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Chinese Hack Attacks on DoD Networks Coordinated
An anonymous reader writes " The Naval Network Warfare Command says that Chinese hackers are relentlessly targeting Defense Department networks with cyber attacks. The 'volume, proficiency and sophistication' of the attacks supports the theory that the attacks are government supported. The motives of the attacks emanating from China include technology theft, intelligence gathering, exfiltration, research on DOD operations and the creation of dormant presences in DOD network for future action. Onlookers warn that current US defenses against these attacks are 'dysfunctional', and that more aggressive measures should be taken to ensure government network safety."
Gee, ya think? China has more than a billion people. I know they're not all running around with shiny new laptops, but come on - this is akin to saying that the majority of low-temperature attacks on the United States come from Canada. Well, duh!
I can make the same "cyberattack" claims about my not-worth-cracking dedicated servers and the dinky firewall machine sitting on my cable modem, too, but that doesn't mean I'm engaged in a "cyberwar" with anyone. The majority of rooted machines trying to root mine are in China. Most of this comes in the form of automated attempts to bruteforce ssh, but I've seen targeted attempts where there's clearly a human on the other end of the wire.
While I don't doubt that DoD machines are probably being targeted intentionally, there's an overwhelming amount of garbage traffic coming out of central and eastern Asia, and it hits everyone. Nearly half of all my rejected SMTP traffic is from Chinese netspace, but most of it's trying to peddle western products to American consumers, the Chinese people have nothing to do with it. China's so full of compromised hosts that whoever's actually cracking DoD machines is probably sitting in an internet cafe in Milan, piping data through some rooted
Oh, and the next person to use "spear phishing" in an article is getting a swift kick in the nuts!
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
Time for the US to execute a "phased redeployment" away from the Internet.
Back to uunet or fidonet, where our bits can be safe.
Onlookers warn that current US defenses against these attacks are 'dysfunctional', and that more aggressive measures should be taken to ensure government network safety.
Sure... drop some bombs. What could possibly go wrong?
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
I am a civilian contractor for the US government, and I can guarantee that we are hit all the time with attempts to get into our networks on the secret and SCI sides.
However, I would like to know who these "onlookers" are... The defense measures (can't say specifically of course) that we take are plenty effective against all types of attacks we get. One of our top priorities is writing code that is solid and secure. We run scans (again, specifics are classified) nightly to test the security of our infrastructure and applications.
Whoever these "onlookers" are, I would love to hear about how THEY successfully hacked into our network instead of just criticizing with no actual knowledge.
The United States really needs to change doctrine to prevent these sorts of attacks in the future. An assault on government networks by a foreign country should be responded to like any other attempt to impair, hinder, or steal information from the government by a foreign country - with an escalating response based on severity from diplomatic rebukes, cyber counterattacks, sanctions, and ultimately military strikes.
"In God we trust, all others we monitor." -- Unofficial NSA motto
Shouldn't this be expected? It's not as if this is a surprise. Their systems should be built from the ground up expecting every and any kind of attack.
The US government gives way too much leeway to China in general. They screw with exchange rates, make it difficult for outsiders to do business inside China (Donald Trump even complained), give weapons to our enemies, take our jobs, have crappy human rights record, use mass pollution to take shortcuts and undercut prices, and are not a democracy.
The theory is that free trade will turn them into a democracy. So far its proven to be hooey. Are we going to allow this shit to keep going on decade after decade with the delusion that eating KFC will make them democracy?
Table-ized A.I.
"Attacks coming from China, probably with government support, far outstrip other attackers in terms of volume, proficiency and sophistication" Government support of attacks on DOD networks is not a minor accusation. You would need a lot more evidence beyond potential motives and speculation to suggest that such an attack is government supported.
I agree that we give China too much leeway in a variety of venues, but things are changing there. They have the special economic zones, which are essentially capitalist, and the government is losing its grip on a lot of places. It appears their accounting rules are becoming more westernized, and with them, more transparency in to their economy.
http://bgcommonsense.blogspot.com
By creating a planetary network, mankind on Planet now has the ability to share information at light-speed. But by creating a single such network, each faction has brought themselves closer to discovery as well. At the speed of light, we will catch your information, tag it like an animal in the wild, and release it unharmed -- if such should serve our purposes.
I wonder how much China would complain if the NSA launched an attack against any confirmed hosts? If there is evidence that computers are attacking use, either live or as bots, can China make a real complaint about us protecting our interests?
http://bgcommonsense.blogspot.com
The DoD should create a firewall rule to automatically drop any packets it recieves from China, North Korea, South Korea, or any of those countries trying to root its machines. On my dad's dinky little small business network with one segment and 10 machines, I saw no less than 300 daily attempts to root the gateway via SSH coming from North Korean and Chinese IP addresses. Now, mind you, I use SSH to remotely administer the gateway. Naturally, the gateway is a secure BSD machine as I wouldn't dare front end a network with a Windows 2003 server. I was dismayed that, in these attempts, the attackers are getting a login and password prompt. Thank God syslog reported that no attempts got past that point. So, I made SSH listen to a non-standard port and added a PF firewall rule to drop ANY incoming connection attempts from Pacific Rim countries. I also checked to see if there were any strange binaries or daemons running and ran a netstat -n to look at activity and there was nothing suspicious. Finally, as an additional safety precaution, I decided I would add firewalls to drop the Microsoft ports in and outbound. Now, instead of reporting access denied, syslog reported copious amounts of dropped packets for about two weeks and then the attacks seemed to drop off altogether. Now I see one only occasionally.
By 'hackers' do they mean people scanning their networks for machines with no firewall running PC Anywhere with default passwords like Gary McKinnon did?
those are all true of the United States too.
If we screw with the exchange rates, why do we have a trade and credit deficit? As far as being difficult for outsiders to do business, we have one of the most open-to-business countries there is. It is not perfect, but one of the top in that regard. And although we slipped on the human rights with Gitmo etc., it is still far more open a proces than what China has. Our system is a B-, their's is an F. And, our polution regulations are much tougher than theirs. I've been there and seen a red moon directly overhead (it was not an eclipse). True, US regs are weaker than Europe's, but Europe is not the issue here.
Table-ized A.I.
It's like their food: you hack away, but find you are not satisfied after a few hours and have to hack some *more* ;-P
Table-ized A.I.
I often find those postings one-sided. In this case,some posters are readily to advocate the USE of military as a result of this. We have the most sophisticated electronic and information warfare capability in the world and people just tend to pretend that we don't do this kind of information warfare everyday. And whenever other nations are "alleged" to conduct such, those ignorant people just ready to beat the drum of war.
Another thing is, as of now, China doesn't even need to fire a single bullet to beat the crap out of us if we decide to launch a war on them.
China currently has 1000 billion US dollar foreign reserve, that is somewhere 1/5 to 1/4 of ALL US dollar reserve held by foreign countries. At the onset of the war, China will have three options: one is conventional warfare, two is nuclear warfare, three is financial warfare.
Conventional warfare is something US would avoid, think Korean War. Nuclear Warfare is something both would avoid, unless the fat lady sings(the absolute last resort.)
At the beginning, we of course would bomb the crap out of their infrastructure and military installation, given our air superiority, as we did in Iraq. And China knows this and know they would not win in this course of action.
All they need to do is to make a threat or actually dump US dollar reserve on the international market.
Don't think this would happen? Brush up your knowledge of Suez Canal crisis of 1956. That was exactly what happened when British and French forces rapily withdrew after successful military invasion after Eisnehower threathened to sell US reserves of British pound and thereby to collapse the British currency. Of course the British pound was already under pressure after decades of British colonial expansions that spent a lot of money, not unlike the current US national debt of today. Most historians agree the Suez Canal is the major milestone of the demise of British empire.
When you have 25% of another country's currency on the market, that is a pretty powerful hand. All you need to do is dump all that at once onto the international market. It effectively and immediately collapses the US currency and the whole American economy. Do you think other countries will have the capacity and more importantly the willingness to buy those currency. Do you think other nations would be willing to lend us money by buying up treasury bills, knowing our money would be worthless on the market.Hell no. People all over the world will be dumping US dollar like crazy. US stockmarket will crash; there will be endless runs to the bank.
The economy as we know of will cease to exist.
Some people of course will doubt that China woud do this. But when you are been bombed crap out of you a-ss and you are getting desperate. Trust me, you'lldo anything.
This, my friend, is how the war between China and US will play out NOW. But very very unlikely to happen. It is like two big boys on the playground. Of course it is nice to be the only king of THE playground. But sometimes it easier to share it a little with someone as strong as you are. That is, the essence of international relation. Boy, I just hope we don't have some airheads in the administration thinking otherwise.
So for those people ignorant of economy and internation politics, you can stop making those senseless remarks. Brush up on your knowledge before making a fool out of yourself.
"My job is to pertect the American people from cyberattack. When we find IP packets that are in that country that are hurting our computers, we're going to do something about it. ... Does this mean I'm looking for a pretext to start a war with China? No. It means I'm trying to protect our computers. That's what that means.
.Hackers, go do this,. but we know it's a vital part of the Chinese government."
Despite our warrantless wiretaps, I don't think we know who picked up the phone and said
Secretary of States Bill Gates added "For the umpteenth time, we are not looking for an excuse to go to war with China. We are not planning a war with China. Yes, we do have contingency plans for wars with every other country in the world, but not China. And even it we did, we have not taken any actual final decisions to act on them in the immediately foreseeable future. We have just sent elint-equipped cruisers to the East China Sea, but those are just there to help Taiwan with its streaming internet video capacity."
In response to a question from reporters as to whether cyberattacks originating from other countries, such as Saudi Arabia, had been observed, Gates said "That's classified information. And besides, who cares? We're not talking about Saudi Arabia, we're talking about China."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
the military drove technology advances and used their money to get computer systems researched and built to their requirements.
Why aren't they running hardened clients on the inside? Why are they running systems against which phishing is useful? Why aren't they deploying advanced OS technology in which stealing a password or compromising a browser doesn't give away the entire machine?
Not to mention that the whole article doesn't make sense. Either the source IP addresses are in China or they aren't. If they are, why haven't they simply dropped all packets from China, and why are they so convinced that a Chinese IP means a Chinese attacker? If the IP addresses aren't from China, what is their reason for believing it's a Chinese-0wned set of machines?
Someone once posted me a rather hurtful letter from France once. It's only obvious that we bomb the shit out of the French postal service.
I think that's the sort of logic the OP is going for at least...
you didn't seriously think America doesn't do exactly the same thing to everyone else, did you?
Yes, but we pray to Jesus before we do it. Makes all the difference.
Table-ized A.I.
...connected to the public internet in the first place. Most sensitive US DOD sites have armed soldiers guarding the physical gateways. They don't let the general public meander through the grounds. Yet they're doing exactly that with their computers.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
This is most likely a coordinated attack by someone who wants US information (could be any country/organization in the world) and developed a botnet which happens to mostly reside in China, since China's computers tend not to get frequent security updates. The fact that the IP addresses are originating from China indicates that it's probably anyone but China.
However...China-bashing does score political points right now.
The US is just as bad - look at the Australia/US free trade agreement regarding extending patent terms and its affect on generic medicines.
Don't play the human rights card because every nation has abuses eg
What makes you think democracy is so great? The US is the best examples of its failures. At least in China when an official is caught taking bribes/etc he/she is placed under house arrest... too bad that type of thing doesnt happen with pork barreling in the US.
The US has been screwing the world for years, it's about time we had a new superpower to keep the US under thumb.
Excuses Are Like Assholes - Everybody's Got One
There are many examples of why this is incorrect - sugar, steel and beef for a start. Why do you think many US foods are full of a more expensive sweetener made from corn which doesn't taste as good? Geological history has left the USA with sulphur rich coal which results in the cheap steel being of very low quality and unsuitable for some roles (Liberty ships were the most exhaustively documented example). You have good beef - but there is very stong protectionism there. The US pharmacutical industry is another big can of protectionist worms which is indirectly fueling enormous qualitities of spam which you would have noticed. There are reasons behind all this but there is still no reason for people to lie about it and talk about "free trade" - Australia was solidly screwed on a free trade agrement with the USA but our representative stupidly agreed to a time limit and they would take whatever was offered at the end of it.
As for pollution regs - they are getting very tough in China because they have to be.
Thats a fun mastabatory game you are playing there.
Do you seriously think that?
While not a fan of our current policies and actions, if the U.S. decided to tell the U.N. to take a flying-f*ck at the moon, absolutely nothing, aside from a vote to tell the U.S. that other people are peeved at us, would happen. Why?
Like it or not, we are still the big boys on the block; Economically and Militarily.
Do you know how many of those countries that take political pot shots at the U.S. are receiving huge chunks of cash and economic incentives to play nice with us on the economic side of the house? If other countries decided to put the money screws to the U.S. (and economic is arguably the biggest persuader in the arsenal) the U.S. could wreak more havok on them. Yes, it would be difficult for us, but in the long run, we'd come out of that game on top as well.
This is like those old samurai movies. Zatoichi, is attacked by a mob of sword weilding henchmen. The first few guys get cut down fast and horribly. A few more try to rush him and end up dead or maimed. Finally, the big ones, the ones that talk the toughest, take off running, trying to figure out how they can make a deal with him. (Also note: It's always the tough bosses in the movies that send the little guys in.) To finish, the U.N. will talk tough, Venezuela and a few others will take economic action, the U.S. will cut them off. And the French, Germans, Russians, Japanese, Italians, Polish, and Indians will still have their teams in the U.S. making trade deals and wrangling for the U.S. dollar and market.
You see, when the average household makes and spends in a month what 3 Indian families do in a year, and your country depends on the availability of that market, thats too big of risk.
Perhaps that's why the 5th column in the U.S. is so busy trying to wreck the U.S.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Years ago, a Japanese company found that a Chinese operative was attempting to steal info. So they fed her with their formulas for capacitors from the 60's. In particular, several formulas that were well known to fail after only a few years of service. Sound Familiar?
We need to do the same. China is bright enough to not run Windows in their equipment (frightening that USA does on our ships which will be used in defending Tiawan). But we can provide ideas/plans that we will not use or that we found subtly flawed. Basically, disinformation. I would be surprised if we are not doing just that.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The amount of confusion and damage that this could do would be enormous. And it would have the added benefit (to the attacker) of leaving the hard assets (buildings, people) in place, unlike an actual war. These could be simply bought up later, rather cheaply.
There are different ways to root a country. Actual destruction is the most expensive and inefficent approach there is.
The real cause of these cyberspace attacks is that the U.S. government has actively encouraged them. First, the Feds have actually punished Government employees who have tried to stop these attacks. Read The Invasion of the Chinese Cyberspies (And the Man Who Tried to Stop Them) This is a variation on a common theme of the attitude of the U.S. government, unfortunately. Protecting the U.S. appears not to be a priority.
The second biggest problem is that the Federal Government has set up a hostile enviroment to discourage Security Research. Security researches are threatened with prosecution, jail time and civil lawsuits that can bankrupt them. The common occurance is when a Researcher reports a problem with a flaw in a product. There are no Safe Harbor procedures or provisions in any Federal law which allow this to happen so that society in general can benefit.
This has had a rather chilling effort on the IT industry as a whole. There is no safe way to study real cracking, so our students (and industry workers) really don't understand how the bad guys work. This also has the added downside that new technologies are developed without any real understanding (or even concern) of what the attack vectors are. MS Windows is the best known example. Javascript is the second best.
Had the U.S. implemented Safe Harbor provisions, we'd be in far better shape to deal with hostile attacks, throughout the entire industry.
While the offshoring of jobs has had an effect, without the above two points we'd still have this problem. Furthermore, if we had shored up and expanded our efforts in Security Research, we would be a lot more resistant to backoffice exploits.
It is also obvious that security can't be offshored. So if the Federal government had made security a priority, your original point would be moot.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
China is too lucrative a market, that American corporations are pressuring the US government to be lenient with China, despite of all the problems that you listed.
...etc.), and will probably be the next empire.
...
Some decades in the future, China will turn out to be a real and formidable rival (economically, geopolitically, culturally,
Meanwhile, instead of preparing for such a prospect, the US has forsaken the obvious means of combating terrorism, for example intelligence, infiltration, disruption, and targeted strikes, and went into a full all out war on two countries, draining its budget, increasing its dead, and earning it the wrath of much of the world.
Go figure
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
SIPRNet is mostly separate. From what I've heard, people aren't allowed to move information between SIPRNet computers and other 'insecure' computers at all.
..."it's about time we had a new superpower to keep the US under thumb."
Be careful of what you wish for my friend.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
Everybody knows that all of this is - of course - merely a part of fighting terrorism, since industrial and military espionage require different, more sophisticated and technically more complex and costly measures. Calling any of these measures disproportionate is considered heresy.
Sarcasm aside: protect your networks, or prepare to be hacked.
I hope I didn't brain my damage.
First and foremost, Americans aren't the only people losing their lives in Iraq. Racism is for fools.
Second of all, we are talking about a government which we know lies as a matter of course. So taking the body counts they offer as proof in any sort of argument makes little sense. --Having learned from their experiences with Vietnam, the government now conceals the number of U.S. Service people wounded or killed in Iraq. There have been more than 3000 American casualties.
Consider also that a significant part of the war is being fought by 'private contractors' (a fancy name for mercenaries) whose deaths are not recorded by the official stats and whose own public records are almost certainly false.
Body armor has also improved much over the last thirty years. Many of the same kinds of wounds received in Vietnam led to death whereas we now have thousands more American kids coming home missing arms and legs than we did from Vietnam.
Thirdly, just because the official casualty statistics in Iraq and Vietnam do not happen to match on the front page of the New York Times does not mean that the two wars have no other significant parallels. Those who cannot see the parallels are either blind or are deliberately not looking.
Fourth, NONE of this discounts my primary points; that propaganda and ignorance on the part of the populace are what to war. --We are now seeing the same tactics with regard to China. These are my main points.
Fifth, and finally. . . You say that bashing the war is sheep-like behavior. Sorry. Wrong. The war was started by those who were blind and foolish. The Administration lied. This is an uncontested fact. (Or rather, the facts are only contested by fools who cannot see reality when is is posted directly in front of their noses. Not even the Bush Administration is trying to sell the WMD's line of bullshit anymore. Not that it matters; fools are willing to accept any new lie which they put forth.)
Sheep are NOT those who see the lies and refuse to believe them. Seeing a lie
Not that this was an overly serious post to begin with, I guess I'll start off by saying that's "masturbatory". But anyway.
The United States of America, as a country, is wholly dependent upon other countries for its own prosperity. Look around you; Virtually everything that you can afford to buy is manufactured in China, (SOMETIMES) Japan, Mexico, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and so on and so forth. Most of those electronics are also designed in Japan (Sony, Hitachi, Pioneer, Panasonic, Nintendo), Europe (Philips), Korea (Samsung, LG) and Taiwan (ASUS, MSI, Biostar, DFI). Why? Cheap labour. Do you realize how much it would cost to purchase a television whose manufacture was solely performed in the United States, with well-paid workers and stricter quality standards? Let's just say there's no such thing as a $20 DVD player in that sort of world.
Like it or not, there is a massive amount of interdependency between the United States and the rest of the world, and there isn't a whole lot that the average American could do with their lives were the United States to end the rest of the world as we know it, or even just cut off contact. Not only that, but the aforementioned brands that people in the 'States use every day would cease to exist in American society. Considering that these electronics companies are pretty much the staple of our electronic consumption for both appliances and entertainment, that means that entertainment as we know it would also take a nosedive.
As I type this, I'm using an Acer computer, with an ASUS motherboard, an LG optical drive, a Microsoft optical mouse (made in China), a Philips 17" CRT, and a Siemens (Germany) DSL modem. Were I living in the United States, and the USA simply decided that it were to isolate itself from the world, all of those things would simply cease to be. Well, that's not entirely true. Existing products would obviously still be around, but when it comes time to buy something else, or if one of those components should fail, I'd be SOL, especially since I don't know of any motherboard manufacturers based in the United States who make AMD motherboards.
My point is, American industry is mostly on the ropes as it is - General Motors, for instance, is scrambling to keep up with cheap, efficient imports of increasingly higher quality. Chrysler is now merged with Daimler-Benz, a German company, meaning that if ties with the EU were cut, the fate of Chrysler in the USA would be in question.
Like it or not, imported goods are a vital part of any economy, and arguably especially the USA's. Economic sanctions would devastate the American economy, and as far as that goes, I wouldn't underestimate the strength of the EU, China and Russia militarily. While not strictly a superpower even combined, they have more than enough nuclear weaponry to glaze over the entire US mainland, and China has more than enough manpower to launch a sustained conventional assault on the United States, as well.
While I highly doubt nuclear weapons will EVER be used by any sane government, it's still in the USA's best interests to avoid pissing off the neighbors.
Screw the rules, I have green hair!
As a webmaster for several popular sites, I can attest that most probes\hack attempts\spambots come from net-blocks within China. I do wonder if it is a trick to get all of us to block all China traffic, so that it helps the Great Firewall?
We are not a democracy. We are a republic.
Bush did win the majority on the last election.
China is not known for its enviromentalism either or human rights record.
After the Iraq WMD fiasco I don't trust the US to know its ass from its elbow when it comes to these sorts of things.
The standards of evidence are obviously so low that nowadays all you have to do is imagine a threat and suddenly it's real and all sorts of circumstantial evidence points to it being true.
So much for the Interstellar Ark:
2 14.shtml
http://science.slashdot.org/science/07/02/18/1359
Only when humans decide to get out of and deprive governments and wealthy of the "defense" industry will humans have money and worthiness of being allowed doe DESERVE an interstellar ark.
Elevating Chinese attempts to breach a DOD (or any government) database to the level of military attack is just ASKING for excuses to wage war. Since vastly many interconnected ties exist in economics, land, and employment schemes, traditional war would be immensely devastating not only to average workers but to the wealthy land owners, property owners and even the high tech companies.
I call madness. Oh, and don't forget the US DOD is probably running stealth "attacks" on Chinese, Russian, French, Canadian, Australian, UK, Venezuelan and innumerable other nations' databases and networks, friend and foe alike.
remember, there are at least to sides to every story. Stop making Chinese out to be the big bad guy. Any nation with something to fear will do what China is known to have been doing for years, and what many informed as well as ignorant "red-blodded 'merkuns" overlook when the US is exposed for doing the same things. In the end, it's specious, corrosive human conduct. If all these people focus on poverty, disease, hunger, underemployment, and other things (like lessening the causes of reactive terrorism), then maybe we can concentrate as a collective on pursuing interstellar travels.
The database and network attacks will be less of a problem if the networks are not accessible via internet junctions. More honeypots need to be set up, more honeynets need to be spun off, and less classified information should be available.
Hell, I suspect that these things HAVE been done, and that the reports many of you armchair politicos (you know who you are-- just informed enough to be barely credible) and the rest of us see are the "leaked" stuff which was generated from logs of Chinese (and other nations') penetration attempts and successes against honeynets and honeypots, and the reports are just mostly useful for facilitating creation of domestic antipathy toward or or mistrust of the Chinese, or whomever is the boogieman of the quarter.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"