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China Says It Is the Target of US Hack Attacks
An anonymous reader writes "Officials at the Chinese Defense Ministry say hackers from the U.S. have been attacking Chinese military websites. 'The sites were subject to about 144,000 hacking attacks each month last year, two thirds of which came from the U.S., according to China's defense ministry. The issue of cyber hacking has strained relations between the two countries.' This follows recent hacks from people in China on high-profile U.S. sites, as well as a report accusing the Chinese government of supporting a hacking group. '[Defense Ministry spokesman Geng Yansheng] called on U.S. officials to "explain and clarify" what he said were recent U.S. media reports that Washington would carry out "pre-emptive" cyber attacks and expand its online warfare capabilities. Such efforts are "not conducive to the joint efforts of the international community to enhance network security," he said.'"
About time. And preemptive my ass. China has been making state-orchestrated cyber attacks for years now. There's a war in cyberspace, did they just think the U.S. wouldn't show up?
...this kind of stuff will absolutely enhance network security. It's geopolitical stability that's in danger in the long term. But if we didn't destroy ourselves with nukes during the cold war, I think we'll come out of this one okay too.
Sorry, can't find it in me to feel at all sorry for them.
This is a pretty good option for small nations who want to get back at larger ones.
Step 1: buy server time with bitcoin from someone in China
Step 2: hack some highly visible US companies with basic java exploits.
Step 3: stand back and watch them hack each other for the next 10 years with professional grade stuff.
I'm sure it's a great consolation to be killed by your own government rather than someone else's.
Did they manage to recover any of it?
hackers from the U.S. have been attacking Chinese military websites.
Wake me up when the U.S. military is hacking Chinese civilian/banking computers or trying to SSH into everything.
Even if this were true (and all signs point that it's just a knee-jerk reaction by China), what the Chinese are reporting is attacks against their military infrastructure from US IPs. This is way different than what the NYT and Mandiant claim the Chinese are doing which is leveraging the capabilities of it's cyber army (god I hate that term) against private corporations for the betterment of it's government controlled businesses.
That's a huge difference. Yes the US is probably targeting the Chinese army but it sure as heck isn't specifically targeting Huawei and giving the information over to Cisco.
Seriously China, grow up.
The point of this announcement is to distract from the criticism they are receiving for launching hack attacks by painting a picture of everyone does it. So whether its true or not they would make this claim. I would believe they are receiving hack attacks from the US, but 2/3rds of them having a US origin sounds suspicious.
Anybody ever thought that maybe it's a 3rd party group doing the work? spoofing IPs? etc.. Sheesh.
Or maybe they hacked our Internets and burned down our firewall? Seriously, IP spoofing is not as useful as the movies make it out to be.
Spoofing IPs is easy, but it's only effective in a few situations, such as when you're sending a message with no expectation of a reply (e.g. spam e-mail, DDoS attack, etc.). If you're trying to break into someone's system, you need to be able to get a response back, and that means providing an IP address you can be reached at to your target. Now, you may try to anonymize your IP address somehow, such as through the use of proxies, VPNs, and other such technologies that can allow you to hide behind or within someone else's system, or you may spoof an IP address of a zombie computer you control and can use to route return packets to you, but at some point, an IP address you control needs to be provided to someone else, otherwise you have no way of getting back a response, and that address can be traced.
The Mandiant report links the attacks to the Chinese government. To a specific group in a specific location during business hours Beijing local time. The Chinese see attacks from US IP address and blame US.
> Such efforts are "not conducive to the joint efforts of the international community to enhance network security," he said.
Perhaps statements like "we're just defending ourselves" are not productive towards network security. But cyber-attacking China? China cyber-attacking the US? You must be kidding.
Even bacteria "know" that being attacked causes the greatest advances in defenses. What greater motivator can there be than an active and verifiable threat?