

Advanced Off-the-Shelf Targeted Attacks Against Nation States [video] - Audiophilip
http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2014/31c3_-_6575_-_en_-_saal_2_-_201412272300_-_rocket_kitten_advanced_off-the-shelf_targeted_attacks_against_nation_states_-_tw_-_gadi.html

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krenoten
To be honest I was a little disappointed when I saw this talk. Its title was
not accurate for a presentation at ccc. It is neither advanced nor
attributable to a nation state. It grossed me out when the nontechnical guy
hyped things and the hired gun shied away, making it clear the nontechnical
guy is grandstanding - also not appropriate for ccc- so I left before it
ended.

~~~
epoxyhockey
_To be honest I was a little disappointed when I saw this talk._

Agreed. The technical sophistication of the described spear-fishing attack was
certainly low, using 10-year-old software and requiring the victim to enable
macros, when prompted, after opening the excel spreadsheet. The only takeaway
from this talk was that a dozen or so fishing emails were related together by
the excel spreadsheet metadata.

Certainly not worthy material for the front page of HN, in my opinion.

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ddod
I am really confused as to why the security community is obsessed with the
term "nation state". Every single publication or quote from security
researchers that wants to attribute some worm or attack to a country
incorrectly calls it a nation state.

A nation state is a specific thing that is not just a pompous way of saying
state or country.

If you're wondering, you can check the Wikipedia entry on it. There's nothing
inherent about any type of technical attack that could connect to a nation
state.

It's sort of a shibboleth of someone who is self-important and doesn't fact-
check.

~~~
sighsigh
What's even more problematic is that you have been downvoted on a community
that was founded by people who participated in building the tech responsible
for forging history's first self-sustaining post-nationalist identity (the
internet) in history.

The nation-state must be the enemy, which can only be defeated by a nation-
state... because the concept of a nation-state is dying and is engaging in
full blown Hegelian dialectics to keep itself afloat. Unions, nationalists,
and identity zealots have been having a field day with HackerNews as of late.

~~~
gizmo686
>history's first self-sustaining post-nationalist identity

I am not a historian, but wouldn't that honor go to religion? Regardless,
religion is certainly older than the Internet.

~~~
sighsigh
This is technically correct in concept, but not in practice, as organized
religion existed long before the formalization of the nation-state. In fact,
one can even argue that nationalism is an agnostic subdivision of organized
theology since it utilizes identical symbol worship mechanisms.

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bengali3
I'm not in netsec, but i'm still a little fuzzy on some details here:

1)what's the evidence that this is tied to/from the off the shelf core-impact
product? using a similar api call? a controlling server is used?

2)other than the target being an israeli aerospace firm and payload pretending
to be military in nature (im guessing to generate curiosity, how are 'nation-
states' involved?

EDIT: maybe answering my own question 1\. a "Campaign" identifier is a
variable found

2\. lure document exists elsewhere and has been seen targeting multiple
nations over years. at academics and defense orgs.

