5333 private links
In January, we learned about a Chinese espionage campaign that exploited four zero-days in Microsoft Exchange. One of the characteristics of the campaign, in the later days when the Chinese probably realized that the vulnerabilities would soon be fixed, was to install a web shell in compromised networks that would give them subsequent remote access. Even if the vulnerabilities were patched, the shell would remain until the network operators removed it.
Now, months later, many of those shells are still in place. And they’re being used by criminal hackers as well.
On Tuesday, the FBI announced that it successfully received a court order to remove “hundreds” of these web shells from networks in the US.
This is nothing short of extraordinary, and I can think of no real-world parallel. //
xcv • April 14, 2021 12:32 PM
@ O.P.
xcv But every courthouse in the United States is running on Microsoft’s legal-industry-specific software products. Lexis-Nexis databases, title deed and recording software, court filing software, etc. So some guy is going to end up in the federal penitentiary, and all the court records will be deleted, altered, or hacked on Microsoft software, and after a few years, nobody can even look up any records as to why the guy’s in prison, but they’re never going to let him out, because he’s been classified as a violent felon in the federal prison population.
It makes me wonder what they classify as “violent crime” or not, because pulling the trigger of a handgun with your finger is no more violent than striking a key on a computer keyboard with the same finger — and consequences no longer matter in court — because modern courts no longer require the third of three elements necessary to convict a crime since the time of the ancient Romans, namely
- mens rea;
- actus reus; &
- noxa rea.
The ancient Romans insisted that if (#1) it wasn’t something you intended to do, or (#2) it wasn’t something you really did, or (#3) you did not really harm anyone — then you didn’t commit a crime, and therefore you could not be convicted of a crime.
Modern courts on the other hand have repealed the classical third necessary element of conviction for crime, and omitted due process by either imposing punishment for harmless or victimless acts, or by falsely imputing harm (noxa) where none exists.
