'Western' meaning the usual aggressors, the “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing alliance of the United States, Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
Not particularly. The last known time a western aggressor hacked into such a Russian intelligence company, Kaspersky, it was revealed to be the Dutch intelligence agency, sharing their info with the US. So it could be any of the 5 eyes or any of their partners.
Unsurprisingly Yandex say that this was detected early, no damage was done and no user data was accessed via the hacking.
Obviously that rings hollow... but, I wonder, what kind of security protocol do high gov officials in RU use, do they follow better security hygiene than the West?
This release coincides with G20 meetings. Intentional or happenstance?
My recollection is that even the individual areas of the ship were not networked with each other at all, so the whole ship relies on humans to relay commands around. The whole ship was designed this way to fight Cylons, and indeed had beat them. The Cylons were thought extinct, so the new generation of ships were all networked and thoroughly pwned as soon as the Cylons reappeared.
Oh wow! This wasn't the one I was talking about, but very cool nonetheless. It's similar, but with keyboards. I hate posting this without evidence, but I think there was also something having to do with watching a plant or a pane of glass vibrate to know what is being said inside a room. The keyboard noise and the vibrations may also be unrelated. If I can find these articles, I'll come back and post them here.
I have a bad habit of mumbling to myself what I am typing, when there is nobody around, sometimes I will even read aloud what I just typed back to make sure it makes sense.
If I was to use a Typewriter, you could probably put a recording device inside it and work out what I was writing about that way.
As far as I know, Putin says that he doesn't use mobile phones and computers. Can it be considered a security measure? Other officials, like PM Medvedev, are better with technology and had their devices hacked: [1]
Regarding Yandex, they have good talents there so what they say might be true.
Kind of ethically dubious to this type of work. There is moral outrage when Google tries to do military contracting, but none against when federal government doing this type of extra-legal actions.
I expect my government to spy on foreign citizens and governments. If they do something truly terrible like kill civilians or disrupt the natural society of a country I'd have to take a hard look. Google is a private firm and subject to market forces like boycotts over military contracting. It's because governments and Google are two very different things.
Personal attacks, flamebait, unsubstantive comments will get you banned on HN. Can you please not do those? We're hoping for a site that's a bit better than internet default.
Because any sane person accepts the fact that some games are zero-sum or close to it, and in these games, his interests (and, by proxy, interests of his country) are more important to them. You want your country to spy on others and at the same time stop others from spying on you.
I'm not sure what zero sum game they're playing that requires hacking Yandex, but I'd strongly prefer if my government used the expertise of the hackers for fixing the security issues that enable these hacks instead of keeping them secret for the use as weapons.
> I'd strongly prefer if my government used the expertise of the hackers for fixing the security issues that enable these hacks instead of keeping them secret for the use as weapons
How have you come to this conclusion?
The reason I'm asking is not that I hold the opposite opinion. It's that I think that this dilemma is inherently hard as there are very good arguments for both points of view and I cannot see an easy way to find any solution to it.
But in consequence you accept that the US committed an act of war against Russia and the Netherlands? I would be more careful with that and if I were a citizen I would request someone in charge to take immediate consequences because the cost/benefit-calculation turns against you if it becomes public. Zero-sum game, non?
Luckily passive aggressiveness isn't an act of war at least.
I didn't use the term war crime. I used 'act of war' which is something different to my knowledge but includes attacks on digital infrastructure as defined by the US government.
Pardon my spelling, not my native tongue, but judging from your answer it must have obfuscated the meaning of my comment.
But it absolutely is. Whataboutism is an illogical thing if you're judging actions of some actor on some abstract moral scale, this is true.
But that's not the conversation here here, as we're talking not about ethic, but about public perception and rationality of offensive actions. And in this game, the context of actions of adversaries matters a great deal: if your opponents do something much worse, smaller on your behalf are expected to draw much less scrutiny and therefore, become much "cheaper".
Espionage against a country that has 1000 nuclear warheads pointed at you, and practices using them, is a very responsible thing to do, and very much sanctioned by government.
Well then by your logic, spying on US citizens by the US government is perfectly fine, since it would count at 'espionage against a country that has 10,000 nukes, used it a couple of times to incinerate a few 100ks people, and is very much sanctioned by government".
Seems the exact same reasoning to me. Especially since we're talking about US, which just revoked visas to international court prosecutor, which dared to suggest an investigation, which would look into any possible war crimes that US soldiers may have commited in Afghanistan ( https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47822839 ).
A country which so aggresively attacks a person that merely suggests to look into possible breakage of a law cannot have clean hands or be trustworthy.
I'm rather fond of Yandex. They have great engineers and make a solid product. Being Russian doesn't bother me, as I have nothing against the Russians. Yandex search has a fantastic image search that rival most others. And the fact that one does not have to provide a mobile number is a plus.
Their search engine is not bad too, and I use it as my primary search engine. They also helpfully provide a link to other search engines so that if you are not satisfied with their search result you can search on the other search engines with just a click. This ensures that they get crucial data (the search query) to improve their search results and also doesn't leave their user disgruntled due to non-relevant search result.
On the flip side, they are just as intrusive as Google. When I installed their browser or mail app (don't remember which one) it asked for my ios PIN / password (no ios app ever requires a PIN / password for installation - and no, I am not talking about an iCloud password which is required for app installation if you have enabled it for app installation).
In my view, if you’re hacking for espionage purposes as a nation who defends classical liberalism, then I’d argue your actions are justified. I do not understand why sources involved with this (or related stories) would talk to reporters.
Despite our flaws, there’s a difference in Russia or China hacking and the US. To suggest otherwise is advocating moral relativism in my opinion.
I do, however, support a pardon for Snowden and Assange.
Err? So, suggesting a uniform standard that says hacking is bad is advocating moral relativism?
There is no end to this "ends justify the means" crap. "Well, we're the good guys, so it's ok for us to torture, depose governments, nuke civilians, fix elections, assassinate foreign leaders, spy on our citizens..." Etc.
It doesn't matter whether "we're" the good guys or even if there are any good guys. Where there are groups with different interests there will always be conflict.
Given that there will always be conflict, you can choose to do nothing and be out-competed, you can act in the interest of the group to which you belong, or you can act in the interest of the other side.
It's possible to argue that these actions are not, in fact, in the interest of your group, but that has nothing to do with some facile Hollywood conception of international relations as good guys vs. bad guys.
Really, it's a lot like the allowable amount of insect parts that the US Govt. Food and Drug Administration allows in food. You're shocked a bit to read it, but the truth is you've been living it (and eating it) for some time.
If we weren’t hacking into Yandex, I’d be asking for new chiefs at the intelligence agencies who would. What the heck of the point of an agency if you’re not gathering intelligence?
It’s a dance. You complain about every hack, every interference in elections and claim moral superiority while doing the exact same hoping no one finds out but when they do always shoot the messenger instead of defending yourself. Thanks WikiLeaks for showing the world
I have tracked a number of state sponsored actors from all sorts of countries back to Yandex accounts. They are the go to account provider when you need semi-legit emails and don't want the provider to cooperate with the US.
It would give US intelligence insights in to operations from China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, etc.
Why does it have to be done this way? Can you provide more sources that show that aggresively attacking a nation's company this way is actually outweighing the downsides?
Note that I'm not questioning the existence of intelligence services, I'm asking you to provide basis that directly attacking companies like that is worth it. Also where's the line that makes this "dirty" business worth it?
No. The intelligence is crap; the CIA has missed basically everything important in its history. It is frequently politicized. It only goes to the President, who might ignore it or misinterpret it. We do much better just by reading newspapers well.
> missed basically everything important in its history
Or the things it has caught don't make newspaper headlines. Because the plots were defused, and thus can't be used to cause chaos and fear in citizens, something newspapers seem to delight in.
> Or the things it has caught don't make newspaper headlines. Because the plots were defused, and thus can't be used to cause chaos and fear in citizens, something newspapers seem to delight in.
That sounds like conspiracy thinking. The media isn't able to suppress the CIA's good deeds, and I don't believe they'd try. "Big alien invasion averted thanks to heroic CIA agent" is a great headline. So great in fact, that fiction books are written on that premise.
With all the minor and major leaks from the intelligence community, they're supposed to have a super tight and successful conspiracy going to hide the fact that they are actually effective? I have some doubts, both on the technical part (large conspiracies are hard) and the reasoning.
Russia does not need this or any other reason, they are already doing this to the extent they can. The public nature of this will provide some political cover, but that's it.
As to 'what it gets' it entirely depends on the kind of information that was obtained, the inherent risks and cost, the targets etc..
Maybe there were specific targets, a specific needs, maybe they were casting a net - who knows.
Consider what it would take to guarantee that there are absolutely no insect parts in a given volume of food. Insects are everywhere, and it's almost impossible to eliminate them with total confidence from every step of the food supply chain. Even if it were possible, it would be incredibly expensive.
Unless you want your yoghurt to cost $100 a pot, you have to accept that some insect parts will find their way into some food. The point of regulation is to ensure that the amount is minimized. If the standard was zero parts, food prices would skyrocket, many food suppliers would go out of business, and poor people wouldn't be able to eat. So the standard is some reasonable low level.
These things are always about tradeoffs and not absolutes.
I've heard that people who think they're allergic to chocolate are actually allergic to the cockroaches bits are in most chocolate. Not sure how well proven that is though.
