A Windows zero-day vulnerability recently patched by Microsoft was exploited by hackers working on behalf of the North Korean government so they could install custom malware that’s exceptionally stealthy and advanced, researchers reported Monday.
I am always amazed at how easy it is for ‘security researchers’ to speculate about which government is solely responsible for exploiting security vulnerabilities.
Specific groups of hackers often have various markers that appear throughout their various malware.
Reused code fragments are the most obvious one. Others are specific code styles such as variable naming, even formatting. It’s basically the same stuff that is used to determine whether a specific text was most likely written by a specific person.
For more on that, go listen to Darknet Diaries, episodes where they talk about major hacks are great
During World War II, the telegraph interception guys would figure out which enemy units were where, even without having broken the codes, because each telegraph operators each had their own “fist,” or distinct patterns in how they punched in the Morse code, and people listening to the signals day in and day out could learn to distinguish them even when dealing entirely in encrypted text.
In modern times, attribution of hacker groups include other indicators include what time zones certain people seem to be active in, what their targets are (and aren’t), hints about installed language support or keyboard layouts or preferred punctuation or localized representations of numbers. For example, you can tell here on Lemmy when someone uses different types of quotation marks a decent indication of what country that person might be from, even in a totally English language thread.
Earlier this year, researchers from security firm Avast spotted a newer FudModule variant that bypassed key Windows defenses such as Endpoint Detection and Response, and Protected Process Light. Microsoft took six months after Avast privately reported the vulnerability to fix it, a delay that allowed Lazarus to continue exploiting it.
Dammit Microsoft, you only had one job!
I’ll bet the NSA or others were using it and didn’t want it broken, maybe
What I don’t get is, we all know the NSA is doing this. It’s no big secret. Why don’t they just report the 0-day to Microsoft, so they can fix it, so that North Korea doesn’t also exploit it. In exchange, Microsoft can give them some special access or special keys or some backdoor. Why even bother pretending anymore or putting on this charade. It’s the same thing over and over again.
In exchange, Microsoft can give them some special access or special keys or some backdoor.
They might be doing this. The thing is, putting something like that in makes so much more likely you’ll accidentally create an exploit for other actors as well. It’s why security experts are so against backdoors. They fundamentally compromise security.
The NSA probably has the cryptographic keys (which they could easilly get with a FISA court order) for signing Microsoft Windows Updates, kernel drivers and so on, so I wouldn’t be surprised if that is their main attack vector for Windows.
There are massive benefits for a State Surveillance and Electronic Espionage entity based in the country of the headquarters of the company that makes the OS and which has special Laws and special Surveillance Courts with secret court orders to let them get their hands directly on the data itself (if hosted on “the cloud”) or the official digital keys for pushing whatever they want into computers running that OS.
Windows, iOS and MacOS should be treated by default as thoroughly compromised by the NSA, as should be any cloud hosting in the US or applications from companies based there.
This is not just an American thing: would you really trust a Russian OS or Chinese Data Hosting provider?
Yet another reason to not use windows.
