RandomGuy
07-30-2018, 08:49 AM
... probably!
Donald Trump certainly got this one right. I'm sure the phishing attempts were to help McCaskill.
GRU 2018 SENATE ELECTIONS RUSSIAN MILITARY INTELLIGENCE FANCY BEAR SPEARPHISHING
Russians Tried To Hack Claire McCaskill. To Help Her, Probably!
Doktor Zoom July 27, 2018 02:00 PM
The universe has a funny way of creating ironic juxtapositions. Like for instance, just the other day, Donald Trump took to the Twitter to try to convince everyone Russia would probably try to get Democrats elected in the midterms because Trump is so very tough on Russia. It was therefore nearly mandatory for news to break yesterday that Russia tried to access email accounts from the office of Democrat Claire McCaskill, the US senator from Missouri. Irony achievement: unlocked. Fortunately, not so much any of her staff's emails, that we know of.
The attempt to grab control of emails from McCaskill's office was done through a targeted "spearphishing" attack similar to the one carried out in 2016 by those Fancy Bears against Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta. Emails claiming to be from Microsoft were sent to McCaskill's Senate staff, telling them their passwords for Microsoft Exchange had expired, and asking staffers to click a link to update their password. The location went not to Microsoft, but to a spoofed URL set up by the GRU, Russia's military intelligence agency and a page that looked exactly like the central login page for Senate email and other online services.
The Daily Beast notes it was a fairly clever phishing attempt:
As with the Podesta phishing, each Senate phishing email had a different link coded with the recipient's email address. That allowed the fake password-change webpage to display the user's email address when they arrived, making the site more convincing.
Luckily, Microsoft had previously sued the GRU for other attempts to impersonate its products, and had stolen back control of the spoofed Senate address, which meant that when anyone clicked on the link, their data went not to Russia, but to a "sinkhole server" owned by Microsoft. It was apparently a really good fake: At last week's Aspen Security Forum, Microsoft VP Tom Burt said the company had saved three US midterm election candidates' offices from having their passwords phished, although Burt didn't name the candidates.
"We did discover that a fake Microsoft domain had been established as the landing page for phishing attacks, and we saw metadata that suggested those phishing attacks were being directed at three candidates who are all standing for elections in the midterm elections," said Burt, Microsoft's corporate vice president for customer security and trust. "We took down that domain and working with the government actually were able to avoid anybody being infected by that particular attack."
https://www.wonkette.com/claire-mccaskill-hacked
Donald Trump certainly got this one right. I'm sure the phishing attempts were to help McCaskill.
GRU 2018 SENATE ELECTIONS RUSSIAN MILITARY INTELLIGENCE FANCY BEAR SPEARPHISHING
Russians Tried To Hack Claire McCaskill. To Help Her, Probably!
Doktor Zoom July 27, 2018 02:00 PM
The universe has a funny way of creating ironic juxtapositions. Like for instance, just the other day, Donald Trump took to the Twitter to try to convince everyone Russia would probably try to get Democrats elected in the midterms because Trump is so very tough on Russia. It was therefore nearly mandatory for news to break yesterday that Russia tried to access email accounts from the office of Democrat Claire McCaskill, the US senator from Missouri. Irony achievement: unlocked. Fortunately, not so much any of her staff's emails, that we know of.
The attempt to grab control of emails from McCaskill's office was done through a targeted "spearphishing" attack similar to the one carried out in 2016 by those Fancy Bears against Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta. Emails claiming to be from Microsoft were sent to McCaskill's Senate staff, telling them their passwords for Microsoft Exchange had expired, and asking staffers to click a link to update their password. The location went not to Microsoft, but to a spoofed URL set up by the GRU, Russia's military intelligence agency and a page that looked exactly like the central login page for Senate email and other online services.
The Daily Beast notes it was a fairly clever phishing attempt:
As with the Podesta phishing, each Senate phishing email had a different link coded with the recipient's email address. That allowed the fake password-change webpage to display the user's email address when they arrived, making the site more convincing.
Luckily, Microsoft had previously sued the GRU for other attempts to impersonate its products, and had stolen back control of the spoofed Senate address, which meant that when anyone clicked on the link, their data went not to Russia, but to a "sinkhole server" owned by Microsoft. It was apparently a really good fake: At last week's Aspen Security Forum, Microsoft VP Tom Burt said the company had saved three US midterm election candidates' offices from having their passwords phished, although Burt didn't name the candidates.
"We did discover that a fake Microsoft domain had been established as the landing page for phishing attacks, and we saw metadata that suggested those phishing attacks were being directed at three candidates who are all standing for elections in the midterm elections," said Burt, Microsoft's corporate vice president for customer security and trust. "We took down that domain and working with the government actually were able to avoid anybody being infected by that particular attack."
https://www.wonkette.com/claire-mccaskill-hacked