St. Paul, MN, was hacked so badly that the National Guard has been deployed
-
Is this a joke or are you serious?
Goddamn it, I can't tell anymore
They found him
It's a joke....
-
FBI, National Guard assist St. Paul as cyber-attackers force shutdown of Internet-based systems
St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter declared a state of local emergency on July 29 following a days-long cyber attack on the city's Internet-based computer networks that led the city to call in the FBI and Gov. Tim Walz to enlist ...
(techxplore.com)
Minnesota activates National Guard as cyberattack on Saint Paul disrupts public services | TechCrunch
Gov. Tim Walz activated the state military's cyber forces to help ensure public services continue to run as the city of Saint Paul battles an ongoing cyberattack.
TechCrunch (techcrunch.com)
So, this actually was first detected on Friday July 25, escalated all the way up to the Emergency Operations Center on July 28 (Monday), state of emergency / near total intranet shut down (they are quarantineing the whole system) on July 29 (Tuesday).
It seems to me that some kind of rather sophisticated threat actor managed to get into the core ... this techxplore article calls it a 'VPN', but it isn't technically a VPN, its a secure access tunnel system that city-gov systems and employees use to talk to each other, it almost certainly is not intended to be geared toward broad internet access/usage, beyond accepting user input from public facing government web portals, such as say, people paying their utliity bills online or trying to submit a business liscense application online, things like that.
This system is sounding like it got fully compromised (as in, low level/high privilege level access was secured), and was either sending data out/in through improper IP addresses, and/or was possibly being hijacked to do some kind of DOS attack ... on itself?
I am having a really hard time finding any exact details on this, but this is my best guess.
Given that the EOC essentially immediately shutdown everything and called in a National Guard Cybersecurity team, it seems to me that there is a high chance this was done by basically a nation-state level threat actor.
It also at least seems like the systems, the data, the hardware, have at least not yet been locked down in a ransomware style move, which... could be largely due to their just quickly pulling the whole thing offline, or could be because that wasn't the goal of the attackers... or some combination of both.
Yeah that's a vpn
-
Yep.
I've been one.
Thats how I know what I am saying.
Like you're not even challenging what I'm saying really, you admit that most PMs are technically incompetent, because their job is mainly playing office politics.
It didn't used to be this way.
And it still doesn't have to be.
A good PM is someone who actually knows their relevant field, and can also do some office politics, but much more importantly, is a responsible and helpful team leader.
A person with only an MBA just has a degree in how to play office politics and gaslight people.
It's always been that way, and always will be. Most people are mediocre at most things.
-
I know of one successful supply chain attack in FOSS.
So still points for using it.
AUR has had multiple Trojans just this week
-
should we get a list of foss projects that have had security issues? Or how about how someone slips some shit in upstream every few weeks it seems?
Stop this nonsense. You can hate Microsoft for legitimate reasons.
Mate have a look at the SharePoint vulnerability. It's embarrassingly bad. Like really really bad, and btw so bad that it's very easy to understand and exploit. And prevent too, if a jr in my team did this I'd get them in trouble.
-
Yeah that's a vpn
No, no its not.
Its an intranet with a secure portal system in and out if it.
In fact, a primary purpose of a VPN, spoofing your IP/geolocation, pretending you are someone you aren't... is pretty much antithetical to a highly controlled system of users with varying levels of access to specific, private areas of that system.
Maybe try and read up at least the basics of the words I am using before you say more really silly things.
-
No, no its not.
Its an intranet with a secure portal system in and out if it.
In fact, a primary purpose of a VPN, spoofing your IP/geolocation, pretending you are someone you aren't... is pretty much antithetical to a highly controlled system of users with varying levels of access to specific, private areas of that system.
Maybe try and read up at least the basics of the words I am using before you say more really silly things.
The primary purpose of a VPN is to create a tunnel between two networks, hence the name "virtual private network". I'm very familiar with them as I work with these systems for a living.
-
The primary purpose of a VPN is to create a tunnel between two networks, hence the name "virtual private network". I'm very familiar with them as I work with these systems for a living.
I'm guessing some people don't know (or forgot) that site-to-site and remote access VPN's are a thing, and was the initial purpose of VPN's. Masking or hiding your location became a benefit after the fact, and todays more common client VPN is technically a remote access VPN with a new purpose.
Remote access VPN's are a very common attack vector for companies, look up companies compromised with Fortinet gear and its typically through the firewalls VPN.
In fact, a primary purpose of a VPN, spoofing your IP/geolocation, pretending you are someone you aren't... is pretty much antithetical to a highly controlled system of users with varying levels of access to specific, private areas of that system.
Most modern remote access VPN's do exactly that, so it is not antithetical at all and is how most client VPN's keep you from accessing other users data. I would encourage you to read up on WireGuard and the like, they are fun to learn about and awesome tools when configured properly.
Also, we removed the above comment because the last sentence was fairly rude and violates rule 3 @sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
-
AUR has had multiple Trojans just this week
I'm sorry, Dave, but AUR does not count.
-
What's Saint Paul gonna do about it?
Complain to Jesus?
-
Mate have a look at the SharePoint vulnerability. It's embarrassingly bad. Like really really bad, and btw so bad that it's very easy to understand and exploit. And prevent too, if a jr in my team did this I'd get them in trouble.
No no, you don't get it.
Random Windows 'Powerusers' obviously know more about programming and cybersecurity than people who actually do that for a living, as a professional line of work, duh!
See, I wrote a bash file once, so I basically know everything about software dev, especially on linux as well, which is basically just the whole OS is powershell, right?
/s/s/s