useful with ChromeOS is to disable security features and enable the Developer Mode, just so you can SSH into a real machine to get work done. Or, you can experiment with some Linux distribution that will require a sketchy firmware patch and, as always, have some horribly broken support in the long run.

        That's only for developers, who represent an insignificant percent of the population who need a "computer". Most people need an office suite (Google Docs, etc.), email, and web browsing for 90% of their needs, and some standalone apps for the remaining 10% (the 90-10 rule). Also, Chromium OS is getting surprisingly good Linux VM integration in the future, allowing you to run Linux X applications transparently in a sandboxed VM while still keeping the host OS secure, no developer mode needed.

        We need open hardware.

        How is this related to this topic? Shipping an OS is completely unrelated to shipping hardware.

        --
        Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 26 2018, @07:39AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 26 2018, @07:39AM (#658277)

      You Sherley mean if Google pursue fucks-ya. Which it will, rest assured.

  • (Score: 3, Funny) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday March 26 2018, @08:01AM

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Monday March 26 2018, @08:01AM (#658285) Homepage Journal

    .. then blackhole that malware server's domain with their hosts file.

    Some guy on the green site mentioned it. He said their discussions were just like recommending what salve to apply when you're on fire.

    --
    Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]