The Elite Hackers of the FSB

https://interaktiv.br.de/elite-hacker-fsb/en/index.html

by truxs • 4 years ago

59 12 4 years ago

interaktiv.br.de

teapot01• 4 years ago

The WebGL graphics background on this site causes my Laptop to chug pretty severely, to the point where I'm not able to read the content.

TedDoesntTalk• 4 years ago

The website UI/UX is truly amazing, and as a web dev, I wish I knew how to write websites like this.

sleightofmind• 4 years ago

I'm thankful for Firefox reader view. Had that not worked, it would have been a quick Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V into my fav editor. Good article. I'm not sure why someone would intentionally make it more difficult to read. The world is swimming in content, but I'm not so certain attention spans have increased. Risky business.

That said, I don't disagree that the special effects seem impressive -- not that I'm competent to judge.

isthrowaway2• 4 years ago

I have an interesting story that I can only recently share due to the statute of limitations passing. I'll stay anonymous for this story.

A number of years ago, I worked on a security team "somewhere". When I joined the place, I was given some context by the other employees about advanced intrusions in the past. For years I spent late nights pouring over my laptop trying to find every imaginable way of breaching the network, and searching for indicators of compromise. Until it happened!

When it happened, it happened so quickly I was blindsided. The attack took place during a time when we would least expect it (not holidays or a certain hour, something else). I was the first to notice the indicators of compromise. They were so quick to work through our network, they identified paths that took me years of research to locate in mere weeks. We were able to stop them, thanks to our network monitoring. Many the techniques they used were cutting edge research, released within the past month. Very impressive and informative. However.. a they made a mistake.

In one of their reverse shells, they were using scp to copy our files to their backup servers. See the mistake? By dumping the packet data from the reverse shell connection, a plaintext password to their server was available. And this is where the statute of limitations comes in.

I connected back to their server with Tor. "Hacking back" is illegal, but I (personally) had to know who bested my efforts to secure the network -- and what they had. What I found was fascinating. They rented out a Linux VPS on a well known provider, but they rebooted the system into a live OS to run in memory. For persistent storage, they connected an SSHFS mountpoint. I thought about it and realized how clever it was to run the OS in memory. If the server is shut down for forensics, nothing would be found.

I explored their files. They were curiously organized. Every one of their targets were stored in a separate folder under a single parent data exfiltration folder. They also had an exploits folder, which had only public exploits. I thought about it and this also made sense, you can avoid profiling by using public exploits. They changed the shellcode in the exploits, however. Their targets surprised me (almost as much as the access they achieved in them). Hetzner, Huawei, and many others. One target was a national security/defense entity of another country, and they set up a SSL/TLS MITM on their ENTIRE network and extracted all of their repositories and credentials. Unbelievable skill. I wouldn't believe it if it was in a movie.

They used their own proxy network, and to the best of my knowledge they only made one mistake. Because of that mistake, I believe I know who was responsible. I feel like I've already said too much though, this is the first time I've made a comment about my experiences in security. On the fence about sharing but I thought you all might enjoy the story!

kaivi2• 4 years ago

Cool story, that does indeed sound like a plot out of a movie!

How were you able to extract a password from just listening to scp (ssh really) traffic though? Also, how did you know that someone's entire network was SSL MITM'd, only by looking at the data they dumped? Did the hackers store a readme file along with every dump?

isthrowaway2• 4 years ago

The traffic containing the clear text password was not scp, it was the reverse shell they sent themselves. Reverse shells are unencrypted on the wire, and when scp prompted for the password, they typed it in over their reverse shell. A significant oversight on their part. If it was a team, it must have been a less experienced member who made that mistake.

As far as the SSL MITM goes, they indeed documented their attack with various files containing notes in English. They had a separate directory (within the target's folder) containing the certificates they were using in the attack.

hakantan• 4 years ago

hey, as one of the reporters writing the article, I'm intrigued, obviously :D

rosndo• 4 years ago

Leaving an email on your profile (the “about” field) might increase the chances of someone contacting you.

rabite• 4 years ago

There's simply no forensic evidence of their claims here -- just a CPU-draining powerpoint show of nothingburgers. This reminds me of a slightly more modern version of Condoleeza Rice presenting fake evidence of Saddam Hussein's WMD development. Just a basic appeal to authority with a total lack of evidence.

deknos• 4 years ago

though that's always the problem with non-opensource-secret-intelligence information. we either trust the government/system/organization, or we do not.

aaaaaaaaata• 4 years ago

Trust their incentives.

The Elite Hackers of the FSB

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