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Cyber Attacks on US Linked to Chinese Military?
wiredog writes "Security expert Bruce Schneier is reporting on a continuing effort to penetrate US government and industry computer systems that most likely stems from the Chinese military." From the Terranet article: "The attacks have been traced to the Chinese province of Guangdong, and the techniques used make it appear unlikely to come from any other source than the military, said Alan Paller, the director of the SANS Institute, an education and research organization focusing on cybersecurity."
Take, for example this story which includes the quote:
Let's not forget how important our information infrastructures are and how dependent we have been on computers for quite sometime. Let's also not forget common rules of war one of which is cutting off an enemy's supply line ASAP to reduce their cone of influence. A pre-emptive move to "test the waters" of U.S. security by China would not surprise me.
My work here is dung.
Does this sound like another blame game when something bad happens in USA? If they have already traced the source and still couldn't fend it off, I don't know what they would do next, calling President Hu?
These attacks come from someone with intense discipline. No other organization could do this if they were not a military organization
Does this rhyme with "Space exploration is both demanding and dangerous. No other nations could do this if they did not have a space shuttle".
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
This was brought up on my local SAGE mailing list earlier. Someone brought up the good point: Aren't there an awful lot of news stories recently (heck, there've been three on /. in the past few days) villianizing China? Almost as if some large government- or media-induced program is going on to remind us how Evil they are and influence the collective consciousness to be in favor of breaking off relations with the most populous nation on Earth? (Or, to some extreme, treating them like our last Axis of Evil?)
Does this, combined with the Air Force's new mission statement, constitute an Act of War?
Just ask anyone involved in the free Tibet movement or any of the ISP's that host websites with the words free Tibet, they used to get massive attacks from DOS right through to serious and well planned attempts to hack these sites. Spent an entire week assisting the fending off of one of these and having to rebuild a server after the attack got through with it.
I have been worried for a long time about the apparent naivete of the U.S. government and military regarding the Chinese.
The Chinese government and military are extremely savvy so long as they are not blinded by their communist dogma. When it comes to trade, information, spying, and weapons technology, they understand the reality that those who play fair lose.
If you are a businessman, have no illusions that your papers and files are safe in your hotel room in China. There have been documented cases of government-sponsored spies following businessmen and bugging or entering their hotel rooms to scour their belongings for useful trade secrets and intellectual property.
We can see clearly that they are pursuing a strategy of mercantilism in trade, to our great disadvantage, thanks to the cluelessness of free-traders in Congress and the White House.
Who can doubt that the same issues exist with regard to sensitive military information? The Chinese sponsor students to come to the U.S. with the express goal sometimes of infiltrating research staffs and supplying tech info back to China. The same surely occurs with U.S. government and military employees, although the screening is more thorough.
In my opinion, the CHinese government would see hacking U.S. government or military sites as a requirement for successful international competition. Hopefully, the NSA and others like them are on top of the problem. I don't doubt, though, that they have gained access to lots of systems on the lower end of the confidentiality spectrum.
It needs to be impressed on people in government, military, and intelligence work, that the Chinese are playing one mean game of chess in everything they do vis-a-vis the U.S. Their sense of time spans centuries and millennia rather than decades. Any suspicious activity on their part needs to be treated with the greatest skepticism by our guys, rather than with apathy or giving them the benefit of the doubt...