this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2023
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[–] mvirts@lemmy.world 144 points 1 year ago (5 children)

"the malware is written in the Visual Basic Scripting language." is where I stopped 😹 lol at least we know the Russians are suffering.

[–] EmergMemeHologram@startrek.website 80 points 1 year ago (3 children)

This is like when I assumed my high school IT department was so good that I'd never be able to get past their content restrictions, but then renaming Halo CE to "explorer.exe" let me play all the games I wanted.

[–] June@lemm.ee 9 points 1 year ago

I had FF3 broken up into a few files and renamed and disbursed through the school network so I’d just pull them all into a local file at the computer I was working at in the lab and play during class. I thought I was the shit.

[–] sour@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

norton family:

[–] digger@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

Renaming it to "winword.exe" was my go-to.

[–] tsonfeir@lemm.ee 31 points 1 year ago (1 children)

To be fair, it’s pretty smart to exploit the flaws in VB to make malware.

[–] TWeaK@lemm.ee 37 points 1 year ago (1 children)

To be fair, it’s pretty smart to exploit the flaws in Microsoft to make malware.

[–] tsonfeir@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

Haha touché

[–] elbarto777@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Are they? Because if the worm is successfully spreading... 🤷

It's funny, though..

[–] Kusimulkku@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They're Russians. There's no situation where they aren't suffering.

[–] Anomalous_Llama@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

They’ve been exporting their suffering to Ukraine the last few years as well.

[–] Numberone@startrek.website 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

As a non programmer, isn't visual basic for Excell scripts?

[–] deur@feddit.nl 9 points 1 year ago

No you can run any .vbs script standalone

[–] soulfirethewolf@lemdro.id 32 points 1 year ago

if you're cold, they're cold

put them in the computer at your work

[–] TWeaK@lemm.ee 27 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Meanwhile if you load Baofeng software from a few years ago antivirus software today will ping out. It never used to ping out, such is the nature of zero days.

Meanwhile Israel has been selling weapons grade hacking technology for decades, they've been directly linked to the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi as well as the Mexican cartels.

Meanwhile Argentina happens to be the hub for zero day exploits, with a bunch of hackers inventing their own shit and selling directly to state actors or whoever will pay.


The only way you can remain secure is to regularly install a fresh OS. Change my mind.

[–] Agent641@lemmy.world 39 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The only way to be truly secure is to throw your computer into the sea and return, naked and fearless, into the forest from whence we came.

[–] bhamlin@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But what about the bears?!?

[–] Thranduil@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Are they moon bears or saturn bears?

[–] MonkeMischief@lemmy.today 3 points 1 year ago

This is just return to monke but more poetic... ... I'm here for it.

... Except for the bugs. I'd rather deal with software bugs than jungle bugs...

[–] metallic_z3r0@infosec.pub 28 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Change my mind.

Sure. Even regularly installing a new OS doesn't necessarily keep you secure if someone wanted to discreetly install malware on your device. In addition to firmware-level rootkits that re-install themselves on fresh OSs (even platform-agnostic ones), it's possible that someone might interdict whatever hardware is bought and implant it with additional small hardware that compromises it in some way.

[–] db2@sopuli.xyz 7 points 1 year ago

They don't even need to work that hard, just compromise the ME/PSP and do whatever.

[–] Pons_Aelius@kbin.social 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Change my mind.

In the end, if you are not of interest to a nation state hacker (or a member of a drug cartel) you have nothing to fear from the things you listed.

But that won;t change your mind.

[–] thesmokingman@programming.dev 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Your incorrect assumption is that only cartels and nation states are using said software. Weaponized versions of this stuff are making their way to consumer levels where you just need to piss off the wrong person online. I don’t worry about the US government targeting me beyond normal levels; I worry about employers deploying spyware.

[–] Pons_Aelius@kbin.social -3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I worry about employers deploying spyware.

If you are using their equipment, it is not spyware and you should expect to be under surveillance when using it.

If you are allowing them to install shit on your devices, the fault is all yours.

[–] thesmokingman@programming.dev 3 points 1 year ago

Once again, you’re making incorrect assumptions. My concern is employers using the spyware we’re talking about without consent on devices they don’t control. Take a minute to think through before responding. Why would I be worried about either of the two things you mentioned?

[–] thesmokingman@programming.dev 4 points 1 year ago

Unless you’re rotating accounts and not posting anything on the internet ever, going so far as to use an in-memory OS like Tails won’t protect you.

[–] TWeaK@lemm.ee 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Also, would this be the same group that hacked the Socchi Winter Olympics, soon after Russia was banned? The one that the US indicted and labelled as a "petulant child"?

[–] thesmokingman@programming.dev 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No. Attribution wasn’t clear for Olympic Destroyer; it’s doubtful we’ll we ever know the specific APT responsible. Signals intelligence was used to guess at Russian attribution so we at least have a pretty good idea which country launched it.

[–] TWeaK@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

https://americanmilitarynews.com/2020/10/2447380/

Maybe the attribution isn't 100% (as would be expected with how the attacker masked themselves using techniques from every major nation state hacker) but Russian hackers were indeed indicted for it.

[–] thesmokingman@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Correct. That’s what I called out with my second link. Your question was whether Gamaredon did Olympic Destroyer.

[–] TWeaK@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ah I get what you're saying. Would be more helpful if lemmy presented more than one comment in context when replying.

[–] thesmokingman@programming.dev 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I thought it was a really valuable question! There are several Russian APTs and you made me question my understanding of the attack. I had to reread some stuff to make sure I could answer you properly.

[–] TWeaK@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

I mean I was mainly joking and shoehorning in another story I knew a bit more about, but thank you for the other links for me to read :)

[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 5 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


A group of Russian-state hackers known for almost exclusively targeting Ukranian entities has branched out in recent months either accidentally or purposely by allowing USB-based espionage malware to infect a variety of organizations in other countries.

“Gamaredon continues to focus on [a] wide variety [of] Ukrainian targets, but due to the nature of the USB worm, we see indications of possible infection in various countries like USA, Vietnam, Chile, Poland and Germany,” Check Point researchers reported recently.

The image above, tracking submissions of LitterDrifter to the Alphabet-owned VirusTotal service, indicates that the Gamaredon malware may be infecting targets well outside the borders of Ukraine.

The data suggests that the number of infections in the US, Vietnam, Chile, Poland, and Germany combined may be roughly half of those hitting organizations inside Ukraine.

The core essence of the Spreader module lies in recursively accessing subfolders in each drive and creating LNK decoy shortcuts, alongside a hidden copy of the “trash.dll” file.

“Comprised of two primary components—-a spreading module and a C2 module—it’s clear that LitterDrifter was designed to support a large-scale collection operation,” Check Point researchers wrote.


The original article contains 744 words, the summary contains 185 words. Saved 75%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] tsonfeir@lemm.ee -5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh noes, my Macintosh is safe again!

[–] nosnahc@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You're on lemmy but not using Linux?!?!!??! Wtf are you?! /s

[–] tsonfeir@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Technically, I’ve got dozens of Linux servers. 😇

[–] A_A@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

Nice joke 😋🤣 ! with the Macintosh. (since it is Windows, yes, you are protected).

... read it yesterday and today again and only now I got it. Well, I am quite slow on the uptake for jokes 😆.