Irked By Cyberspying, Georgia Outs Russia-based Hacker 95
coondoggie writes "In one of the photos, the dark-haired, bearded hacker is peering into his computer's screen, perhaps puzzled at what's happening. Minutes later, he cuts his computer's connection, realizing he has been discovered. In an unprecedented move, the country of Georgia — irritated by persistent cyber-spying attacks — has published two photos of a Russia-based hacker who, the Georgians allege, waged a persistent, months-long campaign that stole confidential information from Georgian government ministries, parliament, banks and NGOs."
Tomorrow's news (Score:4, Insightful)
"Bearded man found shot dead in Russian apartment, found hunched over keyboard."
The Georgians don't mess around, any more than the Russkies do.
He'd better watch his back.
".
Politics are dirty (Score:4, Insightful)
Webcams (Score:5, Insightful)
Public Service Announcement:
Don't hack with a web cam plugged in.
Re:Hell, here we go again: (Score:2, Insightful)
Except it was the other way around - russkies wanted their colonies back. And speaking of escaping the gravity well, Estonia seems to be in the clear. Good on them!
Re:Webcams (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesnt sound like a top-level professional, but the junior-grade trainee - probably taking orders from above.
Or, you know, also sounds like not a hacker at all.
What makes you think he's an actual hacker and not just someone who was a source of inconvenience for other reasons?
Re:lol georgia (Score:5, Insightful)
Does using a trojan count as hacking? I can't keep up with things these days.
Still the part where the 'hacker' downloads an executable file, and runs it...that's weak sauce. One, it tells us he's probably running Windows. Two, it shows he is an idiot: what 'hacker' blindly runs an executable file, even one given to him by 'friends'?
See, if the 'authorities' had managed to capture an image of him by pulling apart a botnet client, tracing the originating command server through several wayward paths, spelunking their way up the internet one router at a time until they found the source of the packets containing a fraudulant origin IP address, then exploited a weakness on a service running on a common port that wasn't patched / no one knew about, then turned on his webcam to grab a photo or two of him while quietly copying evidence off his machine, I'd be inclined to say "GG" and award some finger-snaps for one-upping someone on their own battlefield.
But using social engineering on someone running a common operating system, someone without the common sense inherent in a level one helldesk operator (do not run unknown executables)...I mean, he doesn't even fire up a VM and lock it off the internet before running the thing? Does anyone actually think this guy was anything more than, at best, a script kiddy, and at worst, a pawn?
If this is the best news that they can put out these days regarding their capture of 'cyber-criminals,' there either aren't any, or they're getting schooled.
Here's a hint for understanding power in the virtual realm -> if you need to work with others to achieve something, or need to get a judge to sign off on something, you're doing it wrong. If you need to call up a Bell to run a data tap to find the equivalent of the opportunistic thief robbing a 7-11...then you don't know enough about technology to 'fight' effectively.