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U.S. Treasury says its computers were hacked by a Chinese 'threat actor' in a 'major incident'
The "threat actor" was able to access the workstations via a compromised third-party cybersecurity service provider called BeyondTrust, the department said.
The U.S. Treasury Department said a state-sponsored Chinese hacking operation was able to use third-party software to tap into desktop computers of Treasury employees in what the department is calling "a major incident."
In a letter seen by NBC News, Aditi Hardikar, assistant secretary for management of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, wrote that ...
Comments
These so called breaches are becoming more common...
It amazes how easy it may be to infiltrate any company.
How many places they let their guard down so that the third party service could get in unchecked
I think anyone who knows how to access a hidden backdoor in American chips can do it. There have been rumors about such backdoors for a long time. Perhaps the Chinese have just decided to use them.
eh, its only going to become more and more frequent that this stuff comes up. Need to figure out better ways to just lock down the most important bits, maybe keeping them offline or purely private? transfer data via screen reader or something. Idk what.
Between this and clownstrike, hopefully this is the end of enshittified company workstations bogged down with multiple agents hooking into everything
Time for a comprehensive @vitobotta audit of their systems.
It says it came from software. Put down the propaganda Kool-Aid for a moment as you're not doing any fucking reading before vomiting your bullshit.
The method isn't the issue, it's the fact that it's State sponsored. That's the fucking news.
You can't be 100% sure what happened. Maybe the software at the start, if the hacker didn't have direct access to the hardware. Maybe social engineering was used first to inject some malicious software and then get admin access to the equipment management software. Then advanced hackers could inject malicious code into the hardware's firmware, spread hidden modules over the local network, and whatnot. That's why access to external networks is often cut off right away.
Attacks sponsored by countries (like for example the US or UK) have been going on for years, so it's nothing new. Right now, the US is trying to make China look like the enemy and blame everything on them (sorry, I forgot about Russia and North Korea). Spy wars have been known since ancient times.
"The method isn't the issue, it's the fact that it's State sponsored. That's the fucking news."
Nope, that's not a fact, that's merely what some clueless talking head announced.
The real joke is how shooting-from-the-hip those goons "report" politically convenient BS. The real FACT is that attribution ("who did it?") is known to be a very hard problem which, to make matters even worse, in addition is quite easy to make look like a perpetrator wants.
Example: do it at certain times and such "suggest" that it's "the Chinese", "the Russians" or, for a funny change, "the Brits" (due to typical working hours). Or, even simpler and quite typical, throw some ascii (or UTF8) strings into the binary say, with some words in [language of choice] to "suggest" it was the [speakers of that language].
My explanation is this (my corrected version):
Followed by the announcement
with a confidential info-leaflet printed in 3 pt comic sans in light grey on white peaking out of his pocket which says
What are the hackers in the US doing? Travelling to China?
LOL
But TreasuryDirect is protected by a janky on-screen keyboard so you can't type your password on the keyboard. Surely this kept them super-secure!
You need to chill mate.
Also, if I had access to compromised hardware access, I would do literally everything in my power to make it seem like it is anything but compromised hardware. And that is not that hard to do.
There is no such thing as security these days.
“The {Chinese,Russians} hacked us and put all of this evidence of illegal activity in our email box!” - US government employees, probably
The attacker hasn't got anything classified? Pity.
Fuck off. If you want to be another Russian cock holster, go right ahead.
What? Never mind. I won't bother trying to understand wtf you're saying.
If you do not want to learn the basics of IT security, that is your own problem. But when you attack someone just because they are trying to be objective, it becomes a problem for everyone.
That's not being objective, that's ignoring the topic and hijacking it for unknown purposes. Stop being obtuse.
In such a case, you also hijacked the topic, because there was talk about China and nothing at all about Russia.
This is just the Biden admin doing some creative book keeping... convenient timing.
What lies beyond trust?
breach.