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Chinese Websites Used As Launchpads For Cracking
An anonymous reader writes "A Washington Post article reports that Chinese networks are being used to breach hundreds of unclassified U.S. government systems. The article goes on to say that some analysts believe the activity to be tied to the Chinese government, although there is also some dissent." From the article: "Whether the attacks constitute a coordinated Chinese government campaign to penetrate U.S. networks and spy on government databanks has divided U.S. analysts. Some in the Pentagon are said to be convinced of official Chinese involvement; others see the electronic probing as the work of other hackers simply using Chinese networks to disguise the origins of the attacks."
I used to work in physical security (a clerical job I had in high school), and it was always fun to talk to the old-timers and hear their stories.
My favorite was about how the KGB operatives in DC in the late 50s stayed in good graces wtih their Moscow overloads with a minumum of effort:
They were supposed to keep tabs on the ongoings of the US political system by establishing inside contacts, and reporting back. So, they just summarized the political news from each day's New York Times, and kept their jobs for years.
The Americans pulled an good one on them: To spy at the Russian consolate in New York, the CIA recruited Xerox to install a minature camera in the consolate's copy equipment. When he came to do "regular maitenance" each month, he'd also replace the full tapes with new ones.
Sorry for no linkies, my source for these is an 80 year old CPP.
This is the same govt. that employs a police force tasked with ensuring that chinese citizens don't visit or use the internet for nefarious reasons.
.02 and you overpaid :P
Obviously it has something to do with the govt. sanctioning these attacks and intrusions! Otherwise the chinese govt. would be arresting individuals constantly for exploiting US governmental resources
Just my
There is a difference between the citizens of a country knowing every detail of the government's actions and a country that is actively against many of those actions knowing. The problem is that most of the people I hear from seem to think that if everyone just would calm down, smoke some weed together and such that we would all be friends. No more adversaries... Right.
The US government has always been operating about 40-50% out of sight. Lately, as in the past 10 years or less, this has started to both become obvious and of a concern to some people that believe they should know what the government is doing and why. What they don't get is "what" is sometimes less important than "why" and "why" can be critically important. Often, very, very important to the people in other parts of the world where these actions are taking place.
Obviously, Al Queda would just love to get a "press briefing" about counter-terrorist actions in the US. Do you think that would be a good idea? At a more local level, how about if the police published a schedule of vacation days for officers? Then you could know when getting nailed for speeding was less likely because of a manpower shortage. This could also help coordinate bank robberies so there was less likelyhood of someone being injured in a chase.
Yes, absolutely I would agree that we are starting to see the effects of information being freely available and being compiled by organizations that do not have our best interested at heart. This is always going to be a problem at some level - in WWII Japan and Germany had spies doing nothing more than reading US newspapers. The US has done this with Russia and China for years as well. But there was a general understanding that disclosing too much was a bad idea. So, announcements of high-level officials movements were often reported after the fact or vaguely. Same thing with other information that could be coordinated. Today, we have no such restraint in the news organizations and you better believe there are people watching the news, reading newspapers and magazines as well as reading stuff on the Internet.
Can they put valuable information together? Absolutely. Would "open and transparent" be a lot more valuable to adversaries than to the people it was intended for? Maybe. That is going to be a very tough idea for most people to get their heads around.
I dare say that a lot of hackers (which here I will use in the popular media sense, i.e. someone wishing to gain unauthorized access to a computer system), use more complicated scenario.
1, Sit at a computer in the US.
2, Hack into a computer in China, Eastern Europe or wherever. Hope that the owner / admin won't notice a thing.
3, Hack into the system of an US government agency, company or wherever you need.
4, Hope that no-one notices. If they do never mind, you have a 99.9% chance that they'll assume the attack is comming from China and do nothing about it.
IP spoofing does not necessarily have to do anything with it. The only thing that could go wrong is if the owner of the Chineese / East European server noticed it's been hacked _and_ notified the US government. How likely is that though?
While I don't buy into the very thin link to this being the work of the Chinese govt. there are a few examples of prior de'art I think worth mentioning:
"The more you read and learn, the less your adversary will know."
"A military operation involves deception. Even though you are competent, appear to be incompetent. Though effective, appear to be ineffective."
"O divine art of subtlety and secrecy! Through you we learn to be invisible, through you inaudible and hence we can hold the enemy's fate in our hands."
"Secret operations are essential in war; upon them the army relies to make its every move."
"The ultimate in disposing one's troops is to be without ascertainable shape. Then the most penetrating spies cannot pry in nor can the wise lay plans against you."
"If your opponent is of choleric temperment, seek to irritate him."
Make no mistake...the rules of war by Sun Tzu are as well posted in the halls of the DoD as they are in the far East.
I think about it this way . If these Chinese hackers have the skill to crack Government systems then they would have the skill to disguise their locations. Why would they make it appear as if the origins are in China...
Unless they wanted to make us think that the signals are not originating in china by making us think they are and then us believing that they wouldn't be and that it is someone else diverting through China
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
That really just means that all the Capones outside China (and Russia) never really knew the meaning of really "hitting the big time".
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make install -not war
You're a rightwingnut. The fact is that US-originated multinationals own lots of Chinese production capacity - the American economy depends on it. So your bullshit about "the US has never had very much to do with mainland China" is pure insanity, even just in the most relevant timeframe: NOW. Forget the 50-year Cold War in which we dealt with China, like waging the Korean and Vietnamese Wars on their borders. You know, the continuing stalemate in Korea (that's festered into nuclear blackmail) and the humiliating defeat in Vietnam, both run by Bush's predecessor Republican presidents, Eisenhower and Nixon. Of course, like everything else that gets negative press, it's all Clinton's fault, wingnut? Clinton is safely retired with dignity, while your boy Bush is running rampant with our checkbook and power spilling everywhere.
Really, your pure nonsense is nothing but an echo of your rightwing fantasy talking points. I'm not going to dignify your personal attacks and retarded lies any further. Others reading this thread might be interested in the releatively sane treatments of China and Taiwan at Wikipedia.
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make install -not war