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Four Charged With Stealing Army Helicopter Training Software
itwbennett writes: Four alleged members of an international computer hacking ring face charges in the U.S. of breaking into the computer networks of the U.S. Army and several tech companies and stealing several software packages, including programs used to train Army helicopter pilots, as well as software and data related to the Xbox One gaming console, the Xbox Live online gaming service and popular games such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Gears of War 3.
Stealing US Army software or stealing IP and proprietary data related to Xbox Live? I kind of skimmed through the article, with the photo my first thought was stealing UH60 training material that goes into actual capabilities of the Blackhawk helicopter. Now it looks like gamer software but that may have longer sentences as The Business considers piracy most serious crime.
mfwright@batnet.com
I didn't even know you could train helicopters.
Between January 2011 and March of this year, the four men and others allegedly hacked into the computer networks of Epic Games, Valve, Zombie Studios and the U.S. Army, as well as partners of Microsoft, using methods including SQL injection and stolen user names and passwords of company employees and software development partners.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Did the perps really steal the software, or only copy it?
Not that it matters much. The army loves to go ape on "bad" guys. The army's reputation for paranoid overreaction to any threat involving computers is such that it wouldn't be surprising if the perps end up spending a very long time in Gitmo if the army gets hold of them. They'll be held without trial as, what do they call it, an imminent threat? They'll also be "aggressively interrogated" to find out how they did it. If the army has to hold a trial, they'll be found guilty of stealing, espionage, and of course (cue dramatic music) Hacking.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Somewhere, a 3D printer is working overtime.
Have gnu, will travel.
"Between January 2011 and March of this year, the four men and others allegedly hacked into the computer networks .. using methods including SQL injection and stolen user names and passwords"
No need to guess what Operating System these computer networks run on.
Since Xbox Live and all siloed online gaming is a means by which we are tracking the gifted and talented drone pilots and Dalek operators of the future, this is a mission-critical breach. We need to get computers out of the hands of these hacker terrorists, or else parents might get wise.
Cloudiot: A person who does not see offsite storage as a way to lose control over access to his or her own data.
Four Charged With Stealing Army Helicopter...
Whhuuuuut??!?!?
oh... meh
Dark Reflection
Why? How many leaky coffee cups does a helicopter need?
but did they download an attack helicopter?
No, but this guy had purchased enough parts from government surplus sales to build as many as 88 Cobra attack helicopters.
I had a friend who worked on investigations into this kind of thing. She told me about a guy they caught who had 1 fully functional Apache Longbow helicopter and another that was about 70% complete. I couldn't find a link for that one. But it was around the same time.
For anything coming out of the US Army, think China, Russia, India, Israel, the UK, France. It might be real military espionage, or straight commercial thievery. Both are bad.
In the military context, any inside information is a potential military advantage. I've had to look this up twice in the last week or so, so this time I'm not going to bother, but the Chinese hacked into BA on the F-35 project, and it cost a lot of time and money to recover. And that assumes that somehow you can recover from that kind of vast breach, which is not clear.
For the commercial military market, knowing about your competitors/vendors is a big economic win. It's a competitive advantage for bidding or knowing how to upgrade you product. Just because someone is an ally, that doesn't mean that they don't want to know all your secrets. Jonathon Pollard is serving a lift term (a nominal 30 years) for spying for Israel. It's alleged that some of the information he leaked ended up in the hands of the Soviet Union as well.
This isn't a bunch of fanboys getting into a game company network and getting artwork from a hotly anticipated game. It's billions of dollars and lives on the line. Grow up, whiny fanboys.
Why is Snark Required?
Now here's a little item I think you might go for in a big way - Dragonteeth mines. Made in the US and used successfully in Vietnam, I might add. These little honeys won't kill ya', but they're guaranteed to take a foot off. Take a couple of samples, take 'em home, see if you like'em, let me know how many you need. Okay?
--Eddie Muntz
damaged by dogma
the computer networks of the U.S. Army and several tech companies
It's right there in the summary.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
U.S. Marine Corps used doom in the past
Good luck learning to fly them, maintain them, and supply them with spare parts.
Sorry, also forgot arming them.
If one is sufficiently into the weaponry market to assemble an attack helicopter they can certainly come up with a few guns to put on it. The armament would likely be one of the easiest parts to acquire, as long as they have enough money. The largest non-governmental arsenal on Earth is located at the Blackwater (whatever their name is today) headquarters, where they also assemble their own versions of attack helicopters and armored vehicles and where you can lease a helicopter carrier and gunships.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Seeming isn't always correct, and espionage is not something I feel tolerant about. But is this really espionage, or is this trumped up military hysteria over well known information?
I know the military. They exaggerate. They would like to make everything, and I do mean everything, into a secret. There is no downside to doing so. If unsure about some information, the default is to stamp it as secret. Covers their asses that way. This includes basic facts of nature that are well known, stuff that is taught in high school science and math classes. They are total suckers for Security Through Obscurity. That this strangles cooperation and collaboration is less important to them because they don't get into as much trouble if a project fails than if a "secret" gets leaked.. At the same time, they demand that their collaborators have no secrets, and go so far as to enforce this by insisting that work be done on a military base, on computers belonging to the military, and that encryption can't be used anywhere on the hardware without lots of permission. That means of course that the contractors have to get security clearances and permission to be on the base. They also want to be in control, and despite not knowing what the heck they are doing, will periodically make off the wall demands to which the contractors can't easily say no. Can really hamstring a project, so much so that it makes the difference between success and failure. It's so bad that many refuse military funding because it comes with all sorts of unreasonable strings attached. Many years ago, OpenBSD spurned military funding, and I'm sure it was because of that sort of thing. I know universities have turned them down, knowing that the money would not make up for their interference.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"