back to article Russia reports RAT scurrying through govt systems, chewing data

Russia's Government is reporting that malware designed to steal data has been found in state systems at two dozen agencies and critical institutions. Moscow did not reveal the names of the targeted agencies nor which attacks were successful and what data if any was stolen. Military, scientific, and critical infrastructure …

  1. Mephistro

    After reading the description of the malware...

    ...this sound like something from a state actor. It could be either an American tool -probably outsourced to Israel- or a FSB deployed tool that somehow broke free from its constraints and controls, up to the point that the FSB itself had to address the problem.

    In a distant third position, China. :-)

    1. Mark 85

      Re: After reading the description of the malware...

      Or everyone's favorite scapegoat.. North Korea.

    2. gollux
      Pirate

      Re: After reading the description of the malware...

      Meh, given the nature of Organized Crime in Russia, simply home dudes lookin' to make more money.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: After reading the description of the malware...

      Definitely a revenge attack for the Demo-rat National Convention being "hacked".

      1. lglethal Silver badge
        Facepalm

        Re: After reading the description of the malware...

        Yeah because a dedicated phishing operation compromising thousands of machines was organized in under a week to get revenge for hacking an American political parties servers.

        Well done AC, well done...

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: After reading the description of the malware...

          Brexit?

    4. Aodhhan

      Re: After reading the description of the malware...

      Based on the fact the malware is after commercial industry and not government military services, it's unlikely the US government is involved. The US doesn't stand much to gain by honing in on Russia's commercial industry, as it lags behind the US and most of western Europe.

      Based on the targets, I'd say China is highest on my list. It's no secret, China spends a lot of money building resources for information theft rather than research & development.

      My second pick is contracted hackers in India. Many new industries and a government which is growing; it's a lot quicker to learn by stealing and selling the information.

      Third is Ukraine... don't need to say much here. Motivation is obvious.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: After reading the description of the malware...

        I used to work for a defense industry company in western europe. And the US spied on us, did targeted attacks, even served the vectors using linkedlin and porn pages... they also took some company laptops at the border and cloned the hard drives...

        Anon, of course

        1. Richard Jones 1
          WTF?

          Re: After reading the description of the malware...

          Your company took laptops across a boarder, any boarder with data on them?

          Frankly I find that highly surprising given the state of knowledge anytime in the past 15~20 years, unless of course they had previously filled the hard drive with dummy or otherwise false data.

  2. RedneckMother

    False Flag?

    Who can tell these days?

    Meh - sooner or later, the whole damn thing will fall apart.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It were* Trump

    His call for the ruskies to hack the Whitehouse were a bluff...

    *yorkshire mode..

  4. You aint sin me, roit
    Coat

    Shouldn't have opened the attachments on Hilary's junk email...

    1. ma1010

      Very good! Or maybe it was that email from it@cia.gov

  5. Mike Moyle

    Were I the suspicious, cynical sort of individual (Which, of course, I'm not -- *a-HENH*!), two things would spring to mind:

    1 -- Nothing pulled from the affected machines will ever appear on WikiLeaks, because that's not the direction in which J.Ass. seems to like to shoot, and;

    2 -- Someone is going to start a whisper campaign that L'Affaire Snowden was all just a CIA ruse to get him in-country so the exploit wouldn't be traced past the border.

  6. AliSnackbar
    Paris Hilton

    Dont Panic

    They have Comrade Snowden on it right now....

  7. Mahhn

    No the US

    My government (US) is only interested in ripping off it's citizens and taking land that has oil but no modern tanks.

    1. Uffish

      Re: No the US

      You got an upvote for that?

  8. herman

    Obviously it is America trying to influence the next Russian election.

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