Solarwind, Fireeye, Microsoft and Cisco leaks are offered for sale
solarleaks.net
solarleaks.net
There’s a PGP signature, but as far as I’ve head the attackers didn’t leave behind any other messages to prove it was signed with the same key.
The message is PGP signed. If the protonmail address is taken down, then another message will be put out with alternate means of contact that will have a correct PGP signature.
If you read the message there is indeed an onion address as backup in case things get taken down.
The PGP address is the important part. No matter what gets taken down, if they can get attention to another message with a valid PGP signature, then they can carry on easily.
EDIT: This is actually how Cicada3301 of all people operated. The PGP key allowed them to post a message even on Pastebin or /x/ and they would still be contactable and effectively uncensorable, because their identity was persistent and their messages were replicated.
A way to do it for example would be to use a stolen credit card to subscribe to a few VPN with hops on Tor in between and use that to set up a VPS that puts this up after a few weeks
The devil is in the details, but if you're careful you can leave absolutely no trace.
Source: https://support.torproject.org/faq/staying-anonymous/
Interacting with a tor browser would be amateurish at this point. Just connect to tor (not on a browser, tor directly), use a script to upload to some random pastebin, disconnect from tor.
Note that, for example, your isp can see whenever you are using tor or a VPN. From there, they can inspect the packets to work out what pastebin you have visited. Eg. simply by measuring how many bytes you have uploaded and then finding the paste and comparing the length of the paste with the number of uploaded bytes. (Just a basic example, there are more advanced methods). See https://witestlab.poly.edu/blog/de-anonymizing-tor-traffic-w...
This is why you don't actually post anything on pastebin yourself.
Rather, you SSH into a VPS (via multiple VPNs and Tor/I2P), then program the VPS to post your message to pastebin in a week.
And of course, you're not doing this from your home, you're doing this from the parking lot of a Starbucks in a car with tinted windows and fake plates, using a device with a spoofed MAC address.
There are many ways of pulling this off so that no one will ever be able to pin you down. You just need to pay attention to detail.
You're of course using some sort of obfuscated bridge too, so that packet sizes become meaningless.
Some examples where it could go wrong: what if the VPS was a honeypot? What if the VPN logged everything? What if Tor or other piece of software they are using has a 0-day? The more complexity, the more chance for a bug or mistake... and so on...
That said, a VPN logging everything, or Tor being compromised, or the VPS being a honeypot wouldn't be enough to compromise you, you'd need all of them to be true simultaneously.
Randomized MAC connecting to a MacDonalds free WiFi, cameras capture a masked guy in a hoodie or black Cutlass with unreadable plates. Now what?
Plenty of ways to be untraceable unless there is a spook at every hotspot, instantly notified of undesirable activity.
There actually isn't much attention on replacing PGP with anything specific.
What other completely decentralized alternatives exist with no single point of failure? libsodium? That's a good start but a long way from a complete alternative.
Plenty of quasi-centralized encrypted chat "apps" keep pretending they offer what PGP offers. The clueful ignore these gesticulations.
The closest I've found is using openssl's aes modes, but that requires the IV to be stored out-of-band somehow which is a do-able but a hassle I was hoping to avoid.
You can't verify a signature without a public key.
If you want to have a go at it yourself, run gpg -vv and paste the entire message, it will give you the public key.
You can change part of the message or the encoded fingerprint (which is a bit longer than the portion you pasted), and it will still report it the same way.
However, you will not be able to mathematically verify that this message and another one was signed by the same key.
If you look carefully at what GPG is telling you, probably see a line like this, unless you have the key in keyring:
gpg: Can't check signature: No public keyWindows source is open to most people at MS. MS is not joking when it says we practice an "inner source" policy, in that we do not rely on the security of our source code to secure our products.
Be like Red Hat where the OS is open but you pay for support, I don't know why that model wouldn't work for MS.
I do believe we will see open source Windows in... the next decade?
Anyone want to take a longbet with me? ;-)
* Trademark notice: JavaScript® is a registered trademark of Oracle America Inc.
When was the last you heard somebody say: "I bought windows (server) because of the print subsystem"? I could see them adopting CUPS, for example. That way in 10 years they can stop maintaining theirs when current versions EOL.
But for "intimate areas" that may take time, or may never happen. Or they move into the hardware. So I remain skeptical wrt a 100% auditable (modern) tech-stack.
In the case of the browser-engine I wish though, that they had not picked webkit. What were the reasons against Gecko? Not "embedable" enough?
The print subsystem is one of the backwards compatibility limits on redesigning parts of the classic control panel - I'm fairly sure Raymond Chen has written about it - because so many print drivers depend on the way it works to hack in pages and popup dialogs for specialist configurations for their printers.
It also integrates decently with Windows' granular permissions, file and printer sharing on networks, logging, has tons of specialist printers like label printers, receipt printers, etc and is used by a ton of 3rd party management and configuration tools. I would be hugely surprised if it's unsupported in 2031.
> "*"I bought windows (server) because of the print subsystem"?"
When was the last you heard somebody say: "I would buy Windows server, if it had CUPS printing support in it"?
When using CUPS in my previous posts as an example of "Standard OpenSource component that could be a drop-in replacement in a vast majority of deployments/installations", I was hoping, that somebody knowledgeable would reply with some details about the (speciality-use) features/use-cases of the Windows Print-System.
You mentioned a few points, that I'll try to itemize, and respond to:
* Specialty hardware setup, and UI's for that: In these times(for non-ancient devices/deployments), is that not easily solved by the [WEB-]UI of the printer?
* Speciality hardware runtime control for printjobs (staples, binds, folds, glue, mailing, ...): I thought, all of these are commonly abstracted into "verbs" in the PCL/PJL, and just need to be "included" in the PrintJob.
* Decent integration into enterprise setups. In what ways do you find CUPS lacking here? I find CUPS+AD-Auth_to_Samba4AD works great, and all the RSAT tools are functional from a domain member workstation
* Driver support: Is that really still a problem these days?
* Availability of paid support for Windows Printsystem for X amount of money in 2031: If commercial interest is there, I have no doubt, that MS will offer something like for WinXP and Win7 years after the normal EOL of Srv201{6,9}. I just thought, It was already visible now, that the "commercial interest" for this was going to be small, but then again I might be underestimating the (future) size of the "Seriously large-scale paper printing" market.
> "When was the last you heard somebody say: "I would buy Windows server, if it had CUPS printing support in it"? "
Admittedly, never, but I can probably count in years the paid time, that I have worked helping clients with their Windows Print problems, many times calming them down to get the screaming and crying under control. So maybe a replaced print-system (In WinServer) could (by some) be seen as net positive, while the average Windows Home user wont notice/care. ;)
And you'd have versions with configurable update servers. And LE probably really enjoys the fact, that they can ask "Hey, next time SubjectX downloads daily defender updates, please add-in the Remote-Adminstration-Toolkit" for any of a billion computers. I'm expecting MS to get a big list soon with maybe several dozen million new "people of interest" that need tracking.
That being said Microsoft is slowly "getting" open source. We'll see how far their gut will let them take it.
They do share source code if you're big enough that the revenue matters to them: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sharedsource/
Windows has many of these components, and they are even attributed when you know where to look. For example, the code for parts of the disk management utility, the spinning-disk defragmenter, and NTFS quota management were based from code provided by VERITAS Systems (which I am not even sure if the company still exists). The MP3 codec is provided by Fraunhofer (which still exists, but I'm sure that they will not agree to open-sourcing that codec). On the other hand, some of them are under permissive licenses or even the same code as other counterparts (while the BSD TCP/IP stack story ranges from code removed by Windows 2000 to simply an apocryphal tale) for example, the code by IJG for JPEG support is used extensively in Windows. The only built-in (L)GPL code used ever was the BRLTTY system (https://mielke.cc/brltty/index.html) and LibLouis (http://liblouis.org/), which was used for Braille accessibility (WSL2 used the Linux kernel, but they are arguably a different application with separate instances).
Edit: Microsoft's third-party disclosures: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/legal/products/notices/win
On the other hand, they can't freely release the code, something which is of little benefit to them anyway. How is that a "strong case" against?
Offering support contracts for open source code is an extremely difficult business model. It happens to be one of the few that actually can work, but the margins are just not great compared to the proprietary software industry. 90% of the kinds of customers who really "should" be paying you simply won't do so if they think they can scrape by without doing so.
Leaks are possible, no doubt. But yeah, prison.
There's some very old DOS leaks too, but the "in between" seems to have somehow been avoided.
I can't find it on any keyserver, yet.
[0] https://api.protonmail.ch/pks/lookup?op=get&search=solarleak...
But I don't think the full API is documented. There are some attempts to reverse engineer an API from the WebClient [1], but they tend to be... Brittle.
[0] https://protonmail.com/support/knowledge-base/download-publi...
I really don’t like doing this, but [citation needed]
- - Q: Is this really happening? Can you provide proof? A: Yes and yes.
Q: Why no more details? A: We aren't fully done yet and we want to preserve the most of our current access. Consider this a first batch.
Q: I'm [vendor] and want my data back? A: Talk to us.
Q: Why not leak it for free? A: Nothing comes free in this world.
Q: How to buy? A: Contact us for more information."
These don't sound like things that the Russian government or any nation state would be saying.
Makes the U.S. intelligence / media look stupid. And if it turns out that it is some individuals that happen to live in Russia, it still makes the U.S. look stupid.
FireEye [2] Dec 13th & Volexity [3] Dec 14th were more cautious, citing an unknown actor that they dubbed UNC2452, and Dark Halo, respectively.
Recorded Future made a fair but ultimately inconclusive case for Chinese attribution [4], Dec 30th.
US gov/CISA continues to claim "Russian linked" [5], Jan 5th.
Kaspersky reported a link to the Kazuar malware used by Russian actor Turla [6], Jan 11th.
CrowdStrike's report on the malware injector [7], Jan 11th says "does not attribute the SUNSPOT implant, SUNBURST backdoor or TEARDROP post-exploitation tool to any known adversary".
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/russian-gov...
[2] https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2020/12/evasive...
[3] https://www.volexity.com/blog/2020/12/14/dark-halo-leverages...
[4] https://www.recordedfuture.com/solarwinds-attribution/
[5] https://www.cisa.gov/news/2021/01/05/joint-statement-federal...
[6] https://securelist.com/sunburst-backdoor-kazuar/99981/
[7] https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/sunspot-malware-technical-a...
The benefits of blaming things on Russia for certain political parties are obvious, but those politicians and media members continue to make claims while never presenting any evidence, so you really have to ask yourself what is more likely to be true; A bunch of vapid politicians self benefitting claims without evidence, or the far more obvious possibility that a group of techie people from some random country hacked an easy target for money.
Occam's razor say it is the later.
During an active incident, attribution details are not published. This incident still has people responding to it, and potentially further impacted victims. Indicators of compromise are published to allow for entities to hunt for malware or evidence of breach within their environments, but details that directly attribute a particular strain of malware to a threat actor are generally not shared (at least with the general public). Publishing those details could cause the threat actor to change those details and therefore evade detection and persist in impacted environments.
Let's take the Google breach of 2009, known as Operation Aurora as an example (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora). China was claimed to be the culprit at the time, but it was not until three years later that Fireeye / Mandiant finally published the details that were used to track and identify the threat actor as part of their APT1 report (https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2013/02/mandian...).
In this particular case, even though the known impacted entity count is around 250, around 18 thousand entities downloaded the backdoored version of SolarWinds and are at risk. Publishing attribution details now could negatively impact their response. When respected entities in the field make a claim on attribution, generally it is accepted as if those entities were lying, their service (and potentially some of their executives as they are publicly traded in some cases) would go to jail.
It's important to note that each responding team will have access to different data sources and be able to make different claims as a result. CrowdStrike declined to do attribution, whereas FireEye was more definitive with naming a group. This is likely as FireEye was impacted first hand and was able to capture indicators that are not public. (One of the steps of IR is containment, where you observe a threat actors activity to figure out where they are in your environment, so you literally get to watch them some.)
The people in charge of the various government agencies are politicians without experience in this area true, but they are briefed and educated by the experts that do have experience in that space. Likewise, Washington Post is known for vetting stories in this space carefully. At this stage in the game, it is highly unlikely it is not Russia, as this sales pitch is very similar to when Russian associated actors leaked the NSA toolset. It too was advertised for sale via bitcoin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shadow_Brokers).
Anyways, if you're interested in this space, go find your local incident response (DFIR) meetup and ask how they track malware families. IP addresses are probably not one of their best signals for who made malware or executed an attack.
Great post overall, but I disagree here. It's indeed very likely Russian intelligence did the compromise, but it's still unclear if this particular "leaks for sale" offer is legitimate or just a random unrelated troll trying to make quick money before they get outed as fake. It does sound similar to the Shadow Brokers offer, but that could easily be emulated (and probably would be emulated if a scammer was trying to sound like Russia).
It could be legitimate, but I would be highly skeptical unless/until they release some samples of what they have. The Shadow Brokers started out not providing anything but later started leaking things to prove they weren't lying.
So I'd say this is worth keeping an eye on, but shouldn't be taken very seriously until they post at least some shred of evidence supporting their claims.
Has anyone actually attributed TSB to Russian actors? I don’t think so.
The US government certainly hasn’t made such claim, to my knowledge the mainstream press hasn’t made such a claim and neither have any of the companies you’d usually trust to make such assessments.
> TLDR; just tell us who’s behind the SolarWinds supply chain attack?
> Honestly, we don’t know.
> To clarify – we are NOT saying that DarkHalo / UNC2452, the group using Sunburst, and Kazuar or Turla are the same.
Tho it's really not, the only "official" attributions are WaPos unnamed government source and US agencies saying "Russian linked".
But there is no real evidence for that except those Kaspersky heuristics about the malware having been used before, which is really not that much of a "smoking gun".
There's also the fact that for pretty much everybody involved it would be much more convenient to have this framed as a "state actor attack": The amount of companies breached and their nature just makes this horribly embarrassing for most people responsible and involved.
Even letting on the possibility that some kind of non-state actor is responsible for this would add even more insult to the already existing injury.
Why not? Sharing stolen source costs them nothing, and nation state hackers have budgets just like the rest of us.
They probably wouldn’t even get in big trouble for selling this stuff and using the money to buy themselves lambos, a nice bonus on top of the government hacker salary.
The current narrative is that they aren't on payroll or under orders, but instead individuals or groups within the collective (cozy bear) act on their own initiative to win putin's favor.
According to whom?
They didn't pay to get that data they're now charging money for. "Nothing is free when we're offering it" they should say.
Tutanota on the other hand lost a court battle in Germany and had to give up email data from one of their suspected-to-be-criminal clients [0]
0:https://www.cyberscoop.com/germany-court-ruling-tutanota-ema...
Particularly considering Guccifer is a real person and referencing other hackers not that unheard of.
I didn't realize the bar for "debunking" had become so low.
I mean this could just be an attempt to make it _seem_ like it's not a nation state.
One way to essentially guarntee that it _was_ a nation state is for the stolen data to never turn up for sale to the public/back to the owners as we would naturally assume whoever the actor was was happy just keeping everything to themselves, something only a nation state would ever really do. a non-nation state's only real motivation would be financial and so if no evidence of that ever came about, the only real alternative would be to assume it was a nation state.
This goes both ways: Or they would be exactly the kind of things a government would say to dispel any notion of it being a government.
> Makes the U.S. intelligence / media look stupid. And if it turns out that it is some individuals that happen to live in Russia, it still makes the U.S. look stupid.
I wonder whatever happened to that whole mantra of the early 2000s and 2010s when governments would regurgitate the difficulty in dealing with "cyber" due to the "asymmetric" nature of "cyber warfare"?
Somehow that was completely forgotten over the last decade in favor of blaming any and all InfoSec breaches instantly on some state actor.
One has to wonder how much of that is just deflecting from bad practices with "The enemy is a state, nothing we could do to defend against an attacker that powerful!" in favor over admitting "Yeah some autistic dude in his parents basement pwned all our stuff because our security is completely amateurish".
According to their FAQ, when you register a domain name through them, they own the domain but they respect the agreement between them and the customer to let the customer have "full usage rights".
They seem to provide rather fun named name servers. Reads "you can get no info".
dig +short ns solarleaks.net | sort
1-you.njalla.no.
2-can.njalla.in.
3-get.njalla.fo.
[*]: "Bitcoin, Litecoin, Monero, ZCash, DASH, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum"
On top of that, the data here (which is posted with the mega.co.nz decryption keys standard as part of the URL) has an additional layer of encryption by the uploader, so for all anyone can prove it's pictures of cats, and not anything illegal.
Lol.