Did the Russians Really Hack the DNC? Russia, we are told, breached the servers of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), swiped emails and other documents, and released them to the public, to alter the outcome of the U. S. Crowdstrike named the two intruders Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear, in an allusion to what it felt were Russian sources. According to Crowdstrike, “Their tradecraft is superb, operational security second to none,” and “both groups were constantly going back into the environment” to change code and methods and switch command and control channels. On what basis did Crowdstrike attribute these breaches to Russian intelligence services? To cut or chop with repeated and irregular blows: hacked down the saplings. To make or shape by hitting or. US Equities Strong Bear Hedge Fund - helps investors profit from or protect against a declining U.S. Learn more. Children In Need news updates on host Graham Norton and charity donations for the appeal including the Sir Terry Wogan Fundraiser of the Year 2017 award. Russia, we are told, breached the servers of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), swiped emails and other documents, and released them to the public, to alter the. POPSUGAR; Love; Women's Health; Problems With Women's Reproductive Health Women Bear the Burden of Hormonal Birth Control — Here's My Story.The security firm claims that the techniques used were similar to those deployed in past security hacking operations that have been attributed to the same actors, while the profile of previous victims “closely mirrors the strategic interests of the Russian government. But then again, perhaps not. Regarding the point about separate intruders, each operating independently of the other, that would seem to more likely indicate that the sources have nothing in common. Each of the two intrusions acted as an advanced persistent threat (APT), which is an attack that resides undetected on a network for a long time. The goal of an APT is to exfiltrate data from the infected system rather than inflict damage. Want to hack snapchat pictures, videos, then our online snapchat hack tool do job for you in just 2 minutes. Free hacks to download all send received snaps. Care Bear Share Bear doesn't care what Ariel dares to wear. The 19-year-old Uploaded a brace of pics to snapchat as she cuddled with the. ![]() Several names have been given to these two actors, and most commonly Fancy Bear is known as APT2. Cozy Bear as APT2. The fact that many of the techniques used in the hack resembled, in varying degrees, past attacks attributed to Russia may not necessarily carry as much significance as we are led to believe. Once malware is deployed, it tends to be picked up by cybercriminals and offered for sale or trade on Deep Web black markets, where anyone can purchase it. Exploit kits are especially popular sellers. Quite often, the code is modified for specific uses. Security specialist Josh Pitts demonstrated how easy that process can be, downloading and modifying nine samples of the Onion. Duke malware, which is thought to have first originated with the Russian government. Pitts reports that this exercise demonstrates “how easy it is to repurpose nation- state code/malware.” . It comes as no surprise to us that this type of intelligence agency- grade malware would eventually fall into cybercriminals’ hands.” The security firm explains that Gyges is an “example of how advanced techniques and code developed by governments for espionage are effectively being repurposed, modularized and coupled with other malware to commit cybercrime.” . Cybersecurity consultant Jeffrey Carr reacts with scorn: “The victim set is narrow because the report’s authors make it narrow! In fact, it wasn’t narrowly targeted at all if you take into account the targets mentioned by other cybersecurity companies, not to mention those that Fire. Eye deliberately excluded for being . Petersburg and Moscow. Mark Mc. Ardle wonders, “If we think about the very high level of design, engineering, and testing that would be required for such a sophisticated attack, is it reasonable to assume that the attacker would leave these kinds of breadcrumbs? It is unclear what relation – if any – Guccifer 2. APT attacks on the DNC. In a PDF file that Guccifer 2. Gawker. com, metadata indicated that it was it was last saved by someone having a username in Cyrillic letters. During the conversion of the file from Microsoft Word to PDF, invalid hyperlink error messages were automatically generated in the Russian language. But who is Guccifer 2. A Russian government operation? A private group? Or a lone hacktivist? In the poorly secured DNC system, there were almost certainly many infiltrators of various stripes. Nor can it be ruled out that the metadata indicators were intentionally generated in the file to misdirect attribution. The two APT attacks have been noted for their sophistication, and these mistakes – if that is what they are – seem amateurish. To change the language setting on a computer can be done in a matter of seconds, and that would be standard procedure for advanced cyber- warriors. On the other hand, sloppiness on the part of developers is not entirely unknown. However, one would expect a nation- state to enforce strict software and document handling procedures and implement rigorous review processes. At any rate, the documents posted to the Guccifer 2. Wiki. Leaks. Certainly, none of the documents posted to Wiki. Leaks possess the same metadata issues. And one hacking operation does not preclude another, let alone an insider leak. APT2. 8 relied on XTunnel, repurposed from open source code that is available to anyone, to open network ports and siphon data. The interesting thing about the software is its failure to match the level of sophistication claimed for APT2. The strings in the code quite transparently indicate its intent, with no attempt at obfuscation. Oddly, for such a key component of the operation, the command- and- control IP address in both attacks was hard- coded in the malware. This seems like another inexplicable choice, given that the point of an advanced persistent threat is to operate for an extended period without detection. A more suitable approach would be to use a Domain Name System (DNS) address, which is a decentralized computer naming system. That would provide a more covert means of identifying the command- and- control server. Using a DNS address would also allow the command- and- control operation to easily move to another server if its location is detected, without the need to modify and reinstall the code. One of the IP addresses is claimed to be a “well- known APT 2. Russian military intelligence. It is customary for hackers to route their attacks through vulnerable computers. The IP addresses of compromised computers are widely available on the Deep Web, and typically a hacked server will be used by multiple threat actors. These two particular servers may or may not have been regularly utilized by Russian Intelligence, but they were not uniquely so used. Almost certainly, many other hackers would have used the same machines, and it cannot be said that these IP addresses uniquely identify an infiltrator. Indeed, the second IP address is associated with the common Trojan viruses Agent- APPR and Shunnael. The report code- named these activities “Grizzly Steppe.” . Included in the report is a list of every threat group ever said to be associated with the Russian government, most of which are unrelated to the DNC hack. It appears that various governmental organizations were asked to send a list of Russian threats, and then an official lacking IT background compiled that information for the report, and the result is a mishmash of threat groups, software, and techniques. Indeed, as the majority of items on the list are unrelated to the DNC hack, one wonders what the point is. But it bears repeating: even where software can be traced to Russian origination, it does not necessarily indicate exclusive usage. Jeffrey Carr explains: “Once malware is deployed, it is no longer under the control of the hacker who deployed it or the developer who created it. It can be reverse- engineered, copied, modified, shared and redeployed again and again by anyone.” Carr quotes security firm ESET in regard to the Sednit group, one of the items on the report’s list, and which is another name for APT2. As security researchers, what we call . It is both foolish and baseless to claim, as Crowdstrike does, that X- Agent is used solely by the Russian government when the source code is there for anyone to find and use at will.” . For that matter, the majority of the content is taken up by what security specialist John Hinderaker describes as “pedestrian advice to IT professionals about computer security.” As for the report’s indicators of compromise (Io. C), Hinderaker characterizes these as “tools that are freely available and IP addresses that are used by hackers around the world.” .
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