Slashdot Mirror
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.
That American Hackers = #1! Go America! If Americans can hack alien spaceships with Mac laptops, then China should be no threat at all!
If China invaded Tiawan, where would we get our VIA SIS etc AMD mobo's from???? That would be a huge disruption in PC supplies, and, to the vendors delight, higher prices, thicker margins.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Lately I've been having thoughts regarding the internet as a whole. General nostalgia about times when the internet was free, and good, and exciting.
:[
I worry that the Internet is doomed to irrevicably loose what made it so good (for me). Popup ads, spam, trolls, lamers in the doom-like of the season, and the concept of 'cyberwar' fill me with despair over how misguided most of humanity is. I fear that what is probably the best invention of my lifetime will be tarnished by greed, selfishness, and stupidity.
Guess this is how Environmentalists feel...
Confidential?
We are in trouble if the best way we know to keep things confidential is to give them to a major newspaper.
the CIA want to keep there jobs and they want more funds so they come up with warning after warning after warning. How come the US has so many enemies all of a sudden?
although that herbal viagra really did work!!
Sure it does... Why do you think that there are so many Chinese?
By establishing such a system, you're practically inviting the government to abuse it. While initially, the purpose of the system might be to keep bad people out, it will undoubtedly be twisted to keep people in.
Do you really want to give any more control over the Internet to the government?
J
Such discussion is a red herring to get more government funding as well as to push for even more laws - like we don't have enough already.
Never underestimate the extent the government will go...for example it's widely suspected the anthrax attacks last year was a government test gone awry; or perhaps more sinister, such as a way to get lots of extra funding and laws passed fast with little resistance - most everyone I've spoken with who has truly read the Patriot Act is appalled at the total disregard of the U.S. Constitution and basic human rights.
Bottom line is don't believe all you read - but then most here already know that...for the biggest threats to our security are from within...another reason the U.S. government should NOT develop mini-nukes (a misnomer to say the least!) for it's likely they will be used against us at some point...technology is a double-edged sword and thus we should not rely solely on it to solve our problems.
Ok, I really rambled on here, but anyways one must be careful what they believe...for the U.S. propaganda machine is running full-tilt these days to stuff our minds full of garbage and lies...it's happened before and is happening now!
They've already infultrated Slashdot! Oh, these Red Army types are much more sophisticated that I could have imagined! Using social engineering to keep US Geeks from countering their plot.
Good thing I saw through the disguise!
Unfortunately what the administration has found is that it has opened up Pandora's box and does not know how to handle it anymore. And like you said, it has fallen back 15 years to Reaganism. The thing is, a good majority of the administration are from the Reagan era. It is much easier to lead a country back during the Cold War than it is now. When you know who your enemies are and can rally support against a common enemy, you can pretty much push anything through legistlation. In the past 6 months or so, the administration has tried to find a common enemy (first terrorists, but since that is a broad term, moved onto Usama Bin ladin, and since we can't find him, moved onto al Qaeda then Taliban, etc, etc...)
Bush has had it out for China since he first stepped into office. Remember the US spy plane incident?. And honestly, China isn't doing anything worse than what the US has been doing for years. I would say distrupting and ousting a democratically elected leader of a country is a bigger crime than DDoS that is talked about in this article.
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
A) This is lame. China cant or won't do this, and the CIA is stupid for thinking they can.
B) This is all part of some plot on the part of the CIA to get more funding and/or strip away all of our remaining freedoms.
The CIA's primary role is to examine information from a wide variety of sources and attempt to categorize and where possible act to mitigate short-term and long-term threats to the security of the United States. Given that their job is akin to predicting the future, and given that even with tremendous resources, predicting the future is exceedingly difficult, the CIA will miss a lot of things that look obvious in hindsight (Al-Quaeda was planning an attack on NYC!).So the public says "shame on you, CIA, for not spotting that obvious threat!"
But then, they often catch things that you and I aren't even aware of. They actually do this on a routine basis, and often times American foreign policy is directly influenced by information the CIA has successfully collected and/or analyzed. Of course, the CIA can't go around trumpeting these successes, because it decreases the odds of them being successful in the future.
So China may or may not be planning cyber-attacks on Taiwan and/or the United States. Do you really think that you for some reason know better than the CIA what's going on in the minds of China's rulers?
The CIA has been very wrong in the past, but more often than not, they're right. Also, remember that if China doesn't launch such attacks, it's not necessarily proof that the CIA was in error. It could be that by leaking their knowledge of Chinese plans, the CIA is betting that they'll elect not to try it.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
his adult life and who rides his bike by the CIA office where they park their convoy of matching pink 50cc scooters --I'm not kidding-- everyday on his way to work, I can tell you that spooky stories about mainland China are that. . . . spooky stories. Dime a dozen, they wrap fish with spooky China stories around here.
You want to know about a spooky country--Japan. That's a scare story that has everything to do with Taiwan. Those whacky Japanese are playing scuicide with their economy and they're going to take Taiwan with them.
DOS attacks from Mainland China are not a threat, Japan's serene implosion is a major threat to the global economy. DOS attacks, not scarry, Yen at 200, very very scarry.
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.
;-P ). I guess honker is hacker in Chinese. It was a toolbox of scripts and methodologies.
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
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?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Why does the US always feel that it is justified in arming itself with every weapon imaginable but others aren't. Remember what happened when India and Pakistan tested their nukes?
If they are developing methods of attacking via the Internet, so are we. Yes its a good thing we know of its possibility and are going to take steps to defend ourselves incase such an attack occurs, however, it doesn't mean the Chinese are "evil terrorist hackers!"
Just my opinion anyway.
- Tempestdata
...this article can't really be taken seriously. The Supreme Court has rejected prior restraint except in cases where National Security is involved. The article states that it was a classified report that discusses China's activities. If it was something important, the CIA could've pulled the whole article simply because it's classified - that's the only justification they need of its importance to National Security.
Furthermore, isn't leaking classified information treason? Yeah. So read it and write it off as "FUD". China simply wouldn't be able to hack into the U.S. systems - if we thought there was a threat, we could simply temporarily disconnect the overseas backbones (of which there are suprisingly few). Beyond that, the military, for some time, has used satellites to communicate; and every critical computer system is connected to a separate internal network, with no contact points to the Internet.
If China wants to drop some Spec. Ops. onto the Pentagon, that's a whole different story. But for now I'm not worried. Unless they try and DOS whitehouse.gov and kill all my RtCW ping times.
Jake
Dating: while( 1 ){ call_girl(); get_rejected(); drink_40(); } return 0;
I submitted this a few hours ago and got rejected, but anyway... One question I raised in my submission (just about where the HERBAL VIAGRA joke is in this one), and one that I still think is worth answering is this:
The L.A. Times piece cites the CIA as saying that the People's Liberation Amry is conducting "research into offensive-minded cyber-tools" with the intent to cause damage to U.S. and Tawainese systems.
A technical contact at the Chinese Embassy in Washington counters that the research conducted by the Chinese government is purely defensive in nature.
There is no difference between offensive and defensive research except the intent, right? I mean, you could write a virus strictly for a deeper understanding of viral algorithms and how to protect against them. You could study more secure firewalls in order to circumvent them.
In short, the CIA can't prove that the research is offensive in nature unless they have intercepted Chinese plans to utilize the research in an offensive way. Similarly, it would be even harder for the Chinese to prove that it is defensive.
Therefore the news content in this article is essentially this: the CIA noticed that Chinese government studies network security.
sig is
Try this:
0 1
/16s and 300+ /24s.
http://ftp.apnic.net/stats/apnic/apnic-2002-04-
It shows APNIC assignments. You have to grep through the list to get just the CN assignments. It's a big, ugly, long list of 366 netblocks. 53
I'm gonna add it to the filter(s) at home and see what it does before I fubar the office with it.
All GPL and so-called 'Open' source transfers will be blocked to protect Microsoft's interoperability patents. Although GPL and so called 'Open' source was eliminated under the 2003 American Patriot and Copyright Protection Act, reports have shown that this scourge continues to proliferate in foreign lands. We will block all foreign ftp transfers to ensure that American jobs will remain secure. American jobs mean security for American citizens.
All enemy political propaganda websites, such as in the People's Republic of China, Muslim terrorists in the Middle East, Communist, Socialist, British Labor Party, all French and Dutch, and the (formerly) American Democratic Party will be blocked to ensure that Patriots do not become polluted with unsound ideals.
All unauthorized downloads from pirate, copyright-violating music sites and international file-sharing networks will be blocked as per the procedures in the American Patriot and Copyright Protection Act of 2003.
In addition, for our citizen's protection, all email received in the United States from foreign internet addresses will be checked for malicious, terrorist, or other prohibited activity to identify and aprehend enemies of the state that may be within our own borders.
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
They're doing exactly what the al-queda (sp?) did to them.
No, in order to do that, we'd need to build two 110-story buildings in Riyadh (there aren't any, natch), fill them with office workers, and blow them up.
--
Benjamin Coates
[flamebait]
Ok, so public support for Operation Bomb the Towelheads is declining; what's the government to do? I know! Let's make the American people xenophobic of ANOTHER socioreligious group!
What this all boils down to is a game of hide-the-sasuage that the government is playing with us. The general public is like a herd of buffalo: pretty dumb, hard to get moving, hard to turn, hard to stop when they ARE moving. Apparently support of the US' support of Israel (as Israel plays their own game of Bomb the Towelys) is waning, so the US needs another shiny object with which to distract the herd.
Hmm, I know how to distract them! Let's release a shiny press releas^H^H^H^H news item! Let's see, it's buzzword bingo time:
Hackers? CHECK
Cyber-terrorism? CHECK
Red commie Chinese? CHECK
SHINY OBJECT COMPLETED. DO YOU WISH TO DEPLOY? (Y/N)
DISTRACTION SUCCESSFUL, YOU MAY RECOMMENCE BOMBING OF THE ARAB NATION.
[/flamebait]
I'm sorry if I sound cynical, but the public seems to be infinitely stupid and the government seems to be infinitely willing to leverage this stupidity to their advantage. Just planting the meme of "Chinese Cyber-terrorists!" is bad enough. What's even worse is that the lemmings will be talking about this vaporous Chinese threat over the watercooler tomorrow morning instead of talking about how Israel murdered so many Palestinians and buried them in a mass grave.
It's a red herring planted by a cynical government which isn't afraid to use blatant misdirection to draw attention away from itself.
Personally, I wish that the US govt would do more to examine what it is doing and stop going out of its way to make new enemies. Believe it or not, I'm not alone in this wish... maybe someday we all can get along...
My friend, I wish I had your enthusiasm. More than likely, perhaps millions of years in the future, the last living man on earth will most likely drown trying to attack its own reflection in a lake.
The truth of the matter, I believe the wholesale behavior of nations are just as insane and lacking in judgement as the people that make them up. So if a nation (as a whole) acts nuts, well then, there you go. Perhaps most of the people there are nuts too.
The USA doesn't act stupid. The USA is admittedly greedy. Not nuts or stupid. Not any more nuts than Rome acted before the whole lead in the drinking water thing, and look what they did. To think that other nations think that we are a bunch of stupid cowboys only gives us a tactical advantage. Keep thinking that. Its that same thinking that deep, hidden rock caves can save you in 21st century warfare. And that you can attack innocents in a twitchy, militaristic nation and not get some serious retribution.
I share the same feeling about most nations as I do the USA. Not nuts, not stupid, just trying to carve something for themselves. Not as greedy as America perhaps, but certainly not a bunch of saints because they're not America.
However, Saudi Arabia (and many Arabic nations) appear on the outside to be nuts. Not evil. Nuts. Any nation that enforces its dress code lethtally, speaks to the President of "the meanest dog on the street" like he is a piece of crap and HAS NO REAL ARMY TO BACK THAT SHIT UP, and then has a member of its diplomatic corps for the UK print poetry about the glorious death of their hijackers killing innocents, well then, there you go. Nuts. Not acting in a sane way. Practically begging to get fucked with by the CIA. Or killed. You just don't talk to "ol hot head" like that.
Don't even get me started on Israel.
Also, I would argue that the US has done great controlling the world. We shouldn't want to control the world, but we certainly aren't piss poor at it.
The anti-civilization nutties are rising up now, but that is because they haven't threatened me (meaning the citizens of the world) personally.
When Hussein or someone decides to make New York dissapear in a blinding white flash, well, then they will see what happens when the US starts conscripting troops, and we open up all of those warehouses full of rifles and ammo we've been stockpiling for two generations. We're the only ones fully prepared for straight up war all over the globe.
I've been to those military bases, it scares the hell out of me to see that much weaponry, and I'm an American.
But I don't think we're going to flip out real soon, though, unless someone flips out on us first, and I think that many Arabic nations have been waiting to flip out on everyone not themselves. They have been attacking the reflection in the water for generations.