'Patient zero' in cyberattack on UN aviation agency was official's son (2019) | Hacker News Reader

'Patient zero' in cyberattack on UN aviation agency was official's son (2019)

cbc.ca

136 pointsilamont11 comments

From a CBC article linked in the story above: "This attack had all the hallmarks of a classic "watering hole" attack, in which hackers find a website that their targets frequent and infect it with malware in order to gain access to those targets. "

is there any more detail on the specific malware infection and if it was, in fact, a "watering hole" attack or if they simply don't have a clue how this happened and have called it this simply so there's a plausible explanation?

An earlier article says that watering hole attacks are a common attack method used by the group, but that they probably already had access to the network, just not to specific individuals computers.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/emissary-panda-chine...

(From July 2019)

Looks like Vincent Smith (the whistleblower) was fired in Dec 2019.

https://whistleblower.org/press-release/press-release-un-int...

Those responsible for the termination decision include the two subjects of Smith’s complaint, Secretary General Fang Liu and Council President Olumuyiwa Benard Aliu

Of course, we've no idea of other personal and political dynamics between the complaint subjects and the whistleblower, but at least on this summary, something stinks.

"Smith writes that he was told in a Feb. 25 email from ICAO's chief information security officer, Si Nguyen Vo, that the laptop of a former ICAO IT officer, Maxim Aliu, was infected while he was on a trip to the agency's regional office in Beijing in 2010.

"Maxim Aliu is the son of ICAO's current council president, Olumuyiwa Benard Aliu, who was Nigeria's representative on the council in 2010."

The "official's son" in the headline is misleading. This isn't the case of someone's child hosing up their laptop.

It may, however, be a case of nepotism and gross organizational idiocy.

It's not misleading at all. Mentioning "son" in this context was to imply nepotism, not to attempt to mislead the reader into thinking the son is a child.

After reading only the headline, I for one assumed it was the official's child, so it's at least somewhat misleading, perhaps not intentionally though.

At least personally, I generally don't assume son or daughter imply age. It's just the relationship. Here's an example headline where the son was almost 100 years old[1]:

> JRR Tolkien's son Christopher dies aged 95

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/16/jrr-tolkiens-s...

Two systems of justice in many countries ... one for the have's and one for the have-not's.

In Massachusetts, Governor Charlie Baker's son was not even arrested:

https://www.bostonherald.com/2019/04/05/da-rachael-rollins-s...

Fucking up is one thing.

Getting involved in a coverup of that fuckup is quite another.

Gonna guess Prez Aliu never read his kid the popular bedtime story of Tricky Dick And The Cuban Thieves. That one ended in boiling oil too.

Is a messed up and corrupt organization anyways.

Taiwan was one of the founders and replaced by China and Taiwan is forbidden to join the meetings. China is leading and they now have full control over the worlds flight data.

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