Slashdot Mirror
Chinese Hacking of American Military Networks On the Rise
Anti-Globalism writes with this excerpt from the Guardian:
"China is stealing sensitive information from American computer networks and stepping up its online espionage, according to a US congressional panel. Beijing's investment in rocket technology is also accelerating the militarization of outer space and lifting it into the 'commanding heights' of modern warfare, the advisory group claims. ... A summary of the study, released in advance, alleges that networks and databases used by the US government and American defense contractors are regularly targeted by Chinese hackers. 'China is stealing vast amounts of sensitive information from US computer networks,' says Larry Wortzel, chairman of the commission set up by Congress in 2000 to investigate US-China issues."
The full study addresses these issues and others relating to the US-China relationship (PDF).
This is propaganda. It's simply preparing the public for adding China to the Axis of Evil, erecting trade barriers etc.
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There are -zero- smelting plants for steel based alloys in the US.
Similar with electronics manufacturing, which is all done overseas.
All China would have to do is not export goods or raw alloys, and the US would be in a world of hurt.
Or China could just bomb Taiwan and cause the US more pain because of the sheer amount that the US depends on their manufacturing for electronic items.
China has the ball in this game.
Perhaps this seems a bit extreme, but exactly WHY are these military computers even connected to the Internet? If it's really secret information, shouldn't they have their own network or just not put these things online?
I have seen this. I used to work in a start-up and saw 2 seperate incidents. In one case, I was hiring for coders. Found a gal who was interesting. She had married a GI and moved to Northern Colorado Springs. Since we could do the work over the line, not an issue. I interviewed her and she was not interested. That is, until I mentioned taht we were doing work for DOD and NSA. Then her attitude changed dramatically. She very much wanted the job. Ok, not a big deal.
But a year later, we were looking for funding. Found a Tawain born guy from Loveland who use to own the chinese restaurant there. He wanted to invest. But he insisted on getting control of the hardware (which was the important part) if we defaulted. When would company be considered defaulted? When he said so. Told him no way. So, then he wanted to buy hardware and said that he would sell it in mainland china and we could all be worth 30 million or more. The hardware was only 1M. But he explained that mainland was willing to pay 30 for it and might go higher. I was actually shocked since I considered him Tawainese and would not do that. My opinion changed when at a slashdot posting, a tawain native said that the chinese who came there STILL consider themselves chinese, not tawainese. The original guy may not have been a spy. But, he was all too happy to sell tech to them. More interestingly, he indicated that he had been in touch WITH mainland china.
No, this is absolutely not propaganda. This is VERY real. Chinese ppl are happy to see their country coming up. And I understand that. But chinese gov is STILL in a cold war with us. They are very much spying on the west and buying tech. whenever possible. And yes, it is the west, not just America. That includes countries like Japan, Australia, Canada, France, UK, Israel, etc and even Russia. In fact, I consider your statement far more propaganda, because you have NO IDEA of what you are talking about.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The DoD takes everything personally, and for good reason, but I have a steady stream of chinese hackers attempting to break into the router in my tool shed that reports battery voltage and temperature at a cabin that is inaccessible for 6 months of the year.
I really should put a webcam in there so they can see what they have achieved if they ever do manage to get in.
(22.1F, batteries 25.3V, 600 watt hours of energy stored today.)
Don't be to hard on them. China holding dollars gave the west cheap finance, which triggered an asset bubble, and encouraged overcapacity building in China (overcapacity and debt are the two main causes of depressions, depending on which economists you ask). Then they didn't pass on the wealth to their grunt workers, so Chinese demand won't be able to cushion the fall. Oh wait, that was pretty hard on them.
It is not too hard to hack a network if you got
counterfeit hardware inside the network giving
you a backdoor in.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/05/12/FBI-worried-as-DoD-sold-counterfeit-Cisco-gear_1.html
So once they got in, they learned what they needed
to know to stay in, and put other methods in place
to stay in.
They are going to have to rebuild their network one segment
at a time from the ground up.
They need several things with one of them being segment
monitoring IDS system that can detect the outbound traffic.
Something that can track all outbound traffic against
a white-list of acceptable IPs, think a reverse peer guardian
that tracks what IP's are reached and snds alarms if they
are not on the list.
In any event they will have a monumental task of clearing
all the backdoors in the system, and should consider going
totally to a secure hardware+software encrypted VPN that
does not even travel over the public internet.
There is enough dark fiber out there to do it for the classified
material they transmit.
Also if most of your military traffic goes over the old
global crossing network, don't allow the public sale of
that network to a foreign nation with an oppposing ideology.
Namely China !
http://www.hereinreality.com/likashing.html
When you do stupid things, bad things happen.
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"