China hacked Norway's Visma to steal client secrets | Hacker News Reader

China hacked Norway's Visma to steal client secrets

reuters.com

194 pointstorh35 comments

In Norwegian scale Visma is pretty big.

Pretty much every non-huge company uses them for accounting and other business-crucial stuff.

Hack Visma properly and you probably have more accounting-data on the whole nation than the IRS does.

I didn't know Visma was Norwegian. It is probably among the top 3 companies in Sweden used for bookkeeping/accounting software, especially small to medium sized companies.

Visma SPCS is Swedish, founded in the 80s. Visma bought them in the early 2000s.

It's pretty big all over Europe. Similar to SAP, only cheaper.

Or you could just be on the receiving end of the quality that is Basware where user accounts are merely suggestions, audit logs are mutable and all the clients talk directly to the SQL Server.

Part 1 of the 4 part adventure (plus finale): https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/9m8fz...

Not to detract from the gravity of the situation, but the main picture (and caption) are amazing.

"A man holds a laptop computer as cyber code is projected on him in this illustration picture taken on May 13, 2017."

It might sound weird but those kinds of silly cyber images ... make me trust a given story less. They just seem dumb.

AFAIU Reuters is one of the leaders in terms of news/wire agencies for generating things like that via machine learning and other algos.

It might be an automated choice, where the author or editor merely had to check a few boxes before publishing to get a remotely relevant clipart and caption, essentially. Saves a lot of time and money in an age where it's sort of a weird abstract form that needs to be fulfilled.

-> Hed

-> Byline - Date

-> (Dek)

-> Graphic -> Caption

-> Body Copy

That is, it's not to say the system is elegant, yet....

https://innovation.thomsonreuters.com/en/labs.html

edit: LOL. Just a few more clicks brought me to this article. I laughed.

https://blogs.thomsonreuters.com/answerson/art-artificial-in...

Fantastic. In Ian Mcewan's novel 'Solar', the boorish physicist protagonist remarks that when people talk about "the planet" he assumes their remarks will be ignorant or frivolous and takes this as a cue to stop listening.

This is how I feel about any utterance of the word "cyber" occuring after 1993.

This breach happened in September 2018. More info https://www.recordedfuture.com/apt10-cyberespionage-campaign...

official visma statement: https://www.visma.com/press-releases/intelligence-report-vis...

These titles are so damn stupid. I'm so sick of "they did that", and "they did this", when they don't know.

I've always wondered how someone comes to the conclusion that is was China, Russia or USA who did something.

Anonymity isn't exactly hard on the internet, so how do this all play out? Are data left behind saying something along the lines of "Hey, gotcha! Best regards, China. Contact <person> for confirmation."? No.

"Advanced Persistent Threat 10" "Suspected attribution: China"

But, let's face it, it's not known that is was China, it might just as well be anyone else.

Maybe people should stop being so damn stupid and use accurate headlines.

Why doesn't the EU impose trade tariffs, sanctions or embargos on China?

China will continue to do this and laugh at the naiveté their victims.

There's no reason for them to stop until there is one.

I think the Norwegian farmer is depending on the Chinese to buy their Salmon fish. If the Chinese just stopped importing Salmon from Norway, a lot of people's livelihood is at stake.

And Germans depend on machinery exports, and Airbus depends on exports etc. etc..

But there has to be a price, or the leveraging game will continue.

When there is enough collective power they will waver as we can see in the current US-China negotiations.

The trade balance heavily favours EU and the US and the materiality of that fact becomes evident as soon as someone has the cohones to play the card.

Right now as China is facing an existential turning point with much lower rates of growth, is a good time to do it. And sooner is always better.

Afraid of losing a large market. It's the same with Australia. OECD countries need to band together to respond to countries abusing global trade.

EU is large enough they could do this alone. Or team up with US and really have some firepower.

Things like this is the point of the EU, not creating swaths of regulations about how much or little banannas can be bent.

A place like Australia (alone) could never stand up to China. They would be too willing to make an example of a small country that crosses them. China trade comes with huge amounts of political pride and convenience. Even if Australia joined forces with a larger block we risk being g made an example of like that general saying he would sink an Australian ship to send a message to the US.

Australia is part of ANZUS, which means if China attacked Australia, the US would be obligated to intervene

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANZUS

Obliged by ANZUS, but would they really?

I feel in the past countries would stick to their commitment for the bigger picture. Now, not so sure. I wonder if they would weigh pros and cons and decide to withdraw or not.

If it aligned with their national interests, yes and generally US and Australian interests do align

That link says that the treaty is non-binding

Trump would ask Australia to pay for the intervention.

"OECD countries need to band together to respond to countries abusing global trade."

Funny enough this was what the WTO was supposed to be for.

Norway or the others in the EU simply do not have the courage. They do not take responsibility, and just hope that this thing goes away by it self.

What naughty thing did Norway do 250 years ago that people can use to justify this hacking? (See references to Samuel Slater when China/Chinese nationals hacking American firms for trade secrets is discussed).

These news pop up almost weekly now.

I wonder what it will take for nations to start imposing a firewall on them – just like the one they impose on the rest of the world.

All speculation; no proof in article.

read through the article but can't find any hard evidence pointing to China. It makes me think that blaming China is just an easy way out when western companies got hacked due to their own failures to secure their businesses.

In China, there is no difference between international espionage and corporate espionage. Their Ministry of State Security has proved this again and again.

Stealing intellectual property from companies advances their military goals.

Thankfully, the biggest threat to the individual is a sprinkling of privacy invasion and the odd blackmail. They're miles behind the US on that front.

They won't come and bomb your country to dust to benefit corporate goals like getting access to oil for profit, or massive defence contracts.

"Thankfully, the biggest threat to the individual is a sprinkling of privacy invasion and the odd blackmail."

They have prison camps for political dissidents.

That's a red herring.

This thread is about the use of Chinese state resources to advance the interests of Chinese companies.

I thought your own post was the red herring.

You're the one who opened the door. If you can't take it, don't hand it out.

This is not IP, it's personal and corporate data.

was more work for hackers to hack every single device xD now they're just hacking one big server farm

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