- Nov 5, 2011
- 5,855
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Cyber-intruder sparks massive federal response — and debate over dealing with threats
By Ellen Nakashima .. Full 'Agent.btz' story here ..
HERE: washingtonpost.com .. print.html: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/national-security/cyber-intruder-sparks-response-debate/2011/12/06/gIQAxLuFgO_print.html (- from InfoWarrior link: http://www.mail-archive.com/infowarrior@attrition.org/msg08126.html )
.. and first (two only) pages from Washingtonpost.com: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/national-security/cyber-intruder-sparks-response-debate/2011/12/06/gIQAxLuFgO_story.html?hpid=z2
Quote:
'The first sign of trouble was a mysterious signal emanating from deep within the U.S. military’s classified computer network. Like a human spy, a piece of covert software in the supposedly secure system was “beaconing” — trying to send coded messages back to its creator.
An elite team working in a windowless room at the National Security Agency soon determined that a rogue program had infected a classified network, kept separate from the public Internet, that harbored some of the military’s most important secrets, including battle plans used by commanders in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The government’s top cyberwarriors couldn’t immediately tell who created the program or why, although they would come to suspect the Russian intelligence service. Nor could they tell how long it had been there, but they soon deduced the ingeniously simple means of transmission, according to several current and former U.S. officials. The malicious software, or malware, caught a ride on an everyday thumb drive that allowed it to enter the secret system and begin looking for documents to steal. Then it spread by copying itself onto other thumb drives.'
'The malware that provoked Buckshot Yankee had circulated on the Internet for months without causing alarm, as just one threat among many. Then it showed up on the military computers of a NATO government in June 2008, according to Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer of a Finnish firm that analyzed the intruder.
He dubbed it “Agent.btz,” the next name in a sequence used at his company, F-Secure.'
LINK ADDED: The Return of the Worm That Ate the Pentagon: on Wired.com/Dangerroom: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/12/worm-pentagon/
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Cyber-intruder sparks massive federal response — and debate over dealing with threats
By Ellen Nakashima .. Full 'Agent.btz' story here ..
HERE: washingtonpost.com .. print.html: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/national-security/cyber-intruder-sparks-response-debate/2011/12/06/gIQAxLuFgO_print.html (- from InfoWarrior link: http://www.mail-archive.com/infowarrior@attrition.org/msg08126.html )
.. and first (two only) pages from Washingtonpost.com: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/national-security/cyber-intruder-sparks-response-debate/2011/12/06/gIQAxLuFgO_story.html?hpid=z2
Quote:
'The first sign of trouble was a mysterious signal emanating from deep within the U.S. military’s classified computer network. Like a human spy, a piece of covert software in the supposedly secure system was “beaconing” — trying to send coded messages back to its creator.
An elite team working in a windowless room at the National Security Agency soon determined that a rogue program had infected a classified network, kept separate from the public Internet, that harbored some of the military’s most important secrets, including battle plans used by commanders in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The government’s top cyberwarriors couldn’t immediately tell who created the program or why, although they would come to suspect the Russian intelligence service. Nor could they tell how long it had been there, but they soon deduced the ingeniously simple means of transmission, according to several current and former U.S. officials. The malicious software, or malware, caught a ride on an everyday thumb drive that allowed it to enter the secret system and begin looking for documents to steal. Then it spread by copying itself onto other thumb drives.'
'The malware that provoked Buckshot Yankee had circulated on the Internet for months without causing alarm, as just one threat among many. Then it showed up on the military computers of a NATO government in June 2008, according to Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer of a Finnish firm that analyzed the intruder.
He dubbed it “Agent.btz,” the next name in a sequence used at his company, F-Secure.'
LINK ADDED: The Return of the Worm That Ate the Pentagon: on Wired.com/Dangerroom: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/12/worm-pentagon/
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