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Makirovka! Russian Hackers Breach WH Computers (Paging Selkirk)

Posted by JayZeeBMT on Wed Oct 29 12:31:45 2014

fiogf49gjkf0d
Hackers working for the Russian government (e.g., spying) got into unclassified White House computers earlier this month, triggering service disruptions while a patch was made to correct the breach, officials acknowledged today. All White house staff were required to perform mandatory password changes, and administration officials wouldn't say whether any data was actually stolen.

Unca Selkirk, you may want to get in touch with the IT folks at the WH and sell them a new operating system. :)

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Re: Makirovka! Russian Hackers Breach WH Computers (Paging Selkirk)

Posted by Olog-hai on Wed Oct 29 12:33:50 2014, in response to Makirovka! Russian Hackers Breach WH Computers (Paging Selkirk), posted by JayZeeBMT on Wed Oct 29 12:31:45 2014.

fiogf49gjkf0d
Now where did that reset button go?

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Re: Makirovka! Russian Hackers Breach WH Computers (Paging Selkirk)

Posted by JayZeeBMT on Wed Oct 29 12:34:39 2014, in response to Re: Makirovka! Russian Hackers Breach WH Computers (Paging Selkirk), posted by Olog-hai on Wed Oct 29 12:33:50 2014.

fiogf49gjkf0d
In Russia, computer restarts you!

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Re: Makirovka! Russian Hackers Breach WH Computers (Paging Selkirk)

Posted by SelkirkTMO on Wed Oct 29 13:58:05 2014, in response to Makirovka! Russian Hackers Breach WH Computers (Paging Selkirk), posted by JayZeeBMT on Wed Oct 29 12:31:45 2014.

fiogf49gjkf0d
Yeah, saw that. I guess Symantec isn't going to get their contract renewed. :)

Word is they only got to the press office and operations computers on the network, so now the Russkies know when there will be a PC and when lunch will be served. Heh.

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Re: Makirovka! Russian Hackers Breach WH Computers (Paging Selkirk)

Posted by JayZeeBMT on Wed Oct 29 14:04:33 2014, in response to Re: Makirovka! Russian Hackers Breach WH Computers (Paging Selkirk), posted by SelkirkTMO on Wed Oct 29 13:58:05 2014.

fiogf49gjkf0d
...and which WH staffers have a coveted WH Mess account!

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Re: Makirovka! Russian Hackers Breach WH Computers (Paging Selkirk)

Posted by SelkirkTMO on Wed Oct 29 14:07:51 2014, in response to Re: Makirovka! Russian Hackers Breach WH Computers (Paging Selkirk), posted by JayZeeBMT on Wed Oct 29 14:04:33 2014.

fiogf49gjkf0d
Yeah, probably. Somebody got an email, they opened the ZIP file and doodah doodah. The weakest link in computer security is always the meat. :)

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Re: Makirovka! Russian Hackers Breach WH Computers (Paging Selkirk)

Posted by JayZeeBMT on Wed Oct 29 14:12:06 2014, in response to Re: Makirovka! Russian Hackers Breach WH Computers (Paging Selkirk), posted by SelkirkTMO on Wed Oct 29 14:07:51 2014.

fiogf49gjkf0d
Gee, and here I thought is was those pesky Nigerian R-32 railcar scams. :)

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Re: Makirovka! Russian Hackers Breach WH Computers (Paging Selkirk)

Posted by SelkirkTMO on Wed Oct 29 14:14:27 2014, in response to Re: Makirovka! Russian Hackers Breach WH Computers (Paging Selkirk), posted by JayZeeBMT on Wed Oct 29 14:12:06 2014.

fiogf49gjkf0d
Heh. In all sincerity, DNS poisoning is the usual trick these days once they can get a malformed PDF or Flash video to land. This network was "low side" security, completely separate from the "high side" secure stuff, so no real worries. If it was really important, they would have been behind the wall and unable to get to CNN or Facebook. :)

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Re: Makirovka! Russian Hackers Breach WH Computers (Paging Selkirk)

Posted by JayZeeBMT on Wed Oct 29 14:21:26 2014, in response to Re: Makirovka! Russian Hackers Breach WH Computers (Paging Selkirk), posted by SelkirkTMO on Wed Oct 29 14:14:27 2014.

fiogf49gjkf0d
I wonder how those with SCI/TS computers manage to get through the day without Facebook...LOL...but I would have been both incensed and impressed, had the Rooskies managed to get through "the wall" and discover the really juicy tidbits...like who John Boehner's secret Rentboy jump-off is...I'm so silly!

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Re: Makirovka! Russian Hackers Breach WH Computers (Paging Selkirk)

Posted by SelkirkTMO on Wed Oct 29 14:31:52 2014, in response to Re: Makirovka! Russian Hackers Breach WH Computers (Paging Selkirk), posted by JayZeeBMT on Wed Oct 29 14:21:26 2014.

fiogf49gjkf0d
Heh. You're perfectly welcome to do that stuff on your phone so long as you're not connecting to the secure network, which knows each and every authorized device. Low side security also allows that to hit the router. The high side stuff can't "see" the regular internet anyway and all transport on it is encrypted.

It IS embarassing of course, but this is no Home Depot caper. The usual suspects here are looking for "hard currency" ... they could give a shit about politics.

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Makirovka! Russian Hackers Breached WH Computers *And* Read Obama's Unclassified E-mails

Posted by Olog-hai on Sun Apr 26 12:08:49 2015, in response to Makirovka! Russian Hackers Breach WH Computers (Paging Selkirk), posted by JayZeeBMT on Wed Oct 29 12:31:45 2014.

fiogf49gjkf0d
NY Times

Russian Hackers Read Obama’s Unclassified Emails, Officials Say

By Michael S. Schmidt and David E. Sanger
April 25, 2015
Some of President Obama’s email correspondence was swept up by Russian hackers last year in a breach of the White House’s unclassified computer system that was far more intrusive and worrisome than has been publicly acknowledged, according to senior American officials briefed on the investigation.

The hackers, who also got deeply into the State Department’s unclassified system, do not appear to have penetrated closely guarded servers that control the message traffic from Mr. Obama’s BlackBerry, which he or an aide carries constantly.

But they obtained access to the email archives of people inside the White House, and perhaps some outside, with whom Mr. Obama regularly communicated. From those accounts, they reached emails that the president had sent and received, according to officials briefed on the investigation.

White House officials said that no classified networks had been compromised, and that the hackers had collected no classified information. Many senior officials have two computers in their offices, one operating on a highly secure classified network and another connected to the outside world for unclassified communications.

But officials have conceded that the unclassified system routinely contains much information that is considered highly sensitive: schedules, email exchanges with ambassadors and diplomats, discussions of pending personnel moves and legislation, and, inevitably, some debate about policy.

Officials did not disclose the number of Mr. Obama’s emails that were harvested by hackers, nor the sensitivity of their content. The president’s email account itself does not appear to have been hacked. Aides say that most of Mr. Obama’s classified briefings — such as the morning Presidential Daily Brief — are delivered orally or on paper (sometimes supplemented by an iPad system connected to classified networks) and that they are usually confined to the Oval Office or the Situation Room.

Still, the fact that Mr. Obama’s communications were among those hit by the hackers — who are presumed to be linked to the Russian government, if not working for it — has been one of the most closely held findings of the inquiry. Senior White House officials have known for months about the depth of the intrusion.

“This has been one of the most sophisticated actors we’ve seen,” said one senior American official briefed on the investigation.

Others confirmed that the White House intrusion was viewed as so serious that officials met on a nearly daily basis for several weeks after it was discovered. “It’s the Russian angle to this that’s particularly worrisome,” another senior official said.

While Chinese hacking groups are known for sweeping up vast amounts of commercial and design information, the best Russian hackers tend to hide their tracks better and focus on specific, often political targets. And the hacking happened at a moment of renewed tension with Russia — over its annexation of Crimea, the presence of its forces in Ukraine and its renewed military patrols in Europe, reminiscent of the Cold War.

Inside the White House, the intrusion has raised a new debate about whether it is possible to protect a president’s electronic presence, especially when it reaches out from behind the presumably secure firewalls of the executive branch.

Mr. Obama is no stranger to computer-network attacks: His 2008 campaign was hit by Chinese hackers. Nonetheless, he has long been a frequent user of email, and publicly fought the Secret Service in 2009 to retain his BlackBerry, a topic he has joked about in public. He was issued a special smartphone, and the list of those he can exchange emails with is highly restricted.

When asked about the investigation’s findings, the spokeswoman for the National Security Council, Bernadette Meehan, said, “We’ll decline to comment.” The White House has also declined to provide any explanations about how the breach was handled, though the State Department has been more candid about what kind of systems were hit and what it has done since to improve security. A spokesman for the F.B.I. declined to comment.

Officials who discussed the investigation spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the hacking. While the White House has refused to identify the nationality of the hackers, others familiar with the investigation said that in both the White House and State Department cases, all signs pointed to Russians.

On Thursday, Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter revealed for the first time that Russian hackers had attacked the Pentagon’s unclassified systems, but said they had been identified and “kicked off.” Defense Department officials declined to say if the signatures of the attacks on the Pentagon appeared related to the White House and State Department attacks.

The discovery of the hacking in October led to a partial shutdown of the White House email system. The hackers appear to have been evicted from the White House systems by the end of October. But they continued to plague the State Department, whose system is much more far-flung. The disruptions were so severe that during the Iranian nuclear negotiations in Vienna in November, officials needed to distribute personal email accounts, to one another and to some reporters, to maintain contact.

Earlier this month, officials at the White House said that the hacking had not damaged its systems and that, while elements had been shut down to mitigate the effects of the attack, everything had been restored.

One of the curiosities of the White House and State Department attacks is that the administration, which recently has been looking to name and punish state and nonstate hackers in an effort to deter attacks, has refused to reveal its conclusions about who was responsible for this complex and artful intrusion into the government. That is in sharp contrast to Mr. Obama’s decision, after considerable internal debate in December, to name North Korea for ordering the attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment, and to the director of national intelligence’s decision to name Iranian hackers as the source of a destructive attack on the Sands Casino.

This month, after CNN reported that hackers had gained access to sensitive areas of the White House computer network, including sections that contained the president’s schedule, the White House spokesman, Josh Earnest, said the administration had not publicly named who was behind the hack because federal investigators had concluded that “it’s not in our best interests.”

By contrast, in the North Korea case, he said, investigators concluded that “we’re more likely to be successful in terms of holding them accountable by naming them publicly.”

But the breach of the president’s emails appeared to be a major factor in the government secrecy. “All of this is very tightly held,” one senior American official said, adding that the content of what had been breached was being kept secret to avoid tipping off the Russians about what had been learned from the investigation.

Mr. Obama’s friends and associates say that he is a committed user of his BlackBerry, but that he is careful when emailing outside the White House system.

“The frequency has dropped off in the last six months or so,” one of his close associates said, though this person added that he did not know if the drop was related to the hacking.

Mr. Obama is known to send emails to aides late at night from his residence, providing them with his feedback on speeches or, at times, entirely new drafts. Others say he has emailed on topics as diverse as his golf game and the struggle with Congress over the Iranian nuclear negotiations.

George W. Bush gave up emailing for the course of his presidency and did not carry a smartphone. But after Mr. Bush left office, his sister’s email account was hacked, and several photos — including some of his paintings — were made public.

The White House is bombarded with cyberattacks daily, not only from Russia and China. Most are easily deflected.

The White House, the State Department, the Pentagon and intelligence agencies put their most classified material into a system called Jwics, for Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System. That is where top-secret and “secret compartmentalized information” traverses within the government, to officials cleared for it — and it includes imagery, data and graphics. There is no evidence, senior officials said, that this hacking pierced it.

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Re: Makirovka! Russian Hackers Breached WH Computers *And* Read Obama's Unclassified E-mails

Posted by SelkirkTMO on Sun Apr 26 12:52:37 2015, in response to Makirovka! Russian Hackers Breached WH Computers *And* Read Obama's Unclassified E-mails, posted by Olog-hai on Sun Apr 26 12:08:49 2015.

fiogf49gjkf0d
Ah for the good old days when security depended on the likes of BOClean, Symantec, McAfee and folks who were in it all since the beginning of small computers. Now, all of this is being handled by Boeing, Bechtel, Raytheon, Rockwell and Verizon. Godspeed, America. Lots of luck. :(

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Re: Makirovka! Russian Hackers Breached WH Computers *And* Read Obama's Unclassified E-mails

Posted by Mitch45 on Sun Apr 26 12:54:19 2015, in response to Re: Makirovka! Russian Hackers Breached WH Computers *And* Read Obama's Unclassified E-mails, posted by SelkirkTMO on Sun Apr 26 12:52:37 2015.

fiogf49gjkf0d
Raytheon? My pediatrician back in the Bronx had some Raytheon instruments. They looked like something out of a Lon Chaney horror movie. I didn't know they were still in business.

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Re: Makirovka! Russian Hackers Breached WH Computers *And* Read Obama's Unclassified E-mails

Posted by SelkirkTMO on Sun Apr 26 12:59:00 2015, in response to Re: Makirovka! Russian Hackers Breached WH Computers *And* Read Obama's Unclassified E-mails, posted by Mitch45 on Sun Apr 26 12:54:19 2015.

fiogf49gjkf0d
Yep. They make rockets and drones and stuff. That's the kind of expertise required to do detective work in silicon. Apply some lightning brought down from the rooftop into a Tesla coil and your email is safe. :)

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Re: Makirovka! Russian Hackers Breached WH Computers *And* Read Obama's Unclassified E-mails

Posted by SelkirkTMO on Sun Apr 26 13:02:48 2015, in response to Re: Makirovka! Russian Hackers Breached WH Computers *And* Read Obama's Unclassified E-mails, posted by Mitch45 on Sun Apr 26 12:54:19 2015.

fiogf49gjkf0d
1961
Eisenhower warns of the “military-industrial complex”

In his farewell address to the nation, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warns the American people to keep a careful eye on what he calls the “military-industrial complex” that has developed in the post-World War II years.



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Re: Makirovka! Russian Hackers Breached WH Computers *And* Read Obama's Unclassified E-mails

Posted by orange blossom special on Sun Apr 26 16:04:30 2015, in response to Makirovka! Russian Hackers Breached WH Computers *And* Read Obama's Unclassified E-mails, posted by Olog-hai on Sun Apr 26 12:08:49 2015.

fiogf49gjkf0d
They must've been pretty bored. Obama probably only sends emails about himself.

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Maskirovka! Russian Hackers Breach Pentagon Computers; Email System Down for a Fortnight

Posted by Olog-hai on Fri Aug 7 20:48:34 2015, in response to Makirovka! Russian Hackers Breached WH Computers *And* Read Obama's Unclassified E-mails, posted by Olog-hai on Sun Apr 26 12:08:49 2015.

fiogf49gjkf0d
CNBC

Russia hacks Pentagon computers: NBC, citing sources

Courtney Kube and Jim Miklaszewski
Thursday, 6 Aug 2015 | 2:53 PM ET
U.S. officials tell NBC News that Russia launched a "sophisticated cyberattack" against the Pentagon's Joint Staff unclassified email system, which has been shut down and taken offline for nearly two weeks. According to the officials, the "sophisticated cyber intrusion" occurred sometime around July 25 and affected some 4,000 military and civilian personnel who work for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Sources tell NBC News that it appears the cyberattack relied on some kind of automated system that rapidly gathered massive amounts of data and within a minute distributed all the information to thousands of accounts on the Internet. The officials also report the suspected Russian hackers coordinated the sophisticated cyberassault via encrypted accounts on social media.

The officials say its not clear whether the attack was sanctioned by the Russian government or conducted by individuals. But, given the scope of the attack, "It was clearly the work of a state actor," the officials say.

They stressed that no classified information was seized or compromised and that only unclassified accounts and emails were hacked.

Almost immediately after the cyberattack was detected, the Pentagon took the aggressive step of shutting down the entire Joint Staff unclassified email system and Internet during its investigation. The system should be back online before the end of this week.

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Re: Maskirovka! Russian Hackers Breach Pentagon Computers; Email System Down for 2 Weeks

Posted by cortelyounext on Fri Aug 7 21:15:16 2015, in response to Maskirovka! Russian Hackers Breach Pentagon Computers; Email System Down for a Fortnight, posted by Olog-hai on Fri Aug 7 20:48:34 2015.

fiogf49gjkf0d
Subject corrected.

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Re: Maskirovka! Russian Hackers Breach Pentagon Computers; Email System Down for a Fortnight

Posted by SelkirkTMO on Fri Aug 7 23:14:36 2015, in response to Maskirovka! Russian Hackers Breach Pentagon Computers; Email System Down for a Fortnight, posted by Olog-hai on Fri Aug 7 20:48:34 2015.

fiogf49gjkf0d
Maybe they should have just set up shop on Hillary's server instead of depending on THESE guys. :)

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Re: Maskirovka! Russian Hackers Breach Pentagon Computers; Email System Down for 1 Fortnight

Posted by Olog-hai on Sat Aug 8 00:43:15 2015, in response to Re: Maskirovka! Russian Hackers Breach Pentagon Computers; Email System Down for 2 Weeks, posted by cortelyounext on Fri Aug 7 21:15:16 2015.

fiogf49gjkf0d
y u ha3t br1tz & c4nuckz?

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Re: Maskirovka! Russian Hackers Breach Pentagon Computers; Email System Down for a Fortnight

Posted by 3-9 on Sat Aug 8 16:18:19 2015, in response to Re: Maskirovka! Russian Hackers Breach Pentagon Computers; Email System Down for a Fortnight, posted by SelkirkTMO on Fri Aug 7 23:14:36 2015.

fiogf49gjkf0d
That depends though. The investigation of the Clintons' server is still going, and apparently, they were using Outlook, or at least the Outlook Web application. :-(

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Re: Maskirovka! Russian Hackers Breach Pentagon Computers; Email System Down for a Fortnight

Posted by SelkirkTMO on Sat Aug 8 18:58:59 2015, in response to Re: Maskirovka! Russian Hackers Breach Pentagon Computers; Email System Down for a Fortnight, posted by 3-9 on Sat Aug 8 16:18:19 2015.

fiogf49gjkf0d
That isn't necessarily a clue though - Outlook is a client, and the server side of it all is called "Exchange" and can be run on virtual machine on any operating system. It's part of Active Directory Services. So whatever the source of that tidbit, I'd ignore them since they don't know how this stuff works.

Using Outlook on the desktops is quite typical, but it indicates nothing about the mail server running on the main box.

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Re: Maskirovka! Russian Hackers Breach Pentagon Computers; Email System Down for a Fortnight

Posted by 3-9 on Sat Aug 8 19:31:16 2015, in response to Re: Maskirovka! Russian Hackers Breach Pentagon Computers; Email System Down for a Fortnight, posted by SelkirkTMO on Sat Aug 8 18:58:59 2015.

fiogf49gjkf0d
But isn't the Outlook Web Application something you put in front of a Windows mail server? That's how we used it at work, when we couldn't VPN into our desktop machines and regular Outlook client. (Nowadays, of course, we have our smartphones, which act as an even more convenient alternative.)

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Re: Maskirovka! Russian Hackers Breach Pentagon Computers; Email System Down for a Fortnight

Posted by 3-9 on Sat Aug 8 19:38:37 2015, in response to Re: Maskirovka! Russian Hackers Breach Pentagon Computers; Email System Down for a Fortnight, posted by SelkirkTMO on Sat Aug 8 18:58:59 2015.

fiogf49gjkf0d
Also, even if Exchange is running as a virtual machine, isn't it still an instance of Windows with all its weaknesses? If you hack the virtual machine, get at the data files, and corrupt the VM's OS files on disk, it won't make much difference than if it was the base OS.

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Re: Maskirovka! Russian Hackers Breach Pentagon Computers; Email System Down for a Fortnight

Posted by SelkirkTMO on Sat Aug 8 19:46:33 2015, in response to Re: Maskirovka! Russian Hackers Breach Pentagon Computers; Email System Down for a Fortnight, posted by 3-9 on Sat Aug 8 19:31:16 2015.

fiogf49gjkf0d
Not entirely. What OWA is, is a client program which you can run on a web server through a separate virtual machine that acts like a desktop. It contacts the Exchange server in the same way that a desktop would over a network. This Microsoft article explains it a bit:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2897680

In most cases though, that is on a completely separate machine or in cluster servers, a VM usually running on ANOTHER server.

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Re: Maskirovka! Russian Hackers Breach Pentagon Computers; Email System Down for a Fortnight

Posted by SelkirkTMO on Sat Aug 8 19:52:03 2015, in response to Re: Maskirovka! Russian Hackers Breach Pentagon Computers; Email System Down for a Fortnight, posted by 3-9 on Sat Aug 8 19:38:37 2015.

fiogf49gjkf0d
Well ... we still don't know if Hillary was running Exchange. Outlook clients can access any IMAP, SMTP or POP server and usually servers are set up as a plain old mail server using qmail or similar post office servers.

Virtual machines can get hacked like a "real iron" machine, but there's several advantages to running a VM. First off, if anything happens, you can just kill it and restart it from its image and whatever happened in the VM dies along with the process and is respawned clear of whatever happened there.

Secondly, real VM's are pretty ironclad and if you infect anything, you're infecting the temporary image that's running. Restart it and that goes away too. That was the idea behind KNOS, although we took that several steps further.

It's not at all the same deal, especially if the server's actual operating system isn't Windows at all. Let me give you an example. On this Toshiba laptop which runs KNOS, I can run a VM of Windows 7, OS X Leopard, OS X Yosemite and they're actually all running on BSD as the primary operating system. All these other OS' are "guests" that can be dumped at any time and just restarted clean every time I feel like running something else. Works the same way on big iron.

Back to Hillary, FBI and Treasury have some really good computer scientists working for them. If there are flaws, they WILL find them. But we'll have to wait until they do.

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Re: Maskirovka! Russian Hackers Breach Pentagon Computers; Email System Down for a Fortnight

Posted by SelkirkTMO on Sat Aug 8 19:53:46 2015, in response to Re: Maskirovka! Russian Hackers Breach Pentagon Computers; Email System Down for a Fortnight, posted by SelkirkTMO on Sat Aug 8 19:52:03 2015.

fiogf49gjkf0d
I should also add that federal systems (the ones that are perpetually getting hacked) are bare iron Windows crap and NOT VM's. That's the reason why I said back there that Hillary probably had a far more secure setup than the State Department, but that too is pure speculation until the audit is done.

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Re: Maskirovka! Russian Hackers Breach Pentagon Computers; Email System Down for a Fortnight

Posted by 3-9 on Sat Aug 8 22:51:29 2015, in response to Re: Maskirovka! Russian Hackers Breach Pentagon Computers; Email System Down for a Fortnight, posted by SelkirkTMO on Sat Aug 8 19:52:03 2015.

fiogf49gjkf0d
Since it's a server, though, chances are they aren't bouncing it too often, unless they set up a regular bounce/update schedule or something goes wrong. That could allow a hacker enough time to download tons of stuff. And if the hacker got his hands on the passwords, the VM won't help much.

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Re: Maskirovka! Russian Hackers Breach Pentagon Computers; Email System Down for a Fortnight

Posted by SelkirkTMO on Sat Aug 8 23:05:08 2015, in response to Re: Maskirovka! Russian Hackers Breach Pentagon Computers; Email System Down for a Fortnight, posted by 3-9 on Sat Aug 8 22:51:29 2015.

fiogf49gjkf0d
Anything is possible, just trying to explain how real servers work. And yes, real servers run on a VM and the only thing the host OS is doing is running VM instances. That's what Amazon and other clouds are all about. Nothing gets to the core OS as long as the VM's are set up properly to not communicate down to the OS layer. Setting that up is usually done properly with VMWare, VirtualBox and the other VM's out there.

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Re: Maskirovka! Russian Hackers Breach Pentagon Computers; Email System Down for a Fortnight

Posted by SelkirkTMO on Sat Aug 8 23:06:51 2015, in response to Re: Maskirovka! Russian Hackers Breach Pentagon Computers; Email System Down for a Fortnight, posted by SelkirkTMO on Sat Aug 8 23:05:08 2015.

fiogf49gjkf0d
And once again, just to point this out, most federal systems are NOT running VM's at all, they're running on Windows server on bare metal. Not good. BSD, Linux, Solaris and others are what is used elsewhere because when you have a budget, you don't depend on Windows anything keeping your stuff safe.

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Re: Maskirovka! Russian Hackers Breach Pentagon Computers; Email System Down for a Fortnight

Posted by 3-9 on Sat Aug 8 23:28:45 2015, in response to Re: Maskirovka! Russian Hackers Breach Pentagon Computers; Email System Down for a Fortnight, posted by SelkirkTMO on Sat Aug 8 23:06:51 2015.

fiogf49gjkf0d
Amazing that the federal systems are still running Windows. Did their security wonks say otherwise?

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Re: Maskirovka! Russian Hackers Breach Pentagon Computers; Email System Down for a Fortnight

Posted by SelkirkTMO on Sat Aug 8 23:31:43 2015, in response to Re: Maskirovka! Russian Hackers Breach Pentagon Computers; Email System Down for a Fortnight, posted by 3-9 on Sat Aug 8 23:28:45 2015.

fiogf49gjkf0d
Most agencies have been begging for new equipment since 9/11 if that gives you any idea of just what kind of crap we depend on. Funding? Barely. Not only is XP still alive and well, I've seen Windows98 still running in some agencies. :(

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Re: Maskirovka! Russian Hackers Breach Pentagon Computers; Email System Down for a Fortnight

Posted by 3-9 on Sat Aug 8 23:37:08 2015, in response to Re: Maskirovka! Russian Hackers Breach Pentagon Computers; Email System Down for a Fortnight, posted by SelkirkTMO on Sat Aug 8 23:31:43 2015.

fiogf49gjkf0d
It wouldn't be too much to have MS continue supporting that crap, would it? :-(

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Re: Maskirovka! Russian Hackers Breach Pentagon Computers; Email System Down for a Fortnight

Posted by SelkirkTMO on Sat Aug 8 23:47:12 2015, in response to Re: Maskirovka! Russian Hackers Breach Pentagon Computers; Email System Down for a Fortnight, posted by 3-9 on Sat Aug 8 23:37:08 2015.

fiogf49gjkf0d
Microsoft *is* continuing some support for XP at an extremely insanely high price because of those maintenance contracts. It would be cheaper for the taxpayer to just replace every last box with a shiny new top of the line box. Of course, getting that through GSA is its own little nightmare even if the funding were there.

The familiar faces of the military-industrial complex have the contracts on maintaining this stuff, so there's no incentive for them to fix it. But it should come as no surprise to anyone that big corporate and government systems are getting easily owned. Just more infrastructure that doesn't matter if it's going to cost money to fix it.

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