from the it's-only-going-to-get-worse dept.
New cyberattacks targeting U.S. elections
In recent weeks, Microsoft has detected cyberattacks targeting people and organizations involved in the upcoming presidential election, including unsuccessful attacks on people associated with both the Trump and Biden campaigns, as detailed below. We have and will continue to defend our democracy against these attacks through notifications of such activity to impacted customers, security features in our products and services, and legal and technical disruptions. The activity we are announcing today makes clear that foreign activity groups have stepped up their efforts targeting the 2020 election as had been anticipated, and is consistent with what the U.S. government and others have reported. We also report here on attacks against other institutions and enterprises worldwide that reflect similar adversary activity.
We have observed that:
Strontium, operating from Russia, has attacked more than 200 organizations including political campaigns, advocacy groups, parties and political consultants
Zirconium, operating from China, has attacked high-profile individuals associated with the election, including people associated with the Joe Biden for President campaign and prominent leaders in the international affairs community
Phosphorus, operating from Iran, has continued to attack the personal accounts of people associated with the Donald J. Trump for President campaign
People here may view Microsoft's claims of stopping all these cyber-attacks with derision. Although, this is a Microsoft Memo, many other media outlets have have gone ahead with the story. I expect that all countries that are capable of such cyber-attacks shall make attempts. They have nothing much to lose and no incentive to stop trying!
Other coverage: Russian Intelligence Hackers Are Back, Microsoft Warns, Aiming at Officials of Both Parties and China, Russia and Iran all attacking US elections and using some nasty new tactics, says Microsoft.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday September 12 2020, @05:01AM (15 children)
There's an oxymoron hidden in there . . .
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 12 2020, @05:28AM (11 children)
Back in the days, AT&T was THE monopoly villain, IBM was the computing villain.
Now it's Google (of "don't be evil"), Fuckbook (of ... fuckerberg), Amazon, and Apple. I despise Apple's proprietary ways, but they seem the least evil (though most asinine in the same way millenials are).
And AT&T has reconstituted itself like a resurrected borg, colluding with other telcos and cable companies for regional fiefdoms like in the medieval days.
The notion of democracy is absent and irrelevant through all these episodes.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 12 2020, @09:04AM (10 children)
You missed Oracle, probably the most evil company the tech industry has ever known (probably one of the most evil companies ofaany kind in the past couple of hundred years).
Apple might seem a little less evil because they take a stand on privacy, but they only do that because government control of users interferes with their control of users. They're rotten to the "core."
Google seems more evil than they really are because they are compared to the old Google that actually wasn't evil. They're really second rate evil, not even as bad as 90s era Microsoft.
Amazon is a 21st century tech company that happens to also be a 19th century style industrial company. They're cruel, not evil.
Microsoft is like the career criminal that finds religion in prison. If they're ever relevant again we'll see what happens.
Facebook is a basically ordinary company that happens to have an evil business model. Still evil, but of a different type.
AT&T was a monopoly 40+ years ago, but not any more. Cable companies now are what AT&T was then, except they aren't "monopolies" because there are different monopoly companies on the other side of some arbitrary boundary. AT&T must not have been a monopoly either because there was a different phone company in Mexico.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Farkus888 on Saturday September 12 2020, @11:04AM (9 children)
What exactly do you think Oracle did? IBM profited by helping the Nazis track the various groups that they sent to death camps. If there is something I don't know I want to, but I suspect you took the bad things Oracle did personally and don't know others history. Nothing against your character AC, just a thing I see a lot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 12 2020, @01:12PM (6 children)
Not sure whether to indulge you or just declare victory by Godwin.
I'll split the difference : No tech companies helped the Nazis because the industry hadn't been invented yet.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Saturday September 12 2020, @01:50PM (5 children)
Sorry, but you err. International Business Machine, or IBM, was the pinnacle of technology, pre world war 2. Just because technology has reached undreamed of heights since then, doesn't mean that IBM wasn't high tech at the time. The tools and services provided by IBM were essential to the successes that the Nazis achieved before and during WW2.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 12 2020, @02:48PM (4 children)
It's understood that "tech" means things that happened after approximately 1995. People do not say "tech" to mean bicycles or crossbows or stirrups or cuneiform tablets, even though all of them were advanced technology at some point.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday September 12 2020, @03:00PM (3 children)
Your understanding is simply broken. Technology has an unbroken, traceable lineage all the way back to the first person to pick up a rock to throw at prey. Bows and arrows were a technological breakthrough, and some arbitrarily assigned date in history won't change that fact.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 12 2020, @08:51PM (2 children)
Your grasp of English is shitty, but no one is surprised. Tech == computers in today's common vernacular, technology == what you're trying to talk about. You're not technically wrong, just an idiot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 12 2020, @09:11PM (1 child)
You're not wrong either. You're just a goober smoocher. Please wipe your chin.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 13 2020, @04:41AM
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Goober [urbandictionary.com]
If you wanted a kiss you coulda just asked, though sounds like you slobber a bit much.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday September 12 2020, @05:41PM
And gun manufacturers profiteered from the sale of guns to mass shooters in America.
Your point is...?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday September 12 2020, @05:48PM
Ok, I dare you: go here [oracle.com] and read the documentation. Mind you, those are ony the docos for their databases.
if you are alive after the feat, you will have experienced their evilness and stopped asking silly question.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday September 12 2020, @06:11AM (2 children)
This has actually happened, in supposedly advanced and civilised Europe, in the last hundred years, no less. Alas, it wasn't perfection, despite having all of the other above properties.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 12 2020, @08:54PM (1 child)
Could you go back to frequenting other sites? Or just post as AC so we don't have to see any continuity behind your stupidity? Lose some weight, your brain is being replaced by white matter.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday September 12 2020, @10:12PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 12 2020, @05:13AM (3 children)
Just the other post says the US is the number one cyber power.
Maybe Harvard Kennedy School's super hard-working super-brilliant team should take charge of the election.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Saturday September 12 2020, @09:37AM (1 child)
Someone want to tell Iran that they're going after the wrong target? If you want to get ahead, help the patsy get re-elected and pretend to suck up to him like other totalitarian states have done, then you'll get everything you want. He'll even defend you against his own government advisors.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday September 12 2020, @05:50PM
TMB, they are after you. A bit more and they'll detect S/N servers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Saturday September 12 2020, @05:52PM
That's wool over the eyes to avoid the panic.
Or just postpone it a bit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Troll) by fakefuck39 on Saturday September 12 2020, @05:23AM (8 children)
We keep hearing "cyber war" and "attack" and all this bullshit. It's a bunch of people hacking a computer. None of this shit is meddling with the election unless they're hacking election computers. So they hack into someone's laptop and do what exactly? How is this an "attack?" How does this change the vote of someone at the polls? Now social media - yes. There is a large number of retards that form their opinion on obvious (not to them) misinformation, don't check facts, and go with groupthink. If you flood reddit with an opinion and make it look like the cool new thing, you get a bunch of dem voters. you post shit against that and make fun of it, you get a bunch of redneck voters. you make the comments more and more violent, you get the dems burning down people's cars, and people shooting them in the face.
but this bs is not an "attack" - it's hacking someone's laptop. it's what a teen does in between watching porn. it does nothing.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by sjames on Saturday September 12 2020, @12:15PM (7 children)
There are other ways to interfere with an election. For example, planting incriminating evidence on the candidate you don't like, deleting incriminating evidence on the candidate you want, Altering poll results to lead undecided voters to believe your preferred candidate enjoys greater popularity than the real results suggest (the phrase "jump on the bandwagon" comes from political campaigning). Killing news stories that are adverse to your choice or positive about his opponant, etc, etc.
Unlike actually hacking election systems, even if your efforts are detected, there's a chance everyone will just shrug and say "So they hack into someone's laptop and do what exactly? How is this an "attack?" How does this change the vote of someone at the polls? ".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 12 2020, @05:19PM (1 child)
What about releasing hacked information, harmful to a candidate, that happens to be true?
I think they would have performed a public service.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 12 2020, @06:38PM
...and not releasing the similar information they have on the candidate's main opponent.
If you lack conscience, it's not exactly hard to look like a saint while filing timesheets with the devil.
(Score: 2) by Username on Saturday September 12 2020, @07:44PM (1 child)
I can see how this may influence an election, but not interfere or attack an election. Nothing you've said prevents or hinders me from voting. Nothing you've said is out of bounds for internal interference, like Comey or the US media. In fact, it's probably more trustworthy than anything on CNN.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday September 13 2020, @06:27AM
At least some of what I mentioned would be felonies.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Sunday September 13 2020, @12:54AM (2 children)
planted incriminating evidence on someone's laptop so they can go delete it? if there's an investigation, it would be easy to tell it's planted. Deleting evidence? Like, let's hack the guys laptop and make sure it's got nothing bad on it? Newsflash, if there is incriminating evidence someone has on someone, it's not stored in that one place.
Altering poll results? Poll results are bullshit anywise - anyone who wants to fakes poll results right now and puts them on tv. You don't need a hacker to enable that. Killing news stories by hacking someone's laptop? What, like deleting the news story the journalist doesn't have a backup for - that's supposed to make him not be able to write it again?
My point was, this is not an attack. People keep using this term for someone running a port scanner. It's not. An a cyber attack is someone hacking into a nuclear reactor and causing a meltdown. Someone hacking into air traffic control and making planes collide. This ain't it.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday September 13 2020, @06:33AM (1 child)
Are you being deliberately obtuse here or just so resistant to any counterpoint that you feel obligated to imagine it in the least sophisticated form in order to reject it?
Hint, if you plant evidence to frame someone, you don't tell THEM it's there so they can delete it, you tell someone else so they can find it. And you definitely don't confine yourself to just their laptop.
This is not port scanning.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Sunday September 13 2020, @07:50AM
actually, the deliberately obtuse person is you. the reason for me stating the least sophisticated method is to trivialize what it takes to hack someone's laptop - something a teenager with no computer skills can do. as far as your point of planting incriminating evidence to your opposing party - I specifically addressed that in the post you are replying to, so again, you are being deliberately obtuse.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday September 12 2020, @06:04AM
OK, you may have heard that we recently tried to create an alternative to some well established open source solution which was so popular that we bought up the open source solution and shut down our alternative, but don't worry, we're still relevant.
You may not have heard about all these myriad threats that would without us would destroy your democracy, three cheers for American democracy, but trust us, they were all really relevant threats, and our solutions did really save you, which means you can be thankful that we're still so goddamn relevant.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 4, Funny) by shortscreen on Saturday September 12 2020, @08:21AM
Clippy: It looks like you're trying to undermine confidence in the election results, do you need help with that?
Tom Burt: Not now Clippy.
Clippy: It looks like you're trying to promote the myth of American democracy, even though the Princeton study already showed that there was no correlation between what people wanted and how their representatives voted, do you need help with that?
Tom Burt: I know what I'm doing, just go away!
Clippy: It looks like you're trying to scapegoat foreign countries to draw attention away from the ongoing mismanagement of the USA by the ruling class, do you need help with that?
Tom Burt: We'll just blame Russia, China, and Iran. Nobody will question it.
Clippy: Don't forget North Korea!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 12 2020, @08:23AM
"Microsoft has detected" is in the same level of legitimacy as "Daily Mail has detected" or "blind paralysed 90year old man has detected"
There are gaping, inviting holes in wind0ze that has been usable for soon 30 years.
Yea, they fixed the printer overwrite system files trick, and it took only 20ish years.
So "Microsoft detections" do happen, if only a tad late.. its not a lie, lol.
I'm utterly convinced these "people" can only detect something that does mass scans and sends millions of emails every 20 seconds, they are NOT capable of detecting something that isn't making noise.
They do get lucky, but on the average, the really quiet things hang around for decades.
Why are they posting it then, if they aren't capable of detecting a proper adversary that should represent a nation state (oooooh, be afraaaaaaid, ooo oo)?
Why are they giving rockstar names to unknown entities?
Why are these stories always receiving blanket media coverage, have no technical details, no report on attribution, and are written with same 900ish words vocabulary?
To be realistic, they looked at packet logs in wireshark, resolved the ip for each request and put them on a map by using a ip geolocation database. (if youre not laughing after this sentence, youre a noob lamer)
The result of above process should have like... negative accuracy :D
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 12 2020, @08:41AM (2 children)
As anyone who runs a server on the Internet knows, everyone gets about a billion "cyber attacks" per day, even if there's nothing of interest there. Most of these "attackers" probably don't even know that these servers belong to political organizations.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 12 2020, @10:16AM (1 child)
My home router is bombarded with all kinds of "attacks" constantly.
And that had been the case since my first home DSL connection in the late 90s.
God bless Tomato router OS.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 12 2020, @05:58PM
Before leaving IT, I started calling it the internet background noise/radiation. There are different mitigation strategies for different kinds, like fail2ban. Point is you can't get away from it. It's just there.
Labeling the internet background noise as "attacks" and "hacking" is pure FUD. It comes across as architects (ones who design physical buildings) who engage in weather war conspiracy theory innovation instead of designing buildings that can withstand high winds/earthquakes/etc. Then news stories like this one come across as those weather war theorist architechts sending out press releases blaming Russian, Chinese, and Iranian wind and earthquake machines. Also woodpeckers genetically engineered by Muslim Chicom Russkies.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 12 2020, @01:12PM
"no incentive to stop trying!"
Actually they do. Being dropped from the BGP4 tables is a good incentive. Which I can see happening eventually.
I also see this eventually becoming an ISO standard, where the whole planet schedules their voting cycles, and countries basically go completely off line for about a week before elections. Basically ramadan against the perpetual stupidity.
The only other option is to actually recognize that all this consumer tracking is causing irreperable harm to people through sustained psychological abuse. But a pimp is as a pimp does, and so states will never support the idea that mental health is a human right. Can't keep the bitches in line without showing them the black mirror all day long.
The only people voting in a two party system in this country, are those voting for third parties.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Saturday September 12 2020, @03:31PM
Paper covers "cyber attacks"
However, there are scissors...
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 12 2020, @05:23PM (4 children)
When the choice is between doofus and dementia, something is wrong. That's the best leadership the whole country can come up with?! Are we being pranked?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 12 2020, @06:02PM (1 child)
No, this is just the logical conclusion of putting the old men in charge.
So why not vote for Jo Jorgensen?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 12 2020, @08:57PM
Because we don't want the literal US nazis to continue running the country.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Bot on Saturday September 12 2020, @09:34PM (1 child)
The last thing the system wants in the US is a leadership. Leadership is not big ego foaming dogs, or hard enforcers of ambitious reshaping of society. It is knowledge, vision, empathy, and fearlessness. For the first three things, in the context of a complex assignment, you need a TEAM.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 13 2020, @03:21PM
Does not compute. Great Man will save us.