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HEADLINE: Stealthy, Destructive Malware Infects Half A Million Routers
PUBLISHER: Wired
COMMENT: Are you noticing how basically every piece of society’s infrastructure is easily attackable? As if the Global Positioning System (GPS) lack of security wasn’t enough, now we have routers all over the world getting compromised. Great way to start a war and gain a huge advantage over an enemy country before it even begins. Just read what the original article from Talos Intelligence (the security team) says about this malware: “Both the scale and the capability of this operation are concerning. Working with our partners, we estimate the number of infected devices to be at least 500,000 in at least 54 countries….the malware has a destructive capability that can render an infected device unusable, which can be triggered on individual victim machines or en masse, and has the potential of cutting off internet access for hundreds of thousands of victims worldwide. We assess with high confidence that this malware is used to create an expansive, hard-to-attribute infrastructure that can be used to serve multiple operational needs of the threat actor. Since the affected devices are legitimately owned by businesses or individuals, malicious activity conducted from infected devices could be mistakenly attributed to those who were actually victims of the actor. Finally, this malware could be used to conduct a large-scale destructive attack by using the “kill” command, which would render some or all of the physical devices unusable. Defending against this threat is extremely difficult due to the nature of the affected devices. The majority of them are connected directly to the internet, with no security devices or services between them and the potential attackers.” – SOURCE: Talos Intelligence – New VPNFilter malware targets at least 500K networking devices worldwide. This is a professional malware, maybe with war-like intentions behind it. Although the security team aren’t saying that these hackers are the same russians that attacked Ukraine’s power grids (read the article), there’s the possibility of it being a state-sponsored attack. Again, a possibility. Bloomberg reports this as well, but includes Putin’s words at the end: “‘Russian state-sponsored actors are using compromised routers to conduct spoofing ‘man-in-the-middle’ attacks to support espionage, extract intellectual property, maintain persistent access to victim networks and potentially lay a foundation for future offensive operations,’ according to a joint statement. ‘Multiple sources including private and public-sector cybersecurity research organizations and allies have reported this activity to the U.S. and U.K. governments’. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied using cyber weapons, but Putin last year did suggest that “patriotically minded hackers” could have been behind attacks against Russia’s rivals. The Pentagon has said Russian “trolling” activity increased 2,000 percent after the Syria strike.” – SOURCE: Bloomberg. The Feds are also blaming Russia as a nation for similar attacks, this time on Power grids: “Officials in Washington say that Russian hackers are in the midst of a widespread attack on crucial components of U.S. infrastructure, according to a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report released Thursday. The targets of these attacks include the country’s electric grid, including its nuclear power system, as well as ‘commercial facilities, water, aviation, and critical manufacturing sectors’ the statement said. ‘In some cases, information posted to company websites, especially information that may appear to be innocuous, may contain operationally sensitive information’ the report reads. ‘As an example, the threat actors downloaded a small photo from a publicly accessible human resources page. The image, when expanded, was a high-resolution photo that displayed control systems equipment models and status information in the background.'” – SOURCE: Time. And even the United Kingdom is making joint statements with the United States and blaming Russia for this latest attack on routers. So what can you conclude? Simple: We’re entering in a war-like scenario and pieces are being moved on the board. That’s pretty obvious. Because such level of reinforcement by different governments that a nation is to blame, is a warning sign that retaliation is coming, and therefore that a war may be coming as a consequence. And you — the entrepreneur/businessman/civilian — better get ready for all this.