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.'"

Comments

Not just that...

[AltGrendel]

...noting 'it's easier to attack government X's database than it is to nuke their troops.'

But it's easier on the environment, too!!

How ironic...

[feepness]

That something designed to protect communication infrastructure in time of war has instead become "easier to attack" than the target itself.

Re:How ironic...

[megaditto]

It's not easier, it's just less likely to provoke an all-out nuke exchange.

Not exactly surprising!

[QuantumFTL]

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!

Re:Not exactly surprising!

[cumin]

I think this is exactly the point I haven't seen anybody making, but that we're all feeling. If governments are actively engaging in hacking, assuming they find competent hackers, what is to stop somebody from using the tools to hit innocent civilians? Of course they could, of course they might, and maybe planting a little evidence? How would you prove it?

It goes toward that mentality of finding evidence, then getting a warrant. If you think John Citizen might be doing something wrong, you simply use the official tool, "classified cracker" and log into his computer and watch him off and on for a couple days. Maybe you get your evidence, maybe not. If you do, then you know where to look for evidence you can use to get a warrant, and if not, nobody is the wiser.

Of course it would be a huge invasion of privacy, but if it's not possible to prove it, and not submitted as primary evidence, then it can be ends justifying means. John Citizen suffers, maybe never knowing his expectation of privacy has been shredded.

which is better?

[pak9rabid]

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).

Re:which is better?

[l4m3z0r]

Completely not joking, a physical attack is better and heres why. Physical destruction of lives and things pisses off the populace. People will get up in arms about ending the war and making peace. If its "just" some cyber attacks people will be apt to let it go on a long time or indefinitely being a constant strain on the economy. The economy as you know is what feeds us. If cyberwar destroys the economy to the point where unemployment is riding high thats much worse off than a few thousand killed before we get upset about the conflict.

Re:which is better?

[aztektum]

Yes I'd much rather have hundreds/thousands of people killed, hundreds/thousands/millions maimed, and hundreds/thousands/millions of survivors grieving and scarred for life than face up to the fact that "Oh shit, the economy is swirling the drain. My money is now worthless and I can't buy that $SHINY_GIZMO."

Economies are far more easily rebuilt. Placing an economic system above lives is utterly naive and shows a complete lack of self-sufficiency, IMO.

If the concern over economic collapse through hack attacks, maybe businesses, banks, the Feds should keep that shit on networks that are in no way reachable through the regular Internet.

Huh?

[Otter]

"Cyber assaults have become more sophisticated in their nature, designed to specifically slip under the radar of government cyber defenses," McAfee states. "Attacks have progressed from initial curiosity probes to well-funded and well-organized operations for political, military, economic and technical espionage."

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.

Re:Governments Engage in Cyber Warfare!

[link-error]

    Yeah, thats great, who cares, until your Social Security check doesn't come or your bank account drops to zero.

Worst excuse in the world,

[rodentia]

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.

My biggest concern

[Enlarged to Show Tex]

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.

No

[Yvanhoe]

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 ?

Re:No

[Vanden]

Given your assumptions of "correctly set-up network" and "sysadmins have been doing their jobs", I would agree.

However, most of us know that many networks are vulnerable to attack because they're neither correctly set-up nor are their admins doing their jobs. In these cases, even a no-talent script kiddie could break in easier than a government could launch a nuclear attack.

Finally, a bad analogy on slashdot!

[QuantumFTL]

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.

RTFR!

[cfulmer]

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?)

Re:RTFR!

[jbrodkin]

I am the author of the story and I interviewed McAfee researchers who told me the United States is one of the 120.

Indeed, this is not new...

[rickb928]

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.

Re:Indeed, this is not new...

[NeutronCowboy]

I agree with pretty much your entire post, except for the last paragraph. If you do not even know who your enemy is and whether anyone is attacking you, the only way to ensure your safety is to tie everyone's well-being to yours. This requires deep economic and social ties between individuals and corporations in the different countries. If cutting into American GDP by releasing various pandemics on its soil backfires because people in your country don't have jobs anymore, you're gonna think twice about doing that.

Low-grade, untraceable and deniable attacks are a fact of life with electronic communications. We can either make sure that everyone has a stake in the overall health of the world economy, or we can start a wonderful cycle of isolationism, paranoia and "us vs them" attitude. Personally, I know which way I tend.

Here's a thought

[di0s]

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.

Re:Here's a thought

[bhmit1]

Maybe they break into the home computer of Sam Gov Lacky who is fond of downloading iTunes and putting them on CD. Sam takes it to work, slips it in, his supervisor wouldn't care if they noticed, and now everything Sam's computer touches is trying to bundle information into an invisible location on the hard drive. Now all they have to do is bribe for or luck into the hard drive with the information they want and decrypt.

Not that this is impossible, but it's a lot more difficult than that. Friends that work there in secure places like the pentagon don't even take in their cell phone, let alone a laptop. When a vendor wants to see logs to troubleshoot an issue, there's a month lag while the logs are de-classified. And if you aren't cleared for a machine, you aren't allowed to physically touch the keyboard or mouse, someone else is assigned to type everything for you. Back in the old days, floppies were color coded which made for some interesting stories about non-cleared people picking the wrong color from a store bought rainbow pack.

Don't forget that these people tend to be very in demand as long as they keep their clearance, they've gone through their share of background checks and polygraphs, and that all goes away and replaced with a treason charge if they decide to do something that puts national secrets at risk. This isn't to say it's impossible, just not as likely as it would be if the geek squad was their model employee.

+1, Funny

[rodentia]

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.

quantum truth effects

[rodentia]

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.

your tax dollars at work?

[keithjr]

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.

MOD PARENT UP Re:Governments Engage in Cyber Warfa

[triffidsting]

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

Re:What do you expect? Governments do their job...

[geekoid]

No, in fact a large part of the world is nice.Probably well over 90% of the people will leave you alone.

Infiltrating other government networks is an act of war. So I don't expect them to actually attack them, any more then I expect a military exercise to actually attack 'enemy' targets.

People like you are exactly the kind of people who are fucking up security.

Great, another ISP excuse

[Grandiloquence]

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.