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Pentagon Ups Hacking Accusations Against China
wiredmikey writes "A new report from the Pentagon marked the most explicit statement yet from the United States that it believes China's cyber espionage is focused on the U.S. government, as well as American corporations. China kept up a steady campaign of hacking in 2012 that included attempts to target U.S. government computer networks, which could provide Beijing a better insight into America's policy deliberations and military capabilities, according to the Pentagon's annual assessment of China's military. 'China is using its computer network exploitation capability to support intelligence collection against the U.S. diplomatic, economic, and defense industrial base sectors that support U.S. national defense programs,' said the report to Congress (PDF). The digital espionage was part of a broader industrial espionage effort that seeks to secure military-related U.S. and Western technology, allowing Beijing to scale back its reliance on foreign arms manufacturers, the report said. One day later, Beijing dismissed the Pentagon's report that accused it of widespread cyberspying on the U.S. government, rejecting it as an 'irresponsible' attempt to drum up fear of China as a military threat."
Is this supposed to surprise anyone? And, more importantly, does anyone out there actually believe that the US isn't doing the same thing toward [insert long list of nations here]? I, for one, certainly believe they are.
How long do we uphold the polite pretense that China isn't behind the overwhelming majority of real world hacking? How long are we supposed to avoid to avoid offending them and continue to allow them to steal all of our intellectual property that we supposedly value? At least the Chinese government actually bothers to protect Chinese businesses from foreigners unlike the US government which only protects big business. Turn the other cheek, what if your out of cheeks?
This is an Internet dispute, so let's settle this in our tried-and-true method. I'll begin:
Dear China,
Do you even lift, bro?
I understand that China is a trading partner but in so many other spheres (human rights, pollution, animal cruelty, IP theft, etc etc ) they're a disgrace and yet they always seem to get a pass, unlike some other countries the US has gone to war with over nothing. If the US blocked all Chinese IP addresses, what would be the worst that could happen? How about raising import tariffs?
Null route all the Chinese networks, problem solved. Worked great on my mail server, amount of spam I got dropped massively.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
..when dealing with anything you want to keep secret, and your problem is solved. Internet security has always been and always will be, sheer fantasy for gullible managers.
Any questions?
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Accusations made by US gov towards foreign countries, especially powerful ones, should be taken with a whole lot of salt.
sequestration cuts are getting a little close.
Seriously, terrorism or communism. I only have enough patience for one government-sponsored boogey man at a time.
Schedule it between the mandatory monthly fiscal cliff panic and the gay marriage thing if you could...or if you can roll it into some weird freedom war that works too.
Good people go to bed earlier.
answer: dumb bastards who have the sense of a paper clip. if you don't want to have your hard drives in the morning paper, you don't put them on the Wacky Wacky Webbiepoo. the old joke was you disconnected all cables to the computer, buried it 50 feet deep in concrete, and put crew-served weapons over it if you wanted security.
turns out it isn't a joke, folks. total separation. anything you want scrubbed and publicly availiable, you sneakernet it over to the other machine room on the other side of the Pentagon.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I say we request that businesses and government agencies (especially ones we know they've gone after) set up poorly secured areas with misinformation about "important" projects and such.
Not only do we get them with misinformation, but try to bury them with gobs of data in the form of poorly scanned (un-OCRable) image files.
(Yes, I know the plan probably has flaws, but a boy can dream.)
what's interesting is that these people are claiming that the attacks *originate* from china, and that therefore, logically as well, it MUST be the chinese government that instigated these attacks. noooOoo: unless the U.S. has access to the entire world's internet traffic plus all communications globally including mobile phones, telephone lines and every single server and electronic device, there's absolutely NO WAY that they can prove that accusation - period.
why not? because even if an attack "appears" to originate from within china, all that means is that the traffic is coming from an IP address that's inside the china boundaries. and that's *all* it means. it does *NOT* mean that there is not SOMEONE ELSE who is OUTSIDE of china who has compromised that machine and is using it as a DDOS hacking jump-point in order to deliberately mask their true location [and identity].
the hacking could even be done through servers that are compromised and happen to have access to a telephone or a 3G dongle. dial in, initiate attack: you'd never be able to ascertain the identity of the attacker [unless you had access to china's telephone network records].
for all we know, the hacking is actually being instigated by the CIA as a means to have an excuse to justify yet another war or yet another round of political maneuvring.
even if it's random usage of compromised machines rather than intentional misdirection, the percentage of computers compromised by viruses world-wide is quite likely to have a disproportionate number of IP addresses originating from china simply through sheer numbers of people in china who have computers.
there are plenty of foreign governments who would have an interest in the kind of information being claimed to have been sought. why does it *have* to be china that's doing the attacking?
anything you want scrubbed and publicly availiable, you sneakernet it over to the other machine room on the other side of the Pentagon.
That's what the Iranians did (well, except for the Pentagon part) and even that didn't save them from Stuxnet.
US: We've upped our accusations, now up yours!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
True, the user is always the weakest link.
"Oh I just found a shiny thumb drive in the parking lot... I know, I'll plug it in to the PC I use to monitor the centrifuges."
It's not hard to envision a government employee/military worker/civilian contractor here doing the same thing.
TODO create witty sig.
Of course China spies on the US, much like vice versa. It's hard to choose which of these countries deserves my sympathy less.
...China is not trying to actively harm America, but rather to upgrade its technology by cheating...
China mowed down 2000 of its own students during Tienamen Square protests for free speech. They've also occupied Tibet since 1959, claiming a 1000 year-old country is a runaway province. They continually threaten Taiwan with invasion and strong-arm Japanese fishing boats all the time claiming they are fishing in Chinese waters, and are arguing with Japan now about some uninhabited islands Japan has administered for 1500 years. And they aren't trying to harm anyone? Good luck with that.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
answer: dumb bastards who have the sense of a paper clip.
tink...tink...tink...
It looks like you're writing a diatribe. Would you like help, you insensitive clod?
Sorry...that kind of just wrote itself. ;-)
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
Name one thing that other governments do that the US government hasn't already done. There is nothing. Torture? Check Indefinite detention of innocent people? Check Spying on own citizens? Check Lavish support and benefits for corporations at the expense of ordinary people? Check Americans need to get off their hypocritical high horse of "freedom", "liberty", "justice" and all that crap. They are no better than any of the dictatorships out there.
Enough is enough; do the one thing that will get China's attention: import tariffs.
There is also the Chinese invasion of Vietnam aka the Sino-Vietnamese War in the late 1970s.
[sarcasm]Yes, like forcing the United States into a real finical crisis is a good idea for China Self interest.[/sarcasm]
China buys US Dollars to keep their own economy stable. Also the United States is their biggest buyer. Put all Americans in the poor house, you have lost your own economy.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Now get back to propping up our economy and owning most of our soverign debt.
Care to back that up with a source? They are the largest foreign holder of debt but that is far from owning most of our debt. China owns about 8% of public debt.
While I understand that it feels bad to have your secrets copied, it seems to me that China is not trying to actively harm America, but rather to upgrade its technology by cheating - i.e. copying US technology for free.
... a method first perfected by the USA, and which Alexander Hamilton named "the American System".
Now get back to propping up our economy and owning most of our soverign debt.
Care to back that up with a source? They are the largest foreign holder of debt but that is far from owning most of our debt. China owns about 8% of public debt.
China's exports by country - US buys 20% from China.
Also China runs an year-on-year positive trade balance
US goods trade: total showing a deficit since at least 1989.
Goods trade with China only - deficit again
Gotta ask yourself the population of which country would suffer the most if the trade between the two would suddenly stop?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
...who gives a rat's ass? It's like the halfwitted, demented stooges around my age, or older, who wear those "proud to be a Vietnam Vet" hats --- I always inquire which they are more proud of: That the USA killed at least 3 million Vietnamese by dropping bombs on their sovereign territory, or that the American-based multinationals routinely offshore many, many jobs to the totalitarian society of Vietnam?
Since they shipped all the jobs, technology, investment, and much "defense tech" to China, who truly gives a rat's ass today?
It's like China whining about handing over their OS source code to them, then being hacked by them --- no shit, Sherlock!!!!
Correction: on last sentence I meant to write, "It's like Microsoft whining......"
Minor nit:
according to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_partners_of_China
The EU is actually their biggest partner, we're #2. Still, lose the US and that's nothing to sneeze at.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
And at if the Chinese economy goes really bad some stage the mob might be coming for you and your comrades in the politburo have a date with a lamppost ala Mussolini or Ceausescu.
Would Tibet be better, or worse off without China and why (curious, not that i have an opinion).
Bravo, you just invalidated all of your previous points regarding my reply. Have a nice, blind, life.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
"the Pentagon .. believes China's cyber espionage is focused on .. attempts to target U.S. government computer networks, which could provide Beijing a better insight into America's policy deliberations and military capabilities"
..
And the solution is not to host your critical and military capabilities on such a flakey OS
AccountKiller