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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...
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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/
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
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.
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