Slashdot Mirror
Government-Sponsored Cyberattacks on the Rise
jbrodkin writes "A new McAfee report finds that 120 countries, notably the United States and China, are regularly launching Web-based espionage campaigns. Government-sponsored cyber attacks against enemy countries are becoming more common, targeting critical systems including electricity, air traffic control, financial markets and government computer networks. This year, Russia allegedly attacked Estonian government news and bank servers, while China was accused of hacking into the Pentagon. A McAfee researcher says this trend will accelerate, noting 'it's easier to attack government X's database than it is to nuke their troops.'"
I am amazed that it is only happening now. Years ago I was already thinking that it would happen a lot. Maybe it did, but that only now people are reporting about it?
But it's easier on the environment, too!!
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
That's amazing , I just hope that it doesn't affect my internet usage. As long as that's the case I don't really care if governments hack each other's computer systems to bits.
"Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes."-Tycho
That something designed to protect communication infrastructure in time of war has instead become "easier to attack" than the target itself.
jbrodkin is launching an attack on the networkworld.com website; slashdotting is inevitable
Is anyone really surprised by this? As long as there is something to gain, and there are not suitable deterrents, governments tend to do these kinds of things. Indeed the United States would be foolish to sit back as others engage in cyberespionage.
Yet another good reason to keep your computers secure!
. . . we'll all soon recognize the degree to which these *nations* are practically indistinguishable from criminal cartels, but with priviledged access to hysteria, er, history.
illegitimii non ingravare
What do people here think is better...a physical attack (with guns, bombs, etc) where live are being lost, or cyber attacks where lives are not being lost (to the best of my knowledge..please correct me if I'm overlooking something).
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=374805&cid=21522989
Yes, foolish to let other governments have all the totalitarian fun. I'm reasonably certain that the current administration has been using their toys to spy on us all.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
I'm completely not understanding how the linked article is derived from this "McAfee's Virtual Criminology Report". The version I'm seeing has nothing to do with "government-sponsored cyberattacks" and doesn't contain this quote.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Wasn't the attack on Estonia actually conducted by the Storm botnet?
to quote Lynval Golding. What did your mother teach you about everyone jumping off a bridge, anyway?
Indeed the United States would be foolish to sit back as others engage in cyberespionage.
I think the activity is more at punking than espionage, in any case.
illegitimii non ingravare
Well, you got what you asked for!
Silly, really, since many people here think that rootkitted non-win servers play a key role in controlling botnets.
They are the 'Generals', whilst the windows boxes are he expendable 'troops'
This really doesn't even call for a comment...The fact that any country that has use of computers is in some way shape or form using cyber espionage isn't something new. I believe the simple use of codebreakers in WWII was the beginning of this and it will become more prevelant as the information super highway grows and more and more countries put there servers on the net to exchange information between bases and so forth. This is nothing new and will continue to grow.
I think it's quite likely that the threat of these sorts of attacks will be used as justification by the governments of more and more countries to try to wall off their part of the internet, the erection of things like the Great Firewall of China, and so forth.
Gotta stop those so-called terrorists, after all.
What an appropo subject. I downloaded the FC5 isos recently, and noted that the sha1 checksums don't match with the PGP signed file. This is off of http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/5/x86_64/iso/
So, either someone is messing with the isos, or Redhat screwed up. If anyone has some specific info here, it would be appreciated.
Sorry to be nitpicking, but it *IS* easier to drop a nuke than to attack a correctly set-up network.
Hollywood managed to persuade everyone that with a few million dollars and a rock-star hacker it is possible to break into the most secure systems. The fact is that when sysadmins have been doing their jobs, it is easier to conduct a physical attack than a networked one. Do you think that electronic money could exist otherwise ?
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
What did your mother teach you about everyone jumping off a bridge, anyway?
This isn't like jumping off of a bridge. There's a breal, tangible benefit here, and if the situation is assymetric, our country would be best off if it were asymmetric in our favor.
Part of our "evil" plan to control the entire world involves us performing acts of espionage against just about every other country.
Every country does it, because that's how a country survives. If there was no such thing as war and terrorism (whatever the cause) maybe that would not be the case. But as long as other countries threaten our position, our livelihood, and even our very existence (and in the nuclear age, yes they do) we're gonna have to collect information through just about every available means. It may not be "nice" but it is a smart move.
Argh. The report (possible sign-in required) DOES NOT say that the US is conduction cyber-espionage activities. (Note: the linked-to article in the parent points to the 2005 report) It does say that there are an "estimated 120 countries working on their cyberattack commands," which is quite different from actually being involved in espionage.
(Note that I'm not asserting that the US is not conducting electronic espionage. I would hope that we are. Heck, we did electronic espionage long before the internet; why should we stop now?)
Can you blame a governing institution for taking what their constituents give them?! We live in a democracy, and our voters have proven they are willing to do little or nothing to prevent the loss of their natural rights.
And it's not even very much a secret now.
Estonia got hammered, probably by Russia. That Russia contracted a stormbot net merely qualifies it as a mercenary attack. Think Bay of Pigs, with a lot more deniability.
China-based machines have been spotted trying all sorts of hijinks against targets worldwide. Not that China-based machines are alone in this, but they seem to be pretty aggressive.
When I was younger, I dreamt up interesting warfare. Why use Anthrax when a decent influenza mutant gave you deniability and a very debilitating attack. Use something like Salmonella, and give the population diarreah. A cleanup of fairly massive proportions. As part of the strategy, hit Atlanta with the Salmonella, and Phoenix, and watch the water problems escalate. Influenza would be best used in metropolitan areas, since it would be indistiguishable from a genuine pandemic.
Cyberwar offers states deniability, subterfuge, and targeted attacks at economic and industrial resources. Wonderful way to cripple your opponent on their own soil, and then run circles around them snarfing up territory, influence, or just plain good press while the losers suffer in every other way.
Once upon a time, you knew who your enemy was - they were slashing, shooting, or bombing you. then it got harder to figure out where they were. Then it got harder to figure out WHO they were.
From now on, it will be harder to figure out if you're really under attack, until it's too late.
I suspect our military will be taking more and more systems off-Net, to completely prevent attacks. Then our adversaries will go after the softest parts of the military systems: Communications - satellites for instance. Logistics - civilian systems the military depends on. Political Systems - including the media, elections.
We are close to fighting an invisble enemy, with uncertain targets, in a neverending low-grade conflict that saps our resources and diverts our attention from greater threats and opportunities.
Time to start giving tax breaks to onshore manufacturers again. We cannot continue to import most of our critical technology from our avowed and hostile enemies.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
So is this right out of Live Free or Die Hard? Oh no the east coast power backbone is going to overload
Don't connect critical infrastructure to public networks?? Seriously, what use could Pentagon users possibly have for the public internet? Granted if they *did* introduce a virus or trojan into Pentagon computers, at least it would be a little harder to get information back out.
Hot war. nuke winter. Cold war. E-war.
So let me guess... some dude gets flamed and a bunch of l337 kiddies run to the rescue to pound said flamer. Flamewar on. Onlookers from a distant node wait a few years for the internet to crumble before using fresh servers to save the day and convince selves of heroism. Salty penguin dog says "mind the flame kiddies, they are coming and they are packing spam" 50 year mutually assured spamming mentality defines the society and perceptions of confused morons everywhere.
(Yes, it does make sense)
Part of our "evil" plan to control the entire world involves us performing acts of espionage against just about every other country.
Nothing *evil* about our plans or anyone elses.
because that's how a country survives.
I consider rather that countries survive by learning how to evade history, the hysterical story of global capitalism. See another of my replies to TFA.
Your primary mistake is not to overstate the risk, but to misplace it. *Nations* do not function as discrete moral units in social interaction with each other. The accidents that constitute *nations* are acting in accordance with the collective expression of their political class's historical imaginary.
The only thing that threatens our national accident is the realization on the part of its constituents that the formalism is a parasitic drag upon our potential as individuals and as elective political groups, that is: history itself.
It is not a matter of *nice* [sic--ethics] but of ignorance.
illegitimii non ingravare
I am amazed how much attention and comments this article gets. What do you expect the government to do? Every government is running it's intelligence service and we expect our government to do that, don't we (well our government is part of the nice guys anyway, therefore it is good ;-)).
Now, you do not expect them to use today's technology? Hey, come on, in which world do you live?
I saw comments like "as long as they spy on each other, I do not care" - where do you live my friends? It is part of the governments' job to do industrial espionage (at least most of them do as a matter of fact). And you do not expect them to use today's technology? Come on... The world out there is not nice - it is darn bad!
Roger
Chief Security Advisor
Microsoft EMEA
Theoretical physics has that luxury, dealing in pure abstraction. All reality may be ineffable, indeed, but human communication is diachronic, as is human attention.
We are dealing in the interactions of collections of particles called beings; rather, collections of those collections.
Your comment floored me, but on second glance it is at once right as rain and false as a wooden nickel.
illegitimii non ingravare
government hacks you!
It's easier to attack the network no matter what, for two reasons:
1) If you fail, you don't die.
2) Nobody notices when you succeed, and you're free to do whatever with the information you've got.
If someone notices you've failed (or succeeded), you're likely to be prosecuted in your country of residence. Unless you're hacking for the government, in which case... exactly nothing happens.
Wheras if you fail at dropping a nuke (i.e. the nuke somehow gets destroyed by a "missile defense system") you die. Quickly. And if you succeed, you probably die, slowly, as whatever country you attacked or their allies retaliate in kind.
The summary and TFA both claim that the US is carrying out attacks but I can't find any cite for that in TFA. Not that I don't think the US would do this against an enemy or in retaliation but I kind of doubt that it is going to be discussed in a report that the FBI was involved in producing.
Is buying a Harley Davidson as your first motorcycle since you were 16 at age 49 a midlife crisis issue?
This might generate an interesting new source of revenue for the Storm botnet. Lease out DDOS horsepower, as it currently being done, to the highest bidding government. Scary.
Countries -- no names -- who think their national identity requires them to be the world's biggest bully have even more reason to be looking into cyber war. Never can tell when the perceived need to push someone around will come up. And it might not be a bad idea to find out how pushees might retaliate.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
Non, je ne veux pas coucher avec toi ce soir.
How many government networks do you suppose are correctly set up? Nevermind commercial networks, which don't even have the benefit of government standards on securing their systems.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
Me: So, why is my internet out this time?
Tech Support: Um, let me check. (spins the wheel of random technical failures) Looks like acid rain. Sorry.
Me: That's what you told me last time! I think you're lying to me!
Tech Support: Ok, let me check it again. (spins the wheel) Ok, it's actually a government sponsored cyber attack.
Me: Gah.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
all of those Chinese ISP IP's to show up in my connection attempted logs...
How is the USA a "national accident"? According to my history lessons, documentaries I've watched, and books and articles I've read, there was nothing accidental about the formation of the USA. It is my understanding that the colonial rebels laid out political boundaries and fought off the UK. Subsequent states with set political boundaries agreed to join the union through a democratic process.
Germany, France, and Italy, just to name a few examples, are nations where political boundaries are more or less geographic or where the last boundary war left off. In those nations, a central government happened with time as control crept toward the edges. I tend to think of these circumstances as what creates a "national accident".
Or were you referring to another country? I suppose my USA-colored glasses could be interfering, but the thread definitely seemed to be referring to the USA.
You would no longer be a /.er at that point, however.
i forget
The OMB has just directed the entire US Govamint to reduce itself to 50 connections to the internet. This has to be complete by June 2008! The fed probably has hundreds of such connections currently. I know this is going to be a major undertaking, to say the least. The memo ( http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/memoranda/fy2008/m08-05.pdf ) requires planning to be complete by January. The memo further instructs those with questions to contact Karen Evans at OMB...