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This is interesting for several reasons. 1. It happened during the Treasury auction, and if the timing was intentional, a case could be made about it being a n
by yafetn 3y ago
This is interesting for several reasons.
1. It happened during the Treasury auction, and if the timing was intentional, a case could be made about it being a national security issue. The hackers disrupted the largest, and possibly most important, auction in the financial world.
2. The hackers may have unintentionally provoked an entity you definitely don’t want on your bad side: the People’s Liberation Army’s cyber arm.
3. I wonder if ICBC used a specialized courier service to send the USB stick, or if such a thing even exists. Or did they just use any old messenger service in Manhattan? If the latter, it’s funny to think that there was somebody biking across the city carrying billions of dollars worth of liquidity and settlement data and he/she would’ve been none the wiser.
- pavlov 3y agoI bet there's a specialized courier service in Manhattan who only deliver small and boring envelopes that just happen to be extremely valuable to financial companies. No idea what that company might be, but I'd imagine they don't use bikes just for the "bus factor" risk of that person getting into an accident and the envelope lost.
- barkingcat 3y agoThere are thousands of these kinds of services. Almost all would be bonded, some would offer armed security escorts to go with the courier (of course, for a fee).
- codetrotter 3y agoImagine a bicycle messenger in lime green sports clothes with a dark green box on his back, followed by two guard motorbikes all black, carrying big guns. And the motorbikes riding comically slow in order to stay with the bicyclist. Even struggling to not tip over, because of how slow they are going at times.
- barkingcat 3y agoMore like a motorcade of motorcycles, 3 at the front in arrow formation pushing out the traffic, the forward section not shy about using their guns to move people away - these would be real NYPD with badges hired during their off-duty hours, they would be carrying NYPD weapons. Then you have the main security cordon, a quad / box. They would be on motorbikes, but it would be like guards, and since the traffic is already cleared by the forward section, it would just go at the fastest speed the cyclist courier can go. The cyclist is in the middle of the quad/box. Then at the back you have a rear section (also 3 NYPD off duty cops on motorbikes with firearms licenses and authorized to shoot with no consequence because they are union protected), which will block traffic from coming too close to the courier.
- notnaut 3y agoSounds legit, but also reads like good fanfic without anything provided for external confidence.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- eli 3y agoI don't follow. Wouldn't you just send another USB drive? Doesn't seem any riskier than anything else sent by courier.
- hedora 3y agoYou could even send three couriers, each with the two public + private keys for the other couriers' data, and also their own encrypted blob.
- doublerabbit 3y agoFour couriers Three memory sticks Two encryptions One file
- gpderetta 3y agoNo need. The courier has an implanted memory device with 160GB capacity. But it was pushed beyond specs to 360GB for this run.
- htrp 3y agoIts actually bike messengers
- djbusby 3y agoThe movie industry ships HDDs in locked boxes. You call to get the code when the package is received. I imagine the banks have something like that or even better.
- euroderf 3y ago> You call to get the code when the package is received. Sounds hackable.
- jakeinspace 3y agoNobody wants to repeat back 512 character encryption keys over the phone these days
- eli 3y agoit's encrypted
- motohagiography 3y agoTargeting the U.S. Treasury auction means the target was the US and its cost of funding itself, where this auction facility at ICBC was just the means.
- happytiger 3y agoI’m of the exact same mind. By missing this point people are missing the real story here. This smells like a fairly high-potency (and effective?) attack on a very vulnerable piece of critical financial infrastructure. Seems like a test perhaps?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ok_dad 3y agoWhen I was in the navy, we used to ship both guns and secret material via the regular old US postal service.