Nato investigates hacker sale of missile firm data:
NATO is assessing the impact of a data breach of classified military documents being sold by a hacker group online.
The data includes blueprints of weapons being used by NATO allies in the Ukraine conflict. Criminal hackers are selling the dossiers after stealing data linked to a major European weapons maker. MBDA Missile Systems admitted its data was among the stash but claimed none of the classified files belong to the firm.
The pan-European company, which is headquartered in France, said its information was hacked from a compromised external hard drive, adding that it was cooperating with authorities in Italy, where the data breach took place.
It is understood investigations are centred around one of MBDA's suppliers.
In a statement, a Nato spokesperson said: "We are assessing claims relating to data allegedly stolen from MBDA. We have no indication that any NATO network has been compromised."
Cyber criminals, operating on Russian and English forums, are selling 80GB of the stolen data for 15 Bitcoins (approximately £273,000) and claimed to have sold the stash to at least one unknown buyer so far.
In their advert for the stolen data, the hackers claimed to have "classified information about employees of companies that took part in the development of closed military projects" as well as "design documentation, drawings, presentations, video and photo materials, contract agreements and correspondence with other companies".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 27 2022, @07:43PM (8 children)
Why is the "West" the only victim of "hacking". Where's the Russian/Chinese/Mafia/Cartels/ etc info?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 27 2022, @08:23PM (2 children)
It all depends on your ethics, if you have any, and your sense of right and wrong.
(Score: 3, Informative) by unauthorized on Sunday August 28 2022, @12:52PM (1 child)
Wrong is when Russia bomb children, right is when NATO bomb children.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 28 2022, @06:07PM
Both are wrong, but if one is deliberate targeting (including hand written messages on the missile) and one is not, I'd say they sit at different levels on the wrong scale.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 27 2022, @09:16PM (1 child)
No one wants to copy Russian or Chinese weapon technology.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Username on Sunday August 28 2022, @11:09PM
Explain the AK-47 variants.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 27 2022, @09:23PM
Do you think any of them would publicly acknowledge being hacked?
(Score: 3, Funny) by Opportunist on Sunday August 28 2022, @07:22AM (1 child)
Why would I want to break into a Chinese research lab? To see if they managed to repeat my findings?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 28 2022, @04:12PM
Why would they bother to repeat? Just copy-paste what you already did. Nobody will ever bother checking, and you'll get a promotion to head of the science lab.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 27 2022, @09:35PM (1 child)
Just out of interest, were any of these documents in the trove of materials recovered from Mar-a-lago? Legit question.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Username on Sunday August 28 2022, @11:15PM
Nah, the FBI only seized crossfire hurricane documentation in the raid when they were looking for the pee tapes. Obviously in order for the FBI to self implicate themselves and not to cover up any evidence that could be used as an october surprise.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Username on Monday August 29 2022, @12:02AM (1 child)
As a person who made missile guidance and jamming systems, I can assure you that basically every document I seen had an ITAR logo on it and was about as secure as taylor swift's chastity. Like everyone shared the same username and password for the agile database, the password was akin to agile123. If it wasn't on there it was on a non-authenticated network share that any pc could access. I remember being given a 1k usd encrypted usb drive that would self destruct after 10 failed attempts to use to copy files to and from non-networked machines that wouldn't work on the network pcs since the anti-virus would reset permissions every time it updated, so I just used my phone. Why would a $200 phone work and not a $1,000 usb drive? Because nobody really cares about security when you're paid peanuts by a corp making billions. A corp that has parts on mars and in F-35s that can afford to spend $1k on usb drives for the illusion of security, but not on raises.
Basically, when I read this post, I just imagine a "hacker" walking up to a pc, plugging in their phone, two clicks, unplug phone.
If I wasn't such a patriot, I could have made some serious bank on the documents I handled. A lot more than the company would have ever paid me. I have no doubt something similar with less patriotic individuals are responsible for this "hack."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 30 2022, @12:23AM
There's a really big difference between an ITAR document and top secret SCI documents.