The $7 million hack (was re: [dgc.chat] Crowne Gold Update)

[Tim May]

On Monday, August 26, 2002, at 08:37  PM, R. A. Hettinga wrote:

> --- begin forwarded text
>
> Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2002 19:14:44 -0400
> From: Sean Trainor <sean at crowne-gold.com>
> Subject: [dgc.chat] Crowne Gold Update
> To: GoldMoney List Server <dgcchat at lists.goldmoney.com>
> Organization: Crowne Gold
> ...
> Update: Crowne Gold

...long account of nature of intrusion elided....

> By getting an administrator to respond directly to email, the hackers
> gained access to a computer half a world away from the front-end server 
> and
> eventually captured administrative logons.  The primary server system 
> was
> not attacked until Carnival was in full swing in the Caribbean from
> whence Crowne Gold customer service functions are provided.  When it was
> discovered that hackers had penetrated the system, IP addresses were put
> under trace and the information gained was submitted to Interpol.

And what will happen if and when TLAs decide the best way to undermine 
confidence in upstart, anarchic extra-governmental banks who haven't 
been paying bribes and taxes for generations, like some Swiss banks, 
etc. is to hack them, drain the accounts, or at least shut them down for 
distressing amounts of time?

Will Interpol do anything when HMRG or POTUS was behind the attack?

And considering that CERT wants to be notified first of any identified 
weaknesses, and presumably they and others in HomeSec and other BlackOps 
TLAs know weaknesses not yet publicized or fixed, wanna bet whether they 
could attack many of the upstart offshore banks?

> As you may be aware, Crowne Gold absorbed the former 3PGold whose 
> front-end
> server was located at Havenco at the Principality of Sealand.  Havenco 
> is
> physically secure but when the hackers accessed Crowne Golds equipment 
> at
> the Havenco server farm, there was no one on location at Havenco to 
> support
> the several IT persons on the Crowne Gold side who desperately needed on
> site assistance.   It took several days for Havenco staff to respond to
> calls for assistance and then it became immediately apparent that those 
> in
> communication were nowhere near the actual Havenco platform.

You have just now realized that the Sealand platform is minimally 
staffed?  We heard this a couple of years ago, straight from people who 
ought to know. Seems to me that you have not done due diligence....

(I mean, how can Ryan be on the platform and also be on his way to 
Burning Man? (As an example...I haven't heard from Ryan in a long while, 
but I know that at one time he was administering the Sealand routers and 
boxes remotely.)

> Again we apologize for the delay. We have been rudely educated. Yet as
> things go it has been a dramatic wake-up call and probably the best time
> possible for us to live through this experience.

This will not be the last such attack. Nor could it be expected to be.

Banks have been robbed, blackmailed, threatened, and even burned for 
thousands of years. If digital banking (in its various forms) is 
successful at all, it will be attacked.

Some will try to attack these banks because that's where the money is, 
as Willie Sutton used to say. Others will attack because of the threat 
the digital banks pose, to other banks, to tax collectors, to the status 
quo. For this second class of attackers, disrupting or tarnishing the 
reputation of the operation is enough.

Much more could be said on this.

--Tim May