

FBI investigating laptops sent to US governors - ilamont
http://www.thestandard.com/news/2009/08/27/fbi-investigating-laptops-sent-us-governors

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tptacek
_Many organized criminals would be happy to spend the cost of five PCs in
order to access government computers, said Steve Santorelli, director of
investigations with security consultancy Team Cymru. "What is a netbook? $700?
You send five of them; you're dropping three grand, and say you get into the
Congressional e-mail system. How valuable would that be?"_

What? No they wouldn't. It's a Rube Goldberg attack. And what does it get you?
Access to "the Congressional email system"?

My guess is there's a referral fee they're getting for placing the orders, or
that it's a prank.

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pyre
I half-expect this to turn out to be some sort of 4chan prank. Maybe ordering
the laptops with credit card information obtained from all of those 'christian
dating site' emails/passwords.

On the other hand, it might not be the hackers themselves that are trying to
get network access. It could be China/North Korea/etc. But that's treading
into tinfoil hat territory.

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gojomo
I speculated about 'trojan laptops' a while back:

<http://gojomo.blogspot.com/2002/12/trojan-laptop.html>

With netbooks so cheap, the expected return of such a strategy might have
recently turned positive. (It would be nice to think that only those who steal
the laptops would be bitten, but as thieves probably pass them on to innocent
third-parties, there's not really a 'white hat' way to use this trick.)

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bmelton
I am reminded by this of my trip to the National Crypto Museum on NSA's
campus, north of DC. It's a real treat if you're a geek, what with the old
hardware and crypto devices, but one of the pieces there is a picture.

The picture was mailed to a US senator as a gift from children, who had
supposedly painted it. However, during a later bugsweep, it turned out that
the frame contained a radio device, and had transmitted endlessly since its
hanging.

I remember thinking how perfectly the gift had been designed, how innocuous
the packaging, and how cleverly the delivery mechanism.

With regard to the cost to secret price ratio, I'm going out on a limb to say
that as a non-threat to the nation, I'd happily pay a thousand dollars to see
what ACTUALLY goes on behind closed doors of high ranking political officials.
I can only imagine how much more worthwhile it would be if I had my freedom
riding on it.

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sho
A very interesting physical hack. Perhaps a taste of things to come!

