Monument

Everybody hates the government, but that take is not applicable.

Reading the incident report -
A privileged user got spearphished into downloading a compromised system administration tool. After the compromised tool was detected by industry standard (and modern) intrusion detection software and removed, the backdoor it installed, which was not fixed, was (eventually) used to install a keylogger. Shortly thereafter, another privileged user had a keylogger installed. Afterward, the harvested credentials were used to create further compromises in their network and to move laterally throughout it.

The age of the equipment or software is not a factor when your admin accounts get compromised. The user that got compromised should have known better, but they literally failed one thing - double checking the veracity of the download website. They didn’t surrender credentials, or fall for any direct attack. It’s not really a government bad, private industry good sort of thing. Heck, if that had happened to a non-admin user, the attack wouldn’t have been possible.

The why is sort of at the limits of my knowledge. I can tell you a ‘close enough’ what, though.

By default, Windows tries to install programs to the program files directory, but that requires admin, which triggers user account control. However, apps that do not require admin to install or run can still be installed to the users profile. Clicking cancel from a UAC prompt will just try to install the program locally instead of for all users.

My assumption is that many system administrators believed UAC was enough, or that programs installing locally (as in, just for that user) and not requiring admin were not a big deal.

Was going to comment at the top level, but I wanted to share my thoughts here.

The OP is a really talented writer (I assume in this day of AI) and their ideas have been pretty top notch, even if they are getting some form of assistance with the writing. I genuinely think once they have a body of work, they should launch a website to monetize their efforts or parlay this into future opportunities. Assuming that’s what they want, anyway. The talent is there.

Read this

That’s kind of fucked up if there’s not an indication that it’s a replica. Akin to yelling fire in a theater if someone used one of them maliciously.

Perhaps it could be kind of neat as a curio if it’s a highly engineered/beautiful work of art (that is maybe too expensive to use for malicious ‘jokes’). But I’d still want it to have some sort of indication that folks aren’t getting dosed/they don’t have to trigger a response by your local atomic energy officials.

Editing to add that before I picked Krakatoa (fingers crossed on my inability to predict natural disasters), I actually searched for “disasters with no death toll” to use as an example for a potential model without much success. It is in poor taste and my comments are definitely parody.

That’s horrible. I love it.

Wow. A 3d printer, an ultrasonic humidifier module, and a completely sociopathic grasp on world affairs could see the most offensive Etsy store ever.

There’s basically no limit to the depravity one could stoop to in pursuit of money.

I sense a business opportunity, but at what cost?
No, I mean, literally, what’s a steaming Krakatoa worth?

This is so pathetic and stupid.

This isn’t aimed at Russia or China, whom the article calls out by name.
This is a dick measuring contest with Iran and North Korea.

I mean - he made the announcement in South Korea.

Diplomatically, Trump (well, his administration) has stated to learn that befriending and allowing tinpot dictators to humiliate the U.S. is non-viable. So they’ve moved to cold-war era tactics of arms races and implied threats of nuclear holocaust.
They, of course, are focusing on smaller nations that while powerful in their own right, aren’t actual threats to the U.S. global hegemony. Not that I support continued U.S. dominance on the world stage, but it’s a weird priority.
Maybe by the end of the admin, they’ll be caught up to Clinton, who realized the best way to apply pressure was economically and via international partnerships — assuming the U.S. has an economy and international partnerships to leverage by then.

I have no memory of this place.

It was a TCL Alto 9+.

A quick internet search reveals that this issue was known about at least three years ago.

Another model, the 8i was reported to have a root password of “12345678” - which is partially how I got the idea to start seeing if I could gain root.

I commented elsewhere, but I once had a soundbar that just had a no password ssh login. It was one of those ‘connect to your WiFi’ to stream music through models and for whatever reason, after connecting it to my WiFi, it continued to broadcast the publicly joinable setup network.

SSH was open to both the unsecured and secured networks, so anyone within WiFi distance of the device could have gained root control of it. Or if I had a sufficiently weak network setup, anyone online could have taken control of it.

A few years ago I noticed an annoyance with a soundbar I had. After allowing it onto my WiFi network so we could stream music to it, it still broadcast the setup WiFi network.

While dorking around one day, I ran a port scan on my network and the soundbar reported port 22 (ssh) was open. I was able to log in as root and no password.
After a moment of “huh, that’s terrible security.” I connected to the (publicly open) setup network, ssh’d in, and copied the wpa_supplicant.conf file from the device to verify it had my WiFi info available to anyone with at least my mediocre skill level. I then factory reset the device, never to entrust it with any credentials again.