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Chinese Hackers Infiltrate US Army Database, Compromise Safety of Dams
coolnumbr12 writes "Chinese hackers have infiltrated a sensitive U.S. Army database that contains information about the vulnerabilities of thousands of dams located throughout the United States. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' National Inventory of Dams (NID) has raised concerns that information gathered in the hack could help China carry out a cyber-attack on the national electrical power grid."
You guys have nine years to knock that shit off or there is gonna be trouble.
quoted from "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5642408"
Of course they can, what makes you think they aren't?
But a more interesting question is to look at what information is presented and what is missing. How much is new, how much is old. Then on policy stories like this one I sometimes pop over to the senate web site and look at what's coming up on the senate calendar [1] and oh look, on May 7th they are having a hearing to talk about
Hearings to examine the Department of the Air Force in
review of the Defense Authorization Request for fiscal
year 2014 and the Future Years Defense Program.
Hmm, who is in charge of Cyber Command? Why it's the Air Force! Who would have guessed.
(yes I can be that cynical)
The vulnerabilities of the dams are the real problem, but for some reason the government prefers to lie about that. Most of these vulnerabilities are probably pretty obvious to an expert (and, yes, the Chinese have experts on damns and these can go to the US for vacation), so hiding these problems is pretty stupid in the first place.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Is there proof that it actually was a Chinese citizen behind the keyboard? All they did so far is trace the origin back to a Chinese IP address.
Even if the culprit turned out to be a person with Chinese citizenship, it could very well be the same thing as some pimply faced youth somewhere in a fly-over state hacking into a Chinese database. It does not have to be related to the government. However, if it is, China has some explanation to do.
I'm also wondering whether or not the DOD is purposely saying "it's the Chinese" to avoid people asking them "why don't you secure your shit better?".
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
Anything behind a barbed wire fence should never be connected to the Internet.
Earl! Unplug the cows!
You clearly dont own a server. There are always IPs belonging to China poking and prodding your server. Then when you report it, they dont respond at all, and the IP is never AUP'd. So yes... it was probably f'ing China.
Yeah, because the Chinese have bases in countries all over the world...
The People's Republic of China, A.K.A. communist China, has a growing number of military bases and access to facilities around the world. The Chinese fleet has been participating in anti-piracy actions around Somalia, giving them experience in extended naval deployments. The Chinese navy is planning to build something like four aircraft carriers and is currently flying aircraft off their first one that they are bringing into operation now after learning much from the Brazilian navy. Chinese special forces have been training the military in Venezuela. The Chinese are active in Africa.
The Chinese have also been bullying many of their neighbors, laying claim to distant islands and extensive land areas. Why don't you ask the Indians what they think of China's behavior, they are forming several new airborne infantry units to help deal with the threat? Or the Japanese, who are suffering a growing number of incursions by Chinese aircraft and sea vessels? Of perhaps the Philippines, which is seeing Chinese territory grabs on their doorstep?
No, it's the Chinese who are spending themselves into oblivion on weapons of war... Oh, wait, that's us again.
US military spending has recently generally been between 4% to 5% of GDP, well below historic levels. The army and navy and rumps of what they were at the end of the Cold War. Spending on social welfare programs is several times the military budget and is continuing to grow, and will grow for decades to come. It is Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, now joined by Obamacare which really starts kicking in this year, that will bankrupt the US, not the military spending.
I'm afraid you don't know what you are talking about there.
We spend more on our military than the next 13 nations combined
A large part of that is personnel costs. The US has an all volunteer military that pays its members a salary competitive with the civilian sector unlike many other major nations that use conscription to fill their armies. An American corporal in the Army or Marines makes about what a Chinese general makes per month. I'm sure you can figure the impact of that out. Same thing applies to weapons purchases. Maybe you've heard that Chinese engineering staff and factory labor is cheaper than American?
On the other hand pretty much all European countries allied with the United States spend less than they should by treaty goals. As a result they had a hard time with the intervention in Libya without American assistance.
If it makes you feel better the Chinese are upping their military budget by 10.7% this year.
(but we can't afford to educate our children... bright.)
The US throws large amounts of money at education. The problem isn't with how much money, but what it is spent on, like growing numbers of administrators. There are also social factors that come into play that the education budget itself can't fix. The teachers unions don't help much either.
You don't really have this right either.
I dunno, perhaps if we moved from offense to defense, these things wouldn't be issues?
If platitudes could solve things they wouldn't be issues either.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell