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from the did-they-get-the-size-on-Hillary's-pant-suits? dept.
Two separate groups of Russian hackers have reportedly had their way with the Democratic National Committee's network for months... up until last weekend:
Russian hackers have been accessing the Democratic National Committee's computer network for the past year, and have stolen information including opposition research files on presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
According to CrowdStrike, the security firm the DNC called in to deal with the massive data breach, one group of hackers tied to the Russian government has been stealing information from the national party for about a year. "They infiltrated the DNC's network last summer and were monitoring their communications, their email servers, and the like," company co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch told NPR.
A second group, also tied to Russia, accessed the DNC's network in April. "They went straight for the research department of the DNC and exfiltrated opposition materials on Mr. Trump," Alperovitch said.
The Washington Post first reported the DNC break-in.
CrowdStrike doesn't believe the two distinct groups of Russian hackers — which the company has internally nicknamed COZY BEAR and FANCY BEAR — collaborated with each other. "Instead," company co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch wrote in a lengthy blog post, "we observed the two Russian espionage groups compromise the same systems and engage separately in the theft of identical credentials."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 15 2016, @06:25PM
It does not have to be compromised in the a technical sense; the user is voluntarily giving them access to all of this data. If users could not give others access to data, they would not be able to do their jobs. It is up to the user to "autenticate" the recipient of this data. If the user cannot differentiate between a legitimate recipient and an attacker, it is a social problem not a technical problem; a technical solution would be a bandaid at best. In IT, we do our best to harden systems where we can. But, ultimately, we are forced to trust the user. If the user chooses poorly, there is very little IT can do.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 15 2016, @07:58PM
Nice blame avoidance there. Very professional.
Good security makes it easy for the user to do the right thing and difficult for the user to the wrong thing.
If a single click is enough to do the wrong thing, then your security implementation is de facto bad security.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 15 2016, @08:40PM
In a general sense, you are right. But real-world IT is mostly about doing the best one can under sub-optimal conditions. Really sub-optimal most of the time. There is never enough time to validate every vendor patch for every bit of software and never enough money to harden every attack surface. We do what we can given the time and budget constraints imposed on us.
A good example is AppLocker; I wish I had time to configure AppLocker policies for all my clients. But, my fees would go up and they would go with another provider. For most clients, I could come up with a dozen security technologies and policies that, given the budget and time, I would surely implement. But the business model does not support those fees. So, we rely on users to use adult reasoning and a bit of common sense. That's just life and, I believe, not an unreasonable postion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 15 2016, @10:51PM
On one hand you maximize the effort when describing doing your job: "really sub-optimal most of the time."
And on the other hand you trivialize the effort of the user doing your job: "a bit of common sense."
And the "my fees would go up" argument says you are happy doing a poor job as long as you get paid.
I recognize that a guy's gotta eat. But when you make that argument it is dishonest to then shift the responsibility away from your role as the person hired for their expertise.