“Malware Courier Loses US Visa, Finds it Beneath Seat 3 Days Later”
Oh wait. Wrong story.
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A secret service agent reportedly testified that after putting a thumb drive of Zhang’s into his computer, the device immediately began to download something onto his computer. The agent said that he shut down his computer to “stop the corruption.”
Tum-tee-tum-tee-tum.
And that “stop the corruption” comment. If only he’d been in at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. saying that same line in a very different, saving-the-nation kind of context.
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Yes, I would assume law enforcement would have laptops or other devices specifically configured for, and dedicated to, scanning suspicious drives for malware. Maybe I’m wrong. But the story made it sound like this agent just plugged it into his working laptop.
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That’s a much better quote-- makes it sound like they had a laptop for just these checks.
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In some ways, you kinda hope that was the case, because otherwise it’s such bad tradecraft it makes you wince, even though they’re the Bad Guys.
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A secret service agent reportedly testified that after putting a thumb drive of Zhang’s into his computer, the device immediately began to download something onto his computer. The agent said that he shut down his computer to “stop the corruption.”
I think some kind of employment action is forthcoming for this. Unfortunately, I’m almost certain the applicable rules don’t allow his supervisor to come up behind him and just jackslap him back of the head.
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Meh, check the actual quote above, not Josh’s read. From the statement, sounds like they may have had a laptop sitting around specifically for that sort of work.
If not… Yeah, someone’s getting in deep doo-doo.
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Secret Service Motto: Teneat meum Bersabee
For the rest of us…Hold My Beer.
Making America Great Again? Seem like it might be unraveling.
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This is extraordinarily serious on many levels, the least of which is ‘they’ were more than comfortable slipping an asset into the “Winter White House” to conduct espionage work. We have fallen much further than we know.
I did love the quote, "Zhang “lies to everyone she encounters,” "
She certainly was in the right place.
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Sounds like security at Mar-a-Lago is designed to let spies from hostile countries go through. Somebody must have missed the memo and screwed up here. Time for another purge.
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Mar a Largo is not the “Winter White House.” There is no such thing.
Please don’t repeat and normalize Trump’s lies.
Mar a Largo is apparently the in country base of any number of foreign espionage operations.
Supported handsomely by the tax dollars of the non-oligarchs who still pay taxes.
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Just sayin’…
Of course little Arabella’s mommy has plans to do something with all those Chinese trademarks. Perhaps someone should be thinking about what those plans might be?
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Russia comes across as just some Mafia state looking to line the pockets of the boss and top lieutenants. China is playing the long game for global dominance. And they may be winning.
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Wrong.
I can prepare a thumb-drive that will infect your machine immediately without any auto-run or any other kind of program execution. Just by the HARDWARE querying the GUID of the device for it’s USB identifier I can force it to run code on your machine AND it doesn’t have to be a USB drive. It can be a mouse, keyboard, network dongle, anything that plugs into your USB port (type doesn’t matter either, USB-A, or USB-C or Thunderbolt although on Thunderbolt it’s a little harder.)
I can also prepare one that will fry your motherboard immediately the moment you plug it in.
The only way to make sure that a USB-device does not infect your machine is to use a hot-glue gun on all the USB ports (don’t laugh, I once worked a contract at a location that did just that.)
Anytime you have physical access to a machine, you can infect it if you know what you are doing and are prepared.
The only way to check USB devices for malware is on a physically separate non-networked device that you wipe and reload (including the BIOS/UEFI) afterwards. Even then, some of the more sophisticated firmware worms can infect the firmware of hard drives, network adapters, and even video cards to avoid detection.
It’s a never-ending arms-race between the malware writers and the security specialists, and the APT (Advanced Persistent Threat) players, being mostly government entities are very, very well funded and staffed.
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Damn… Hope you’re not one of our IRA specialists, because that is a very good write-up there!
The agents don’t have a dedicated, clean, non-connected computer to detect malware? He just stuck it into his computer to see if it was bad?
I guess Vlad asked the Chinese to do something obvious and showy to take the stupid amerikanski’s minds off of their ‘elected’ Supreme Commander for a while.
Naw, looks from the agent statement that they were doing it on a clean computer, not his work one.
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Do the Kushners have to refund her $500,000 now?
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