The Inner World of Gov-Sponsored White-Hat Hacking

romanval writes "Anonymous leaked emails of white-hat hacker firm HBGary shows how it develops and markets products to government agencies. From the article: 'In 2009, HBGary had partnered with the Advanced Information Systems group of defense contractor General Dynamics to work on a project euphemistically known as "Task B." The team had a simple mission: slip a piece of stealth software onto a target laptop without the owner's knowledge. They focused on ports—a laptop's interfaces to the world around it—including the familiar USB port, the less-common PCMCIA Type II card slot, the smaller ExpressCard slot, WiFi, and Firewire. No laptop would have all of these, but most recent machines would have at least two.'"

Black hat not White

[Anonymous Coward]

A 'White Hat' hacker is someone who aims to improve security; HBGary are aiming to take advantage of exploits in order to hack into computers, for mining personal information. They are most definitely 'Black Hat'.

Why "White hat"?

[Goglu]

Why would this qualify as "white hat"? Because they sell their solutions to corporations? Corporations are often no better than the mafia: check how well established and still active corporations helped bring Hitler to power.

What would it be called if they sold their solutions to the "legitimate" government of Saudi Arabia? Or to Hamas (who was elected as the representatives of the Palestinian people)? Would it still be "White hat"?

I propose that "White hat hacking" be reserved only to those who use their skills for the good of the community as a whole. Just my 2 cents.

White-hat? I don't think so

[moonbender]

White-hat? Hacking doesn't automatically get a white hat just because it's done for your favorite government (or other organisation). Developing malware and rootkits destined for actual use is black hat hacking, plain and simple. HBGary did both black and white hat stuff.

"Greg Hoglund" not "HBGary"

[Securityemo]

Greg Hoglund is a leading expert on rootkits, and per the article it was he who did all the developement and research. If the article tells the truth, the firm sold advanced rootkits to the US government, and the latest iteration would have been one that used advanced memory management techniques to jump around in process memory and do it's thing without using any OS-managed structures, thus evading detection. I don't grok this at all, but it sounds like an advanced version of a technique I read about where the malware extracted the code from DLL files and ran things without having to go through the OS. So that part was entirely llegit, but the social networks part (which the government apparently wasn't at all interested in, presumably because they already got a contract with those Palantir guys) was evidently a catastrophe in the making.

Re:Black hat not White

[phunster]

Richard Nixon said "If the President does it, it is legal." We all know how that worked out for him. It sounds like you are substituting "government agency" for "President." No one is above the law, not a President, and not a government agency. Black Hat is Black Hat no matter who is doing it, or who they are doing it for.

Re:Black hat not White

[Anonymous Coward]

No HBGary belongs to a completely new category of hackers. Neither 'black hat' not 'white hat', but 'ass hat'

Re:Black hat not White

[Divide By Zero]

It's nothing to do with "good" or "evil", it's what you do with the results. If you hack, say, Hamas, and then use that information to your advantage, you are Black Hat. If you hack Hamas, then walk in through their front door with a report of how you owned them (pwned, pwnz0red, whatever) and how they can fix their systems, you are White Hat.

White Hat can be "evil", Black Hat can be "good". Value judgments are independent of the definition - are you there to improve bad security or exploit it?

Re:Black hat not White

[Corbets]

It's nothing to do with "good" or "evil", it's what you do with the results. If you hack, say, Hamas, and then use that information to your advantage, you are Black Hat. If you hack Hamas, then walk in through their front door with a report of how you owned them (pwned, pwnz0red, whatever) and how they can fix their systems, you are White Hat.

Not quite. If they REQUEST that you "hack" them and you do so, you're a white hat. If you do it without being asked, then you're a black hat. Walking through the door later is a CYA technique only.

Pedants ruined this discussion

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd read TFA earlier. I decided to read the discussion here to see what interesting thoughts people might have on the topic, only to find page after page of arguments about hat colors. WTF? Pedants very rarely ever add to the discussion. Their comments seem mostly intended to inflate their own sense of superiority, and sadly often derail the discussion here as so many readers seem inclined to try to prove they are smarter. I'm sure someone will post a snarky reply that I must be new here. I'm not. I learn something every day reading here. However, this has got to be one of the most vacuous discussions I've seen related to what is a technically interesting topic that deserved better.

Re:Black hat not White

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

HBGary is Black Hat. And Mercenary. They are a boot on the neck of the American people.

Is torture "White Hat Interrogation" when done by the US, as opposed to the former DDR?

No. Only if your name is Rumsfeld, Gonzalez or Yoo, would you disagree.

HBGary is a fascist tool - more akin to the "Ministry of Information" of Brazil [wikimedia.org], than any recognisable "White Hat" group - say Rapid7 [wikimedia.org].

HBGary trades in 0-Days for profit, to organisations which act without regard to Constitutional provisions. They advertise tools and methodology to conduct PsyOps and openly advocate methods to subvert the democratic properties of modern public communications channels.

HBGary colludes with insiders to use Government power to cement corporate advantage over the interests of the citizens and tax-payers of the United States, in the name of "national security".

They are a fraud and a blight on the purported claims of a free and open society. Like in the movie "Brazil", the methods of Mr. Barr have identified individuals in error. In the age of Abdulrahman Zeitoun [guardian.co.uk] and Bradley Manning, the consequences are quite possibly as dire for those individuals, as they were for Mr. Buttle and Sam Lowery.

Re:Pedants ruined this discussion

[mug funky]

the HBGary sockpuppets are all over /.

didn't you know?

btw, how much do labour unions suck? OMG i like totally need to tweet some fox news links right now.

i like BP. i think the government is being overly harsh.

Obama is a muslim and wasn't born in america

AGW is a myth perpertrated by the illuminati and terrorists to make us give up our guns. think about it.

Re:Black hat not White

[tick-tock-atona]

Richard Nixon said "If the President does it, it is legal." We all know how that worked out for him. It sounds like you are substituting "government agency" for "President." No one is above the law, not a President, and not a government agency. Black Hat is Black Hat no matter who is doing it, or who they are doing it for.

Actually, in the US today, the President and government agencies *are* above the law [salon.com].

Yesterday, in South Carolina, an Obama-appointed federal judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by Padilla against former Bush officials Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, Paul Wolfowitz and others. That suit alleges that those officials knowingly violated Padilla's Constitutional rights by ordering his due-process-free detention and torture. In dismissing Padilla's lawsuit, the court's opinion relied on the same now-depressingly-familiar weapons routinely used by our political class to immunize itself from judicial scrutiny: national security would be undermined by allowing Padilla to sue; "government officials could be distracted from their vital duties to attend depositions or respond to other discovery requests"; "a trial on the merits would be an international spectacle with Padilla, a convicted terrorist, summoning America's present and former leaders to a federal courthouse to answer his charges"; the litigation would risk disclosure of vital state secrets; and "discovery procedures could be used by our enemies to obtain valuable intelligence."

In other words, our political officials are Too Important, and engaged in far Too Weighty Matters in Keeping Us Safe, to subject them to the annoyance of the rule of law. It's much more important to allow them to Fight The Terrorists without restraints than to bother them with claims that they broke the law and violated the rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

Fortunately, other countries are not so squeamish about prosecuting war crimes, which is why Bush et al. will likely never set foot in the EU again [salon.com].

Goodbye, leaders of the free world. It was nice while it lasted.