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Chinese Hackers Mess With Texas By Attacking Fracking Firms
chicksdaddy writes The technology revolution that is "fracking" has created billions in wealth for states like Pennsylvania, Texas, Ohio and Wyoming. But all that oil and all those dollars have attracted the attention of sophisticated spies from near and far to steal valuable trade secrets. Digital Guardian's blog notes this report from News 4 San Antonio in Texas which quotes local FBI officials saying they are "very concerned" about theft of trade secrets from companies engaged in "fracking" in the Eagle Ford Shale in Texas. "It's corporate espionage, there's no question about it," said Christopher Combs of the San Antonio FBI. "Foreign governments or foreign companies are looking for any competitive advantage. Whether it's the widget that you use to drill, or it's a process that you use to track inventory better. They're really looking at the company as a whole to find out every little thing that you do that makes you a better company on the world market." Combs declined to name specific firms, but said that Chinese firms are "aggressively" engaged in industrial espionage. However, the problem isn't limited to China. Companies with ties to governments that are U.S. allies are believed to be conducting espionage against innovative US firms as well.
Smelly either way.
This is great news. Now people in China have a better idea of the chemicals we are pumping into our own groundwater systems than those of us in the US know. Maybe they can make an informed decision about what is going on in their country.
Don't hack the frack?
No hacking on our fracking?
The frack are you hacking?
We heard you like hacking, so we put some frack in your hack.
The possibilities are endless.
The US would be in terrible economic trouble without fracking.
But of course the US is squandering this opportunity just like all the others.
There won't be many more fossil fuel miracles to bail out the US.
From the standpoint of trying to steal business secrets, that's something that everyone does on everyone else, even the US. You'd think by now most businesses would understand that connecting everything to the internet isn't necessarily a good idea.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
If China starts World War III, it's going to be because China's air, food, and water are so toxic that their people can't live there anymore.
Noooo, really ?
This seems fair to me...
http://www.pcworld.com/article...
http://www.wired.com/2014/10/n...
what's good for the goose is good for the gander
Why would you not spend some money to implement some measure of security, if this IP was your bread and butter.......
I live in PA. We have not gotten "billions" from fracking firms, since we have no gas extraction tax. Most of the rig workers are from out of state. They spend a fair amount fixing roads -- but that is because their trucks tore them up. Please stop repeating that natural gas production benefits the common citizen. It benefits shareholders. Our gas bill isn't even that cheap, since the gas is shipped to nyc/boston.
You don't mess with Texas.
Groups have been pressuring the oil/gas companies to give information on the composition of the magic "fracking solution" for years now. All the companies have been willing to say so far is "it's safe, trust us!". If the courts can't get the companies to tell us why we should trust them on the safety of this cocktail, perhaps the hackers will find out its composition and tell us first?
One might wonder how an oil/gas company would look in terms of safety if they were ousted by a Chinese group...
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Who really cares how these "secrets" eventually get out? They are usually massive advances that can save time, effort and make a process much more efficient. Surely more cooperation on these areas is a better idea so energy isn't wasted researching the same stuff over and over again across the 250+ countries in the world. Obviously examples like nuclear need more sensitivity as screw ups can be big. Just remember: These global monolithic corporations who may happened to be headquartered in your country aren't necessarily in it for the good of your citizens.
There's gotta be a song in there somewhere. Don't forget to mention the train, prison, and pickup truck..
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Mr. Pot, meet Mr. Kettle.
Have gnu, will travel.
IN TX you can shoot people like that the TX AG should just look the other way and let the people who got hacked have free range to go after the hackers with no fear of having to do any time.
They are literally just grabbing everything that isn't nailed down using advanced attacks. I hope you're running an IDS...
Maybe this isn't corporate espionage.
Maybe it's someone trying to see what is really in fracking liquids -- which they keep telling us are safe, but won't tell us what's in them.
They also tell us that fracking doesn't lead to groundwater pollution, but few people really actually believe them.
Frack u later.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
its probably just those greenpeace hippies
> The technology revolution that is "fracking" has created billions in
> wealth for states like Pennsylvania, Texas, Ohio and Wyoming.
This smells (PI) like corporate propaganda to me.
> Chinese firms are "aggressively" engaged in industrial espionage
> conducting espionage against innovative US firms
riiight.. McCarthy, anyone? And.. innovative?? Innovation? Involving fossil fuels? The only trade secrets they are likely protecting is the toxicity and environmental impact of fracking. So the next logical step is that the chinese or whoever steal the "secrets", realise how stupid phracking is, then cancel any such plans at home and invest massively in renewables.
So this is great news. The fracking disaster will end with the US.
-f
http://www.cheezus.com/merch/i...
i can't see any value for citizens in frackers being able to keep secrets about how they drill , this secrecy makes it harder to fix any problems they cause because we emergency services will not have simple access to the list of chemicals being used.
also , wtf is the government allowing the pumping of tones of unspecified chemicals into the ground ? how can that possibly be sensible custodianship ?
This secrecy has created the value in this industry , if there were real scrutiny of what was being done by frackers it would not be allowed so the need for secrecy was created and sold as a requirement for investors instead of the abuse of process that it actually is.
I suspect these hackers are targeting this info not for commercial gains , its not that valuable as there are probably only a few drilling equipment suppliers to choose from , but for its social disruption value. If more people knew what was actually being done by frackers they would not allow it.
Worse , this posturing that the chinese are trying to steal our valuable secrets for commercial purposes is directly misleading.
[site]
China has massive shale oil and gas deposits - larger that the US and has a high priority to develop them.
It really should not be too big a surprise that they would make industrial espionage in this area a favorite activity.
... brings to the table is providing fucking reports that we've been hacked.
As for actually being able to STOP that shit ... forget it.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Those Chinese hackers are more than likely backed by their military. And what many AR-15 slinging, big talk'in, Texas yahoos don't get is that life isn't a Hollywood action movie where the "good guy" always wins - or even wins at all. The Chinese will kick their big fat asses.
'The technology revolution that is "fracking"' is a curious claim (some would call it a lie), given that the technology is something like four to six decades old, and has been used to drill oil well before the recent high cost of oil (how about that global conventional crude oil peak back in 2005?) caused fracking to actually more than break even. Granted, "The high cost of oil revolution" would probably not sell copy, and the recent slide of prices will mostly put the hurt on one of the few bright spots (flaring pun included) in an otherwise stagnant or declining oil industry (the oil majors as recently as March were muttering something about the new "age of austerity" and "loosing their shirts" in natural gas).
It seems that the Chinese are being blamed for an awful lot these days when most hackers and spies and terrorist sympathizers in the U.S. are citizens and not from anywhere. Spies steal from whoever they can whenever they can, exploiting every opportunity and selling what they steal to whoever has the money. I find it hard to blame China for this when its really a supply and demand problem. You eliminate the supply and the demand goes away. Perhaps the feds should be investigating people in the U.S. with access to aerospace machining, the military and intel.
Seems like Texas isn't alone with weird fracking problems. Southern California was experiencing a rash of abnormal "micro-quakes" attributed to fracking and military testing for over a year now. If our military and security groups really want to stop China from profiting on stolen secrets then they should really focus on their own internal problems and stop giving the wrong people unlimited access to information with no accountability.
The U.S conducts spying on monumental scales, but starts accusing China left and right for anything and everything, without providing any proof whatsoever.
There's a awful lot of potty-mouth on this story....
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
It's awfully hard to be sympathetic to companies that engage in or support fracking.
Looks like the media already took a side, that is, USA can do anything, nobody else can do that without USA's agreement/observation.
They want new designs and techniques? These companies must have a ton of them that sound good but didn't work out after expensive testing. Make a few of those "available" to the hackers with some doctored test results.
Biggest risk is accidentally falling for your own disinformation.
Well, when network equipment suppliers are required to insert backdoors into corporate routers, what do we expect to happen when those backdoors are found by third parties? This was ineveitable.
Time for Texas to open up it's own IT hacking office and then remind China of what happened at the Alamo. Be open about it. Announce that you are opening an office to commit economic espionage against Chinese companies, ban Chinese students from all Texas universities, and ban Chinese companies from doing any business in Texas. Start by banning Huawei instead of welcoming them like Utah did..
You don't mess with Texas.
Exactly. It's not nice to pick on retards.
You don't know what you're talking about. There are a lot of trade secrets in fracking. There are trade secrets in the instruments that monitor and improve drilling. There are a lot of trade secrets developed to improve production efficiency. There's a lot of essentially "public" knowledge too, but even that is hard to come by, so internal training materials can be extremely valuable to capture that knowledge that is typically only accrued with experience or being an insider at a reputable company. Just because fossil fuels have been down there a long time doesn't mean there is no innovation involved in getting them, otherwise we (the USA) wouldn't have just passed up Saudi Arabia as the worlds biggest energy producer. American fracturing companies dominate the world market for fracturing.
China has a problem trying to exploit its shale reserves. They aren't as flat and even as those in the USA. So they may be looking for ways to make similar improvements exploiting their own shale reserves by looking at how we fracture reserves in states that do have some geological variance in their shale reserves, like Pennsylvania and Colorado. Chinese companies are making often pitiful attempts to compete in the international market with sub-par technology. It won't always be pitiful though, I think. They're obviously trying to improve and the only thing holding them back is the trade secrets.
As shown in last night's Simpsons episode. ;P
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
"The technology revolution that is "fracking" has created billions in wealth for states like Pennsylvania, Texas, Ohio and Wyoming. But all that oil and all those dollars have attracted the attention of sophisticated spies from near and far to steal valuable trade secrets."
..
Please distract from a rational discussion of the environmental impact of "fracking" by introducing bogus stories about 'Chinese Hackers'
If by 'wealth' we mean 'earthquakes' then yes, Ohio has gotten some wealth. http://time.com/60363/fracking... http://www.reuters.com/article...
You never know where those terrorists are going to be, and what better place to hide you terror plans than in some file marked "Fracking Trade Secrets". Thank you China (or whoever you are) for keeping us safe!!!
I am sure they are not looking at any other material that would be of interest, just the terror information (which could involve drilling in the ground, fracturing the rock and injecting unknown substances to extract a countries mineral wealth).