kevin_thibedeau2 hours ago
> In late September, ShinyHunters hacked the FBI recruitment website fbijobs.gov
The OPM breach was 11 years ago and apparently the incompetence still reigns.
jacquesm2 hours ago
The quality of offensive tooling has somewhat improved during that period.
nradov26 minutes ago
So why have government employees and contractors been so lazy and incompetent as to not improve defenses by a similar margin?
mikeyouse5 minutes ago
The vast majority of the competent people got DOGE’d. CISA lost like 40% of their staff including much of their red team specialty. 18F was completely eliminated (“Deleted” as Musk put it). If some specialist in the FBI who could have helped prevent the hack happened to have been assigned to work on the Classified Docs case, they were also fired because the most corrupt, incompetent group of morons is running things in DC for the next few years.
cowsandmilk20 minutes ago
+1, in this case, the hackers exploited a CVE in PeopleSoft that had a published patch. The contractors just didn't apply the patch. https://www.reuters.com/technology/accenture-contractor-remo...
jacquesm15 minutes ago
If they're incompetent and lazy as you say then probably because they couldn't...
aleksandrm25 minutes ago
True or not, anyone trust the Feds right now? With the current administration, no one should trust the Feds right now, not a single bit.
mmoossan hour ago
Even before the current administration, federal law enforcement's leaks of suspects, especially in high-profile crimes, have been highly unreliable and have ruined lives. See Wen Ho Lee, Richard Jewell, etc.
vntok2 hours ago
Breaking Bad vibes here. "You don't want a ransom negociator, you want a ransom negociator!"
taneq2 hours ago
Better than some random negotiator.
Waterluvian26 minutes ago
You can have $1,000,000 in unmarked bills as requested. Or you can have whatever is in the mystery box!
ofjcihen2 hours ago
Working in the IR space I’ve had a lot of opportunities to work with negotiators before. Most of them are extremely professional and worth their weight in gold for what they provide to their clients.
Ridiculous that scumbags like this are tarnishing that space.
gregsadetsky2 hours ago
Can you shed a light on what this process looks like? Are negotiations are alike or completely unique? What does it boil down to..?
Thanks!
gregglainan hour ago
The book "Never split the difference" is a great read on hostage negotiations.
gregsadetskyan hour ago
I do (half) remember reading that book! I actually meant to ask (in my question above) whether that book is actually "accurate"/representative of malware negotiations.
ofjcihenan hour ago
No honestly, most of the time it’s very formulaic. You can usually tell how it’s going to go once you know who has your data.
For instance, what’s mentioned in the article about not dealing with COM actors is great advice because chances are they’re going to keep your data and sell it or use it for future extortions no matter whether you pay.
Other actors though have a reputation to uphold to get paid and they know it.
An example of the process is something like:
1. Notification by ransom operators Including proof. Negotiations start at some arbitrary number like 6 percent of reported earnings.
2. Negotiators notified.
3. Back and forth begins. “This isn’t really that much data, do you have more? It’s not that damning. Fine, my client is willing to pay 50k. 60k? Okay, but you need to provide proof of how you got I the data so we can close the gap”.
ahelweran hour ago
Nothing is yet proven and other articles have painted this arrest as shocking.
cobbzillaan hour ago
based on history, expect more ridiculous scumbags in the future:
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/ransomware-re...
https://complexdiscovery.com/a-48-month-federal-benchmark-re...
nradov23 minutes ago
Ransom negotiators are all scumbags. Their actions perpetuate further criminality and place others at greater risk. Paying a ransom should always be a criminal offense, even if not paying means that people die and businesses are destroyed.
cuttysnarkan hour ago
[flagged]
Grosvenoran hour ago
That wikipedia page says David Hogg's father is Kevin Hogg.
ChrisClark28 minutes ago
Nope, not his father