CIA Warns China Might Be Planning Cyber Attack

malibucreek writes "The Los Angeles Times is reporting that the CIA is warning of possible cyber-terrorism against U.S. and Taiwanese computer systems by the Chinese Army. Or, China could just launch a massive denial-of-service attack by sending billions of "GET HERBAL VIAGRA" e-mails from the .cn TLD." The article has a reasonable amount of information and is probably worth a read if you're curious about what could be a real big deal in the future.

Comments

Chinese hackers are no pushovers

[circletimessquare]

Remember then Chinese hacker push in early May of last year? It was to coincide with May Day and in protest over the whole U.S. Spy Plane Hainan Island debacle the month before that.

Some MS boxen got "f**k USA government f**k poizonbox" pasted all over their IIS roots. Not much beyond that, and I think some American hackers returned the favor. A little miniature patriotic hacker war.

Out of curiosity, I kept up to date on Chinese hacking at a site whose address is www.cnhonker.com (visit at your own risk, and don't hit the Back button ;-P ). I guess honker is hacker in Chinese. It was a toolbox of scripts and methodologies.

But very recently, in March, the site was closed by someone called "lion". I had a Chinese coworker of mine visit the site, and she translated the brief explanation for the site's closing as "After long thinking, we have no choice but close it. Please don't write to us asking why, give us a little time. We'll be back. September 2002, we'll see you again"

I am not much of a conspiracy theorist, but when it comes to autocratic governments, my instincts change... any bets on whether or not the Chinese Government has coopted some of their talented hackers for a patriotic cause?

Re:Red Herring To Get More Govt Funding and Laws

[Tazzy531]

At least try to have your conspiracy theories make some kind of sense. Exactly what kind of government test can go awry, resulting in anthrax being mailed to US senators?

Check these articles: 2nd Leak Of Anthrax Found at Army Lab

Or this one: investigation raised the possibility that there was a secret CIA project to investigate methods of sending anthrax
Excerpt:

Three weeks ago Dr Barbara Rosenberg - an acknowledged authority on US bio-defence - claimed the FBI is dragging its feet because an arrest would be embarrassing to the US authorities. Tonight on Newsnight, she goes further...suggesting there could have been a secret CIA field project to test the practicalities of sending anthrax through the mail - whose top scientist went badly off the rails...

DR BARBARA ROSENBERG: FEDERATION OF AMERICAN SCIENTISTS: Some very expert field person would have been given this job and it would have been left to him to decide exactly how to carry it out. The result might have been a project gone badly awry if he decided to use it for his own purposes and target the media and the senate for his own motives as not intended by the govt project...but this is a possibility that I think needs to be considered