Slashdot Mirror
China Denies Role In US Grid Hacks
Slatterz writes "The Chinese government is denying any involvement in the reported infiltration of US electric grid systems. Xinhua news agency quoted Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu as saying that any sort of involvement from China in the incident 'doesn't exist at all.' The denial follows a report in the Wall Street Journal which claimed that agents from China and Russia along with several other countries had infiltrated the computer systems charged with managing electricity in the US and left behind software payloads which could be used to control or disable electric grids in the US."
Bruce Schneier is skeptical about the whole story.
Well I happen to work for a government agency, and a very disproportionately large number of the attacks we see on a daily basis are coming from China. Whether or not these are state sponsored, I don't know, but the Chinese government certainly isn't making any real effort to hold these "useful idiots" at bay. You would of course expect more because they are more populous but it really is disproportionate, more like 8x-10x the amount of attacks seen from other wired countries per capita. At what point does a country become responsible for the traffic that leaves its borders? Especially one with border firewalls? I'm on board with the information warfare theory. I see it every day...I'm in favor of holding them responsible.
"Schneier is a computer security expert, not a geo-strategist, and he was wrong about Iran's lost connectivity a few months ago when we all discovered the high frequency of Internet cables malfunctions"
In what way was Schneier wrong about Iran and how does not being a geo-strategist relate to the validity of the claims that China infiltrated the US power grid?