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Hackers Plundered Israeli Defense Firms That Built 'Iron Dome' Missile Defense
An anonymous reader writes: Brian Krebs reports on information from Columbia, Md.-based threat intelligence firm Cyber Engineering Services Inc. that attackers thought to be operating out of China hacked into the corporate networks of three top Israeli defense technology companies. The attackers were seeking technical documents related to Iron Dome, Israel's air defense system. "IAI was initially breached on April 16, 2012 by a series of specially crafted email phishing attacks. ... Once inside the IAI’s network, [the attackers] spent the next four months in 2012 using their access to install various tools and trojan horse programs on systems throughout company’s network and expanding their access to sensitive files, CyberESI said. The actors compromised privileged credentials, dumped password hashes, and gathered system, file, and network information for several systems. The actors also successfully used tools to dump Active Directory data from domain controllers on at least two different domains on the IAI’s network. All told, CyberESI was able to identify and acquire more than 700 files — totaling 762 MB total size — that were exfiltrated from IAI’s network during the compromise. The security firm said most of the data acquired was intellectual property and likely represented only a small portion of the entire data loss by IAI." Most of the stolen material pertained to Arrow III missiles, UAVs, and ballistic rockets.
...until software and systems security is finally taken seriously. That may mean corporate LANs interconnected between sites by leased private fiber, where ther entire computer system for the company is not able to even reach the public Internet. That may mean that users have separate systems, one for internal communication within the company, and one for external communication to outsiders. That may also mean that companies stop allowing anything sensitive on public-reachable computers, and it might even mean that corporate IT departments have to look at hardware that doesn't allow for secure computers to even plug into regular, public networks, and for those 'regular' networks to be highly monitored and partially locked-down as to what IP ranges (and countries) can even be communicated with.
I can tell you one thing, if such a system were implemented there'd probably be an uptick in efficiency as now it'd be a lot harder to screw around at work. Sure, a lot of people would be really pissed that they can't do non-work tasks at work without using a system seeing such monitoring too, but given that salaries in the defense sector are generally pretty good, that's a tradeoff that one could probably stomach.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
China is in a state of de facto war with every military R&D project in the world. Any defense contractor not locked down six ways from Sunday should be punished (or they should get a bonus for best practices.)
Apparently the Chinese don't think so. Compared to the American liberal arts community of experts on missile defense, they must be sadly misinformed.
Why, did China start to settle on their land, too?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
given that china also has problems with Muslim minorities is not that far fetched.
nice trolling, its a prison, not a concentration camp!
"AI was initially breached on April 16, 2012 by a series of specially crafted email phishing attacks"
Just who in their right minds keep 'secret' files on a Windows computer?
No, just Tibet.