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US Chamber of Commerce Infiltrated By Chinese Hackers
SpzToid writes "The Wall Street Journal is now reporting that a group of hackers in China breached the computer defenses of the United States Chamber of Commerce. The intrusion was quietly shut down in May 2010, while FBI investigations continue. 'A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, Geng Shuang, said cyberattacks are prohibited by Chinese law and China itself is a victim of attacks. ... Still, the Chamber continues to see suspicious activity, they say. A thermostat at a town house the Chamber owns on Capitol Hill at one point was communicating with an Internet address in China, they say, and, in March, a printer used by Chamber executives spontaneously started printing pages with Chinese characters.'"
According the article, the group "gained access to everything stored on its systems" and may have "had access to the network for more than a year before the breach was uncovered."
a printer used by Chamber executives spontaneously started printing pages with Chinese characters.'"
Did you try switching it off then back on again?
a printer used by Chamber executives spontaneously started printing pages with Chinese characters.
Finally we've tracked down that bad printer driver to China.
Well deserved. Any organization that handles sensitive data, but puts even thermostats to internet as controllable online, deserve hacking.
Dont blame chinese. the hackers could as well be kiddies. Hell, it could as well be a random bot mistakenly and randomly gaining entry. Since the level of stupidity is as high as to put thermostats online as controllable from internet, go figure how did they treat rest of the network.
Read radical news here
The US Chamber of Commerce is a lobbying organization -- it's not like they have Industrial Super Secrets. Besides, a high proportion of their clients are Chinese anyway and presumably have pretty good access to the organization already.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
That is why we need SOPA, oh wait a minute!!
I'd just like to take this opportunity to point out how insidious it is to purposely label a highly partisan think tank with a name that is obviously meant to seem like a legit government agency.
Do you think China will be willing to shut down the rest of our lobbies for us too? Then we maybe able to accomplish something in government.
It sounds like a cheesy horror film, a parody should be made.
The US Chamber of Commerce is a LOBBYING organization (y'know, some of the folks behind SOPA and other crap) and is NOT the US Department of Commerce, the cabinet department that (supposedly) promotes economic growth.
I'm having trouble feeling bad or worried about this.
"A thermostat at a town house the Chamber owns on Capitol Hill at one point was communicating with an Internet address in China".
Hey Larry, does it seem a little warm in here today?
Yeah, it is kinda warm.
Oh my God! We've been hacked by the Chinese!!!
It's a lobbying group for businesses. Therefore, the Chinese can hack away all they want with my blessing. No harm done.
In fact, considering the harm brought onto US citizens by the Chamber of Commerce, the more damage done to them by the Chinese, the better it is for American citizens.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
This story is ridiculous. It's not like the US Chamber of commerce does anything meaningful at all other than lobby for no taxes. Anyway, does anyone doubt that the NSA and CIA also hack into foreign servers and desktops to steal corporate data? I am sure that back when the Russians were developing MiG fighters the US "hacked" into their computers and stole all the blueprints or if they didn't, they would... and Boeing was/is the beneficiary of that. So honestly gimme a break. Why wouldn't the chinese develop their ability to attack american tech infrastructure? Since the US and China is probably going to go to war over Taiwan within 50 years, and the US will be attacking from the sea with Drones while a million chinese try to literally row their way over from the mainland, I think their best strategy is to learn to disable the American computer systems somehow.
if your life is such a big joke then why should I care?
A thermostat at a town house the Chamber owns on Capitol Hill at one point was communicating with an Internet address in China
What the fuck is a thermostat doing being accessible from the internet?
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Seems to me it's more likely to be various Chinese teenage hackers.
The professionals are smart enough to realize that IP addresses from China are readily noticed.
To The Hackers This May Concern:
On behalf of all American citizens who understand the poisonous effects of lobbying on American democracy and society, I would like to thank you for your hard work. The US Chamber of Commerce is not a government agency, but may as well be so for all intents and purposes. It lobbies our elected officials to adopt policies that favor only big business, with the misguided belief that only laissez-faire capitalism will improve the American way of life. Nothing is further from the truth.
In short, you're doing us a favor.
If it's not too much to ask, could you please submit your findings to Wikileaks, or just post them on a publicly accessible blog? I think more of my countrymen should know about the inner workings of this nefarious herd of swine, and their attempts to sell naked greed as enlightened self-interest.
May we also interest you in targeting other groups, such as "The Club for Growth", "Americans for Prosperity", and "Crossroads GPS"? I'm sure you'd find them just as interesting.
Thanks again,
- Meoward
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
Is there any more information on this other than WSJ claiming an attack happened?
IHMO, any government/sensitive systems should be completely isolated from the internet. It surprises me that much of the US infrastructure is connected to the internet. Why does the US CoC need internet controlled thermostats? That just opens up vulnerabilities. On another note, why was the thermostat communicating with China? If these attacks were as professional as claimed and went undetected for a year, then you would suspect the "professional" hackers would use a proxy or some sort of onion routing. And the printer printing Chinese characters? Why would a hacker do that? And couldn't any "hacker" (not necessarily Chinese) have the printer print Chinese characters? The US will get its systems secured sooner to later, but if they don't secure it now by their will, they will be *forced* to secure it later.
Online home thermostat like have little security any ways or some one just left it on the default password. Hell maybe even they have a open wifi with no password or have it on WEP that is very easy to hack.
Simply because the IP traces back to China is not necessarily a "Chinese sanctioned" hack. It could very well be a Chinese server has been compromised from somewhere else in the world.
Should the Chinese government be looking to hack for secrets, I doubt they would choose the Chamber of Commerce for their target, much less leave the tracks leading right back home to them.
FUD is FUD.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
The US Chamber of Commerce is a lobbying organization -- it's not like they have Industrial Super Secrets. Besides, a high proportion of their clients are Chinese anyway and presumably have pretty good access to the organization already.
True, The Chamber Of commerce also hacks anyone who criticizes their illegal and immoral behaviour. HBGary Federal payback perhaps?
Does anyone actually care?
Pretty sure that was what General Curtis Goatheart told his wife when he determined their eggs were really an alien attack.
But that is beside the point.
What are the chances that all of those made in China net enabled thermostats have a default password and a default 'phone home' to a Chinese address?
Sure a default non routable address would be appropriate but that too is another issue for several manufacturers.
No brain, no pain.
If you believe that it's the chinese state doing this, and for the sake of argument I'm going to assume that's the case, it's not that hard to see what they might gain: influence. The chamber of commerce is one of the top lobbying groups, and is an ideal target for inside information on how to carrot/stick our elected representatives. To say nothing of, for example, blackmailing them with a recording of a conversation they had where they agreed to support a chamber initiative in return for a political contribution.
I don't shed any tears over bad things happening to the CoC, but I'm not going to let schadenfreude blind me to how dangerous this is.
The local chambers are non-profit entities whose purpose is promoting local businesses.
The US Chamber of Commerce is not this type of organization, nor is it affiliated with them in any way, but it has been intentionally named to mislead you into thinking it is.
Yeah, but it is only 'hacking' when there is no profit involved... so what they did is considered 'ok'.
Where did you grow up, such that you're utterly unaware of local Chambers of Commerce that are clearly non-governmental?
Seriously, they're in every town around here, and they're always running some booth at a fair or some charity event.
It's been well known to me, for years, that the local chamber of commerce is comprised of local business owners. I'm honestly not sure how anyone could be confused about the non-governmental status of any level of CoC.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Actually;
They target the U.S. Chamber because a lot of the people in said chamber also work for the Government at Very high levels; in addtion to this if you can comprimise the low security network they use at the Chamber you may get access to the high security networks they use everywhere else; chances are they have the same passwords.
The politbeuareau is known to break into things when they want somthing, and they do it at arms length; also the 300 million unpatched windows boxes make it quite easy to say "No it wasent me, it was the one armed man over in russia"; they've done this to Canada and Britan already.
Why isn't there any technical details about how this hack happened? For something that happened almost 2 years ago it seems there's surprisingly little information on what actually happened. It seems this article is more concerned with blaming China for attacking America than it is giving details on what actually happened.
reriously, Does anyone know anything about launch codes?
Maybe we should protect our trademarks. "US" and "Federal" for starters. Fedex is OK if they make the word all one color, Federal Express is not.
There is plenty of precedent for this. AFAIK, the seals and military medals are protected. Nobody is allowed to give out "authentic medal of honor replicas". That one might be a criminal act actually...
""It's nearly impossible to keep people out. The best thing you can do is have something that tells you when they get in,""
It's easy to keep them out take it off the Internet, seriously when they are hacking your thermostat from China how much more encouragement do you need?
It's pretty clear they don't have much in the way of telling them when someone gets in either since they (who ever hacked them) were there for over a year.
All these hack jobs in the news are beginning to seem like a steady stream of pro "closed Internet" propaganda.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Yeah but grabbing and leaking a few documents detailing bribery & coercion of politicians would have been nice.
Not nearly as nice as getting a handle on the politicians would be, eh?
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
All these hack jobs in the news lately seem like "closed Internet" propaganda to me.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
The printer thing sounds like a standard malfunctioning printer driver -> any decent IT person has run into this problem before. Printer spits out pages and pages of gibberish, and it's a sign that the printer driver needs to be reconfigured. Probably trying to print using a PostScript driver instead of a PCL driver, or something to that effect.
And this is from 2010. Slow news day? Or someone desperately trying to play up the "h@x0r$" card, to drum up a little money for a solution in need of a problem?
Lastly, McAfee has gone downhill from their glory days as an anti-virus provider. That was a long time ago, mind you. They've reached the point where they'd claim they'd discovered foreign government intrusions on a coffee cup. I'm not saying that their advice is untrustworthy; I'm just saying that I haven't heard anyone in IT mention, let alone recommend, one of their products in nearly a decade. I think the only reason I know they still exist is their persistence in trying to bundle their anti-viral products with Adobe Acrobat.
On a side-note, one of the major reasons (but not the only one) for servers getting cracked back in the day, was the warez crowd. Servers sat on fat pipes, with a huge amount of disk space. People would scan entire ip ranges for an unsecured server. You would crack a server (often times, not even that, as a fair number of them didn't even use passwords), upload a bunch of files, then announce the site to everyone on a board somewhere. This was before the advent of cable modems / ADSL / FIOS / etc. Now almost everyone has a fast connection, hideous amounts of disk space, and bit torrent which spreads information faster than the older method.
How do I know? I left a home computer, with an (IIS) FTP server on it and no password, for the purposes of some web work I was doing at the time, on an apparently internet-accessible link, and several days later my hard drive had a bunch of 0-day warez on it. *shrugs*
I am John Hurt.
Not officially, but China already has its hands in the chamber; this use of this is a nice backdoor to get into well connected powerful people in the USA. It would be a wise move for China but other parties bouncing off a computer in China could be doing it as well; same motivation either way.
You know, the CIA has been doing plenty of operations for the benefit of US corporations for over a generation now. (you look it up, it happened and likely still happens. Wikileaks only covered the state dept messing around with others; just imagine what the CIA leak would have looked like given what is known about their past!)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Good Hackers?
Considering that the USCOC is a Conservative/Republican cesspool of manipulation, I sincerely hope that the hackers are simply stockpiling information to use AGAINST these asshats.
I eagerly await the Wikileaks release of information gleaned from these "investigations", but I would accept a more public, strategic release of information that torpedoes any chances of Conservatives/Republicans gaining further benefit from the USCOC.
That's OK... billionaire hedge fund manager and currency collapser George Soros funded Occupy Wall Street via the Tides Foundation. Slashdot-- you're all suckers.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
When liberals do it, it's financial terrorism. When conservatives do it, it's capital gains. Just sayin'.
So I'm all for the Chinese, who are major beneficiaries of all those jobs, and all that technology, which has been offshored to them, to continue on hacking the USCoC, McKinsey, and by all means Rockefeller stooge, Peter G. Peterson's Peterson Institute!
....I would declare the Chinese to be American heroes, should they wish to blow up the US Chamber of Commerce. Also, any and all Fox, CNN and NPR stations.
It is more like blaming the houseowner for putting handles on the doors, since these faciliate entry.
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
The US Chamber is the one that pushed tax cuts for outsourcing as well as allowing illegals to be here. Even now, it is the Chamber that pushes its members to buy 49% or less of a factory (i.e. no control) of a Chinese owned factory and then move as many operations to China.
The chamber being cracked by China , is a lot like breaking into your own home.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Is this a big deal since people think that the US Chamber of Commerce is a government agency?
Really - The Chamber of Commerce. Who the fuck cares? Why do they even give a shit? The Chinese already got TOP SECRET NUCLEAR ARMS SECRETS from Lawrence Livermore way back when Clinton was getting his dick sucked. So why would anyone give a rat fuck that the Chamber got hacked. For that matter why in the hell do I have to create a password for my email when any fucking hacker or government agency can see my emails anyway. WTF is this world coming to. The Chamber of Commerce???