French TV Network TV5Monde Targeted In 'Pro-ISIS' Cyberattack 71
An anonymous reader writes French broadcaster TV5Monde [was] today working to regain control of its 11 television channels and online platforms after hackers claiming ties with the Islamic State hijacked its network on Wednesday evening, forcing the media group to show only pre-recorded content. The television network was able to return in part to its planned schedule by 1:00am (23:00 GMT) last night, after the hacking group had suspended its broadcast services for three hours. Yves Bigot, the Parisian company's director general, said that the network had been "severely damaged" by an "unprecedented attack" which would have taken weeks to prepare. The hacking group posted threats and shared a collection of files across TV5Monde's Facebook page which it claimed were copies of ID cards and CVs of relatives of French soldiers involved in anti-IS operations.
More coverage at The Independent, which says the attack "revealed personal details of French soldiers."
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Why aren't these isolated off the grid systems???
Not EVERY machine ever created needs to be on the greater network of networks.
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Remember this?
GOODEVENING HBO
FROM CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT
$12.95/MONTH ?
NO WAY !
(SHOWTIME/MOVIE CHANNEL BEWARE!]
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This would be fun!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Lost control of eleven television channels? (Score:3, Interesting)
How did the hackers get control of eleven TV5Monde television channels. Technical details please
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They guessed their terrible passwords. From what I read, their highest-level password was azerty12345, which is the French version of qwerty12345. They then interviewed someone about it in front of someone's desk. That person's desk had usernames and passwords on index cards taped to their monitor! People could read them from the video, and their youtube password translates to "the password of youtube".
tl;dr they had godawful security practices.
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When a Muslim says that they denounce ISIS and think ISIS principles are an abomination to the Islamic faith, it is difficult to know whether or not that Muslim is telling the truth.
And of course, when someone who looks like they might be a Muslim says that they are Christian or atheist or whatever, it is again difficult to know whether or not they are telling the truth.
But, this difficulty does not justify automatically punishing every single person who claims to be a decent Muslim, or claims not to be a M
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Does ISIS leadership actually believe that attacking civilian targets and posting threats like these will aid them in achieving victory?
It sure seems to be winning them a lot of disaffected teenage losers from the West lately, though I dare say this benefit pales in comparison with all the money that our "friend" Saudi Arabia is sending them.
Re:Saddam (Score:4, Informative)
I believe America has interest in their natural resources.
The US is the third largest oil producer in the world and produces almost three times [wikipedia.org] as much oil as Iraq. Iraq has more proven reserves [wikipedia.org], but lacks the infrastructure to get it out faster. And also lacks the stability to be able to set up shop, drill, and pipe it out.
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Because speculators are idiotic assholes.
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This is actually a rather recent phenomenon. There was a time when you would see "No Dogs or Jews" signs in businesses in every part of the US. And I'll bet you the people who put those signs in the window believed they were good, faithful Christians.
Even the notion of a "Judeo-Christian" culture is relatively recent, and was first used in the 1950s.
And the first official ally of the United States was a Muslim country. Morocco was our
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Unlike Israelis, you don't hear about Moroccans spying on the US and selling US intelligence secrets.
Only shows they're better at not getting caught. In the middle east we have no 'allies', only clients, and by the numbers Saudi Arabia is one of our best. We sell to Iran and ISIS (the politicians called them 'moderate rebels' when they point their weapons away from us) also, but that is done a bit more 'discreetly', where everything simply vanishes in to thin air [washingtonpost.com]
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Yeah, yeah, you're not saying anything to the contrary, so bla bla bla.
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This is actually a rather recent phenomenon. There was a time when you would see "No Dogs or Jews" signs in businesses in every part of the US. And I'll bet you the people who put those signs in the window believed they were good, faithful Christians.
Even the notion of a "Judeo-Christian" culture is relatively recent, and was first used in the 1950s.
And the first official ally of the United States was a Muslim country. Morocco was our first ally and remains our closest, most faithful ally in the Middle East. Unlike Israelis, you don't hear about Moroccans spying on the US and selling US intelligence secrets.
A lot of fundamentalist Christians see themselves as a Jewish sect. This is despite the fact that, according to orthodox Judaism, Jesus is being boiled in excrement for his crimes against Judaism whereas Jesus is revered in Islam.
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True. The rise of the avidly pro-Israel "Christian Right" is a relatively recent phenomenon, however.
If you read some of the history of the post-WWII agreement that turned the Holy Land into a Jewish state, you'll find that US Christian leaders were singing a very different tune back then.
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We had wars before there were income taxes or a Federal Reserve, and at about the same frequency as today.
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Here in the US, we go to war about every 20 years, like clockwork. We'll fight anything that moves, and if it doesn't move, we push it over and then we fight it.
And we do it over there, because doing it over here leaves a mess and the American people don't like messes and if we had wars over here there might be less appetite to go have them elsewhere.
There is a golem in this world that profits off of war, and that golem needs to be fed. The golem's la
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WWII ended the great depression and was followed by a kind of economic golden age. I think that some presidents are trying to recreate that economic boom.
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the great depression was on it's way out by '39 (at least in the US) -- and that economic golden age was largely due to Bretton-Woods combined with the entire industrial world (outside of the US) being bombed back into the 1600's.
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... the American people don't like messes and if we had wars over here there might be less appetite to go have them elsewhere.
On the contrary, war dips its toe in American waters and the Americans go crazy and attack, usually the wrong people.
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This is the shit that Saddam Hussein was stamping down.
The Middle East has never been at peace and never will. I wish we'd stop meddling and let them solve their own problems their own way and if we don't like it, well tough shit.
The problem is there is such a history of animosity (and long memories) in the Middle East that the only way a group can maintain peace in a state is by brutally clamping down on other religious/ethnic groups. So, when the ruling group is removed from power (by force/election/death of monarch or dictator/etc) and another group gains power, they are thinking "hell yeah, it's our turn, time to get even!". Unfortunately this cycle won't stop until they get sick of the bloodshed and try to work together. But
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This is the shit that Saddam Hussein was stamping down.
The Middle East has never been at peace and never will. I wish we'd stop meddling and let them solve their own problems their own way and if we don't like it, well tough shit.
The problem is there is such a history of animosity (and long memories) in the Middle East that the only way a group can maintain peace in a state is by brutally clamping down on other religious/ethnic groups. So, when the ruling group is removed from power (by force/election/death of monarch or dictator/etc) and another group gains power, they are thinking "hell yeah, it's our turn, time to get even!". Unfortunately this cycle won't stop until they get sick of the bloodshed and try to work together. But "peace" bought through oppression like Saddam or Assad or Gaddhafi is only a temporary stopgap pushing the problems down the road, and the peace of a dictator is worse than open conflict because it just increases the pressure even more, so when things blow up they blow up bigger.
The middle eastern cultures elevate revenge to a core principle. Its one of the most important things to those people, no slight can be left unavenged, any insult or offence must be punished as harshly as possible. Tit-for-tat can't be allowed to stop or their cultures would just implode.
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I wish we'd stop meddling...
Can't. The Russians will move in.
The Saudis know we're their bitch.
For 60 billion dollars [telegraph.co.uk] I'll be their bitch! And right now we are making huge profits from both sides in the Saudi-Iranian proxy war in Yemen. We are repeating Iran-Contra all over again. Why would anybody let that market fall into the hands of a competitor?
Instead of puking, invest! War is good business, or it wouldn't be happening.
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They tried it before. It didn't work out.
Yes, because of 'meddling'. The US and Europe funded and armed the Mujaheddin. And besides, Afghanistan is an opium war and war for control of overland trade routes. Old habits die hard. And now war is more profitable than trade.
Isn't this what we're doing? (Score:2)
The Middle East has never been at peace and never will. I wish we'd stop meddling and let them solve their own problems their own way and if we don't like it, well tough shit.
Isn't this what we're doing or at least allowing to happen? Finally getting to the point where the Islamists can fight their own version of the 30 Years' War?
Syria is a shredded mess, Lebanon has more factions than LA has street gangs, Iraq is only viable as a state if you close one eye and look at it sideways, Iran's economy is teete
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Hands totally off the Middle East? Fair enough, so long as western societies have the right to kick out any person who has any form of affiliation with any religion that has been weaponized into a death cult. This is not so much of a problem in the US as in Europe, which has imported large numbers of angry young radicals under preferential immigration laws from their former colonies.
Wat (Score:2)
I read the Indy article and it still didn't explain why a TV network had the personal details of French soldiers.
Firewall protection (Score:3)
Detailed report (Score:2)
Detailed report on the hack (in french): http://www.breaking3zero.com/cyber-attaque-contre-tv5-qui-comment-pourquoi/ [breaking3zero.com]
I note the malware was able to spread from user's PC to broadcast server, which suggests some kind of OS monoculture.
"Cyber-attack", sure (Score:1)
Too bad that most of their passwords were written on post-its clearly shown during their transmissions [blogspot.com], even after the hacking happened [blogspot.com]. It seems the "ISIS supporting group" are more likely a bunch of wanna-be hackers that defaced many other websites that shared poorly configured servers and minimal IT resources, such as the Swizerland Boyscout website.
[Source: Paolo Attivissimo's website (in Italian) [blogspot.com]]
Technical Coverage (Score:2)
There is some technical coverage of the attack here
Breaking3Zero [breaking3zero.com]
- link in French
Terapi Kecemasan Berlebihan (Score:1)
Thanks for the info. (Score:1)