Related to the widespread cyberattack affecting possibly thousands of compromised systems.

Quote

The U.S. National Security Agency issued a rare "cybersecurity advisory" Thursday detailing how certain Microsoft Azure cloud services may have been compromised by hackers and directing users to lock down their systems.

Wonder if there are any possible effects for MSFS users....

https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN28R2ZJ

oh ... those bad bad P3D people ... so naughty

like Zoot

Exterior shot. MS headquarters, the camera zooms in on an office window. Cut to interior, a high tech office. A pretty secretary rushes into the plush office...

Secretary: 'Sir, I've found some malicious software on my PC, it does all kinds of weird things!'

Manager in expensive suit: 'Relax Darlene, we know all about it, It's called Windows 10'.

Edited December 19, 20205 yr by Chock

God forbid that my logged hours are hacked.

Oh ok now we know what happened to tropical watermasks and all that!

No wonder Asobo is having so much trouble fixing stuff:  Russki sabotage!🤤 

Probably my fault for having the nerve to land in red square.

So THAT's why previously working elements are broken with each update...

There is hope then that someone may hack in and actually fix some stuff!

5 hours ago, HiFlyer said:

Wonder if there are any possible effects for MSFS users....

I mean, certainly, but it's hard to say exactly how.  Solarigate/SUNBURST (the two names being used for this attack) is incredibly subtle and well-designed, to a degree usually only seen from state-level actors.   The general course of its activity once it's in place seems to be to exfiltrate files and open other security loopholes, which can make it easier for other malicious code and users to gain access to a system.  

Orion, the application attacked by this malware, is system monitoring and management tool widely used in enterprise IT.  SolarWinds themselves say that 18,000 users downloaded the compromised update.  Any of them could have been sprung wide open between now and March.

(My employer was one of the ones running this version of Orion; we got an automated notification as soon as the CISA alert went out and took immediate mitigation actions.  Fortunately we didn't show any of the signs of compromise.)

Given its presumed origin, and the profile of the targets it's known to have compromised, it's likely that things as mundane as identity theft were not the primary purpose -- something of this sophistication and scale isn't generally done to pick on random individuals.  The main way I could see it affecting MSFS users is if for some reason they managed to compromise large sections of Azure and decided to cause mayhem internally in ways that would take down the streaming and multiplayer servers.

As long as one is already taking reasonable measures to protect their identity and online presence I wouldn't be too worried about this at an individual level.  I'm more worried about what government or corporate secrets have been stolen and what whoever is responsible plans to do with them.  To have had something this sophisticated in so many high-profile targets since as early as March is... alarming.

The malware itself is really fascinating.  If you're of a technical bent and want to read some more, this has a really good technical overview of it:   https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2020/12/evasive-attacker-leverages-solarwinds-supply-chain-compromises-with-sunburst-backdoor.html

 

5 hours ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

like Zoot

Ah yes, naughty Zoot!

IIRC she wanted to be spanked in that movie... 🍻

I heard the main intent of the attack was to deliver the following line of code:

MSFS=DX11+1

 

 

5 hours ago, ADamiani said:

Oh ok now we know what happened to tropical watermasks and all that!

beat me to it.

The response from MS was quite something...

Microsoft Tactically Nukes SolarWinds Hackers That Infiltrated U.S. Government Agencies (hothardware.com)

6 minutes ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

Internet security is always going to be a major problem.  Anyone can verify the continual hacking attempts 24/7 ... setup SQL server on your PC and enable auditing of login attempts ... within minutes of setting it up and start the service listening on whatever port you want, your audit logs will be full of AI based computers trying to access it.

Did that years and years and years ago, and watching all the access attempts made me paranoid as heck about the internet, a wariness that has never gone away.