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The Invasion of The Chinese Cyberspies
HorsesAss writes "Time Magazine has an article up entitled 'The Invasion Of The Chinese Cyberspies and the Man Who Tried to Stop Them', which outlines how Chinese PRC is cracking DOD networks and downloading massive sets of files detailing every aspect of military planning and practice." From the article: "The hackers he was stalking, part of a cyberespionage ring that federal investigators code-named Titan Rain, first caught Carpenter's eye a year earlier when he helped investigate a network break-in at Lockheed Martin in September 2003. A strikingly similar attack hit Sandia several months later, but it wasn't until Carpenter compared notes with a counterpart in Army cyberintelligence that he suspected the scope of the threat. Methodical and voracious, these hackers wanted all the files they could find, and they were getting them by penetrating secure computer networks at the country's most sensitive military bases, defense contractors and aerospace companies."
USA vs. China
While the rest of the world chooses sides or tries to get out of the way...
My blog
Isn't this the reason that there is supposed to be an air gap between classified networks are and unclassified networks?
I'm wondering how much of what was obtained is planted information to look like something valuable. Then again, it is the government we're talking about, so it could well be national secrets.
Jerry
http://www.itcapability.com/
Is there a reason that they even bother accepting traffic from any where outside of the US?
How about disconnecting the Military from AOL?!?!? Why is our national defense infrastructure attached to the Internet? Where autonomy can be easily obtained. How about people make a private network for defense systems. Public networks will largely never be secure because some asshole will always want in and will always have more time to crack away.
Bush ran Iran/Contra, and the Savings & Loan heist that underwrote so much of it. He was a lot smarter that Jr, but I still wonder whether it's just a question of the "right" act at the "right time". Certainly Bush's Carlyle Group has benefited from the way the Iraq War has been prosecuted, as well as its investments in China. Follow the money, and the different faces for different eras don't matter as much as the consistency of direction.
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make install -not war
Result: no Chinese banks left to balance the debt. US now owes China nothing because
China is left a 5th-world nation, a stone-age society pounding rocks together once again. US recovers in 10 years and continues to dominate the entire world for 500 years - India dominates in Asian sphere but remains friendly with US.
Best part - IT careers in US skyrocket.
Did you consider the USA wants those systems hacked by the Chinese.
It is like the old lawyer trick. My company made a product we knew would break and result in death (Say a car tire that we knew would explode and cause cars to turn over). Now your lawyers knows this, so they get a court to subpeona the papers showing we knew the product was bad. Instead of sending that one report, we send you that report mixed in 250,000 other reports. Hell, we might send you 249,999 reports and the 1 you wanted is missing. We send you so much stuff, that your whole legal staff is running at 110% and getting nowhere.
The point is if lawyers can use misinformation, I am sure the government is too. We did it with the USSR, causing them to spend so much on the military that their economy collapsed. Are we doing the same thing with China? Giving them a bunch of false "intel" that the Chinese believe they "stole" when in fact we wanted them to get it??
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
It's not just a bubble, China has copied EVERYTHING Japan has done right down to the bad loans.
The dollar bought 360 yen from after the war into the 70s, just like a dollar right now buys an inordinate of RMB
China's industry started off by manufacturing cheap labor intensive goods at western company owned factories, as did Japan.
China eventually started moving up the food chain, and even making things for their own companies, as did Japan
Everyone thinks that China's record growth will continue unabated, so banks loan money to businesses that have no realistic hope of ever making a profit. Same thing happened in Japan.
China's bubble will be bursting, much like Japan's did, but as you pointed out, Japan didn't have nuclear weapons or one of the strongest conventional forces on earth when it's bubble burst.
China is heading towards having too much capacity, they can't even sell all the stuff they are making, but they are making it anyway. The problem with the export economy is that it cannot grow when it doesn't have anyone to export to anymore. The centrally planned(yes, China's economy is still centrally planned, just not as tightly controlled by the government, much like Japan's economy) works well when you are trying to grow, but the distortions introduced eventually warp the economy. For instance, everyone lists Japan's high rate of savings as one of the reasons that Japan grew so quickly, however now the problem is that they cannot get consumers to spend their money. Every economic report coming out of the country states that, and thus Japan seems to only be able to grow by exporting more.
The export economy can also warp the economy on the whole in more subtle ways as well. For instance, in Japan the export industries are among the most efficient in the world, but everything outside of it is a mess. All one has to do is walk into any big store in Japan and you are just hit with how many store clerks there are. Overemployment is phenominal there. There are even people at some of the bigger stores who are solely in charge of managing the umbrella condom dispenser(umbrella condoms=the plastic bag you put over your umbrella when you enter a building in Japan. They really aren't called umbrella condoms, but it's an accurate description) China seems to be suffering from some of the same problems, only it's going to get worse there as they have 10x the population of Japan.
I honestly don't think the world economy can continue on this pace forever. Every poor country wants to get rich the same way Japan did, but for that to happen, the dollar has to remain strong. However, for every dollar they import, the dollar just gets that much weaker. When only 1 country was doing it, but now there are a lot more, and eventually, something will have to break.
Monstar L
Not so sure. YOu seem to think that population makes a superpower. Yet as you also point out, most of the historical superpowers were not necessarily the most populous countries.
Instead, I think that *trade* makes a superpower. This provides a Grand Unified Theory of Geopolitics which accounts for every major superpower I can think of from the Persians and the Greeks to the US and the EU. The EU is doing a better job at that than the US at the moment, and so I think that they will continue to surpass us.
China's downfall (and Japan's too) is that they are extremely ethnocentric, which prevents them from effectively assimilating the results of the trade. Right now, China *appears* to be doing exactly this (as measured by manufacturing counterfit items) but I don't think there is any real room for pluralism in Chinese society. Even the European Powers of the 17th century had more room for pluralism than we see in China today. So China will eventually find their bubble bursting. They will still be a large power but nothing on the scope of the EU.
If I was going to be worried, I would be *much* more worried about India.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
US power has allways relied on networking with other countries, and their current state as an hegemony relies hevily to that. That is what has to be counted for when comparing countries with each other.
In example: China and India both have over 1 billion inhibitans, when US only has about 300 million. Now count in Mexico and Canada to that, which are geographically close and their economies are tightly linked to US, you get a powerhouse of over 450 million. Okey, that's not so much, but then count in Europe. Europe and North-America are basicly tied to each other economically, politically and militarily. Now you will get a networked power of over 1 billion people, the transatlantic civilization. When one notices that US is just a small part of transatlantic civilization, it's easy to understand that US power relies on leading the network. European Union could be a superpower, they have the people, developed economies, technology and military strength, what they lack is the desire to lead. The US has desire to lead, and most in importantly, their culture is most suitable for leading the network.
The suitability of US to lead a network which ties heavily Europe and Latin America to a one economic powerhouse is their firstly their commitment to capitalism being a truly multicultural and -ethnic society. Capitalism is very lucrative to all countries because it's based on anything being in sale, meaning bigger countries don't have any desire to use their power on smaller ones, as long as everything can be bought, that means vice versa that the smaller countries can use the same resources that the bigger ones, as long as they got the cash. And because US is multiracial and -cultural it doesn't have the burden of carrying a message that one race is better than others, which easily forms when other country has an overpower over another.
Thougth US won't be the only superpower in the world in 50 years, it doesn't mean that it still woudln't be leading the transatlantic civilization and it's powers. Yes, India and China will be lot stronger, but then again, they aren't networked power, they are too big to form networks. I would suspect that the tensions between superpowers will be more in Asia between India and China, an between group of smaller nations that for surely will group together to make a counterforce against China and India, namely Indonesia, Malesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore and Burma.
Thought then again, if the global capitalism continues to rise, in 50 years, it mighty be just the same what is the leading superpower. It just doesn't matter how much power you have when everything is for sale.
Survey research tool for commercial and scientific use
i fail to understand why the u.s. government is treating this guy so badly. granted, he used expertise gained by his employment to do some of the things that he did, but c'mon... he is (was) doing the u.s.'s intelligence services a favor.
i would think that activities such as this would be encouraged, but then again, we're talking about a system whereby the government rewards only those within a proprietary complex of contracts, etc. maybe this is just a little more evidence that that system needs to change.
The AntiJoey
First, I will agree that China is over-rated as the next great powerhouse economically and militarily. Personally, I think that they are clearly a "World Power" but not on the level that either the US or EU are. China would like to be there, but they have a lot of obstacles to overcome.
An accurate, if somewhat rough, appraisal of the current situation and the direction of current political, economic, and military momentum.
The most serious is that China is not, and will probably never be, a pluralist society. The Chinese have almost always seen China as the center of the world in a way that even the US has not done. So while they go back and forth between isolationism and expansionism, the isolationism always wins out because of the huge force that ethnocentricity plays in their culture. I am not saying that this is good or bad. It just places limits on what China can achieve in a pluralist world. To a large extent, this is what crippled the Japanese expansion as well.
The "middle kingdom" mentality that has existed for millennia in the collective Chinese social consciousness. This is certainly a potential handicap in their international dealings, but I would not characterize this difficulty as insurmountable.
Currently the world has two superpowers: The US and the EU. The US is a military superpower and is largely able to dictate its will militarily, and the EU is an economic superpower which is largely able to dominate international and internationist institutions as well as dictate terms on a purely economic basis. Assuming that an EU constitution is forthcoming at some point and that the EU countries agree to have a single foreign policy, they will be in a position to actively challenge the US on any foreign policy area simply by virtue of their economic clout. Note the growing diplomatic war between the US and EU (usually referred to as "Old Europe").
This is where we part ways. It would be inaccurate to characterize the EU as an economic superpower in the same league as the United States (never mind the military part where the United States has a clear advantage), which has both significantly higher GDP per capita and growth than the European Union. Consider the recent trends in the economic and political development of the European Union, the defeat, by referendum, of the EU Constitution, protectionist import tariffs, the high rates of unemployment and slow rates of growth in Germany, France, Italy, and other EU states, with the notable exception of the newer Easter European members where growth is somewhat higher, and the increasingly expensive, burdensome, generous, and ultimately unsustainable social welfare programs that are seen as a birthright by citizens of the EU member nations. If the European Union wants to seriously compete with the US economy and the Asian Tigers then they need to slash government spending, cut taxes, remove onerous government regulations which distort the markets, and encourage more entrepreneurship and risk-taking with investments and capital. There seems to be a lack of will among the EU nations, France especially, to follow through with the necessary reforms on the grounds that bare knuckle American style capitalism is just not the "European" way. If the EU is serious about competing in the global economy then they need to enact meaningful reforms or leaner, meaner, and more efficient firms in the US, India, and China will eat the lunch of over-regulated, uncompetitive, and risk averse European corporations. The EU is still number two economically to the United States, but they are nowhere near overtaking the US in economic power, indeed they are in danger of losing their number two spot to more competitive Asian nations if they are slow to move on needed reforms. People in Europe are afraid of the US system and globalization, but does the European model of high taxes, massive government social service programs, and protectionist economic policies really deliver the best standard of living for all Europeans
You could be right. I know it's not fashionable on Slashdot to give credit to anyone in government for having any brains whatsoever, but from time to time the government gets things right. The closer you get to national security, the longer-term the planning becomes, and the more secretive as well.
I'm not sure that forcing the Soviets to try and outspend us was an example of misinformation, but there are examples of America actually using misinformation well: the buildup to Operation Overlord comes to mind, and the Pentagon used misinformation very well in making Saddam Hussein think the American attack would be a head-on affair, rather than the "left hook" it actually used.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I disagree if you think gathering innocuous near-open source information isn't important. In the article it stated "these hackers wanted all the files they could find." It's obvious now that the Chinese way of collecting information is to throw a massive net into various geographical realms (including cyberspace) and gain as much information as possible. Who knows what data these guys are getting. The data may seem innocuous to us but to the Chinese it may be pertinent competitive information. In a worst case scenario this information gathering could be a reconnaissance for future cyber covert action.
In the SIGINT world while breaking cryptography and traffic analysis are considered more important much more manpower goes at targeting weaker sources like plain voice traffic and technical parameters. This method of attacking a a FUOU network that doesn't haven't high level classification goes along with the Sun Tzu-based chinese way of war. In Sun Tzu's art of war he stated "To effect an unhampered advance, strike their vacuities." That is what these guys are doing-attacking weak unclass networks rather than go after harder to attack classified networks.
Part of the counter-intelligence (CI) game is to make sure the enemy doesn't know he's been caught.
While that is so, it's a pretty sophomoric view of CI. Usually CI runs through a couple of stages:
1. Ascertaining what needs protection in the first place and assigning priorities (time and money) to targets. In this case the US probably now realizes that these low level networks need as much protection as high level networks. So the priorities will probably change in the future.
2. Second stage is analysis needs to be done to ascertain the particular vulnerabilities of those secrets that were ID'ed in stage one. If the higher officials were worried about this cyberthreat there was obviously vulnerable information on those networks. Probably either put there due to incompetence or if the information is put into context with other disparate info.
3. Third stage is where CI assesses what areas foreign intel is targeting and assess its ability to reach those targets. Obviously these guys have the ability to target the low level networks.
The American CI have a pretty good idea about the Chinese hackers technical means, their operational means and what information the Chinese are exactly getting-hence why they are worried. So to publicly out this through the press really isn't a big deal because they know everything they need to know, they now need to assess their vulnerabilities and run through the CI cycle again.
That theory isn't far-fecthed. We've already done it :)
http://www.gasandoil.com/goc/news/ntr41080.htm
--- RFC 1149 Compliant.
The story's author is Nathan Thornburgh. A look at his track records at the Time shows a total lack of technology articles. And this story isn't raising his average. Looks like the author is anything but a techie. Which doesn't prevent him from writing down to his audience about things he knows nothing about.
Frankly, I can't help but wonder if Thornburgh hasn't been completely hogwashed by this Carpenter guy. The story would also be a tad more convincing if the artcile didn't read like a bad movie script or one of those inane pulp "hacker" novels concocted by writers who think using FTP to transfer files is a great technical prowess.
Thornburgh should write B-movies for the sci-fi channel. At least he won't have to explain the technobabble.
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Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
It's called a cold war. Just like the war with Russia, and its started already. The problem is America is losing. Americans are so greedy and selfish that China has learned to exploit Americas corporate weaknesses to its own advantage.
Outsourcing? It's simple. People who support outsourcing are supporting the Chinese. China is already kicking our asses in the economic war. If you want to win the war with China, you have to win the economic war. There is about 0% chance of the war becoming a physical war because at this level, with this much money at stake, neither country will ever want to have a physical war, and America will not go to war to defend Taiwan just as China will not require physical war to take Taiwan. China will buy Taiwan.
And before people post saying I don't know what I'm talking about, here is an blog for you all to read. Thomas PM Barnett is a war strategist. Read his blog, do some research on the subject, and then respond to my post.
Thomas P.M. Barnett is a strategic planner who has worked in national security affairs since the end of the Cold War and has operated his own consulting practice (Barnett Consulting) since 1998. Recently, Tom founded a consulting partnership with two other outstanding individuals called The New Rule Sets Project LLC. The consultancy was acquired by Enterra Solutions, LLC. in August of 2005, with Dr. Barnett as Senior Managing Director.
Thomas PM Barnett's Blog