How Hackers Broke into John Podesta and Colin Powell’s Gmail Accounts

Re:How Hackers Broke into John Podesta and Colin Powell’s Gm... by tptacek on Thursday October 20, 2016 @06:32PM (#12756755)

The specific attack vector isn't the only IOC they're working from for these incidents; there are probably dozens of IOCs associated with each attack, some of which are extremely specific to just one or two threat actors. Many of those IOC signatures are non-public; you only get them by being in intelligence or law enforcement, or by being one of the handful of threat intelligence companies deployed at enough giant enterprises to see enough of a cross-section of attackers.

So when people say things like "anyone could have carried out this attack" or "these systems are so insecure it could have been anybody who did it", they're not actually addressing the argument.

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Re:How Hackers Broke into John Podesta and Colin Powell’s Gm... by dahdum on Thursday October 20, 2016 @06:49PM (#12756855)

Makes sense, but at the end of the day didn't he fall for the same basic phishing attack so many others do? If it's so effective and easy I have to imagine the NSA is doing the same.

Whole thing makes me really wonder if using insecure email in government is a good idea...

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Re:How Hackers Broke into John Podesta and Colin Powell’s Gm... by nickpsecurity on Friday October 21, 2016 @12:44AM (#12758186)

It's long been known not to use insecure endpoints, email, etc in government. NSA used to certify the high-assurance alternatives. Here was one of the early ones with incredibly-strong TCB for the time:

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.454...

Almost all older or modern ones build email processing capabilities onto guards optionally with a proxy on client's side to integrate with common, mail client. Here's an article describing what a guard is along with some examples government uses today:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guard_(information_security)

Firewalls are knockoffs of guards that were created after businesses and much of government rejected high-assurance systems since they didn't have development pace and [insecure] features of low-security competition. Firewalls were cheap, fast, constantly added features, and totally left off the whole "design it to be nearly unhackable" aspect of guards. Even the guards themselves have lowered their assurance at the TCB and guard software over the years as neither military nor commercial market really care outside a small niche of customers. Remaining ones like Boeing SNS Server and BAE's XTS-400 go for $100,000+ a unit due to limited market + high development & certification costs.

So, that's that. Medium-assurance solutions like Nexor's and General Dynamics continue being developed and adopted. They'll get smashed, though, since they're all adopting Linux-based cores & other COTS tech. Such are the market incentives.

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Re:How Hackers Broke into John Podesta and Colin Powell’s Gm... by eric_h on Thursday October 20, 2016 @07:05PM (#12756930)

I think there are countless examples across government, industry and personal accounts that using insecure email is a universally bad idea.

Unfortunately it has the strongest network effect at the moment, and no one's come up with a way to get everyone to use encryption/cryptographic signatures yet.

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Re:How Hackers Broke into John Podesta and Colin Powell’s Gm... by jessaustin on Thursday October 20, 2016 @09:04PM (#12757496)

Surely an agency like NSA could make such rules?!

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Re:How Hackers Broke into John Podesta and Colin Powell’s Gm... by tptacek on Thursday October 20, 2016 @10:16PM (#12757719)

There is no secure email. If you need to send a message securely, don't use email to do it. I agree with you.

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