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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.
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.
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
And if one of the most destructive attacks they can manage is forcing safety mechanism to fail and causing a massive spill, is that still the attitude you'll have?
I don't like fracking. It overextends fossil fuel dependency when we need stronger economic incentives to get off them for our long term needs. But if it does happen, I don't want this kind of risk from it.
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.
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
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.
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.
This is about industrial espionage and secret stealing, not hacking and damaging equipment. The idea is to try and go undetected.
Fair point. But sabotage of the competition also helps you get ahead if you're willing to break the law.
Any idiot can see the moral difference between stealing secrets and causing an explosion or an oil leak, so stop trying to group two completely unrelated acts under "breaking the law". You may as well say anyone who smokes weed is capable of triple murder/rape.
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.
We're talking about states and corporations here. You should, as a matter of course, assume realpolitik dominates decision-making.
The end of the energy chain firms like electric and natural gas providers are covered under NERC and FERC regulation. But the essence of NERC and FERC is they're CYA laws not so much they'd ever be protected from real bad stuff.
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.
> 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
Nothing wrong in the eyes of the Chinese or Russians to cause a nat gas plant to go up. I'm sure they want payback for when the CIA did it to them in the Cold War.
Problem is that a lot of companies pay at best lip service to security. "Security has no ROI" has been a mantra I have heard quite often.
Of course, little to nothing will be done about it. I remember solar companies getting hacked a few years ago, then China making solar panels of their exact same designs, then dumping them onto world markets for cheaper than the rare earths. It killed the US solar industry. I couldn't be surprised if this is the same with the natgas industry since there are a lot of reserves China has access to.
I strongly doubt that. Even a little familiarity with the industry would cause you to conclude the exact opposite. Natural gas in the USA is CHEAP. Natural gas in Europe and Asia is roughly 4x more expensive. Even Russian natural gas, in Russia, costs about 3x more than US natural gas. The problem is that shipping natural gas long distances is expensive if no pipeline exists. Ocean shipping of natural gas relies on cryogenically cooling the gas into a liquid, which is energy-intensive (expensive). Then, on the ocean journey, the ship either must burn or discard all of the evaporating gas, or expend even more energy with an on-board liquification plant.
Natural gas in the USA will continue to be produced in North America and consumed in North America. Even if the Chinese can solve the transportation problem, they will sell to their domestic market first, Japan/Korea second, Europe third, South America and Africa fourth, and only then would it make any sense to try to undercut the staggeringly cheap USA natural gas. The only loser with China getting strong into fracking would be Russia, and the environment.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
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.
While I wouldn't celebrate a hacking that caused safety mechanisms to fail causing a massive spill, I'd question why such safety systems were on the Internet. If such systems needed to be network enabled (e.g. allow remote monitoring), then I'd question whether the security procedures were up to par and why an intruder would be able to cause such havoc.
Of course, as other posters have said, this is industrial espionage, not attempts to damage the operations. Their ideal would be to get into the system and not have anybody know for as long as possible. Causing a huge spill by tampering with safety mechanisms would be the exact opposite of what they want to do.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
'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).
Beyond secure lines, there needs to be a secure network with pipes that don't use the Internet (no VPNs.) NIPRnet is an example of this.
This way, at least the bad guys would have to hack access to the network, then hack access to the central switch to allow their machines to communicate with others, then finally go after the data. With throwing everything onto the Internet, it is a relatively easy job to compromise almost anything.
I don't like fracking. It overextends fossil fuel dependency when we need stronger economic incentives to get off them for our long term needs. But if it does happen, I don't want this kind of risk from it.
I know - let's ship all the frackers and their equipment and their trade secrets to China! Then at least the havoc those bastards wreak won't be in this part of the world. Just in the tradition of shipping our problems to other countries, y'understand...
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
"Security has no ROI" has been a mantra I have heard quite often.
If anyone really believed that, then they wouldn't bother spending any money at all on security, would they?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Any idiot can see the moral difference between stealing secrets and causing an explosion or an oil leak, so stop trying to group two completely unrelated acts under "breaking the law". You may as well say anyone who smokes weed is capable of triple murder/rape.
Stealing secrets could conceivably be a lot worse than causing an explosion.
Say the Nazis had stolen the plans for D-Day, this would have been much more of a disaster than the loss of a power station.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Natural gas in the USA will continue to be produced in North America and consumed in North America
Not necessarily, projects for megascale exporting of North American LNG going on as we speak.
http://www.cheniere.com/lng_in...
There are no reports nor proof, only propaganda. What is certain is that the U.S itself is spying on everyone, even the countries they call "allies". You seem as concerned as only a sheep could be.
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.
Everything is hackable. If someone wants in anywhere... they'll get there.
Shitty planning is putting industry secrets on a public network and it happens all of the time.
Everything is hackable.
Absolutely not true.
That statement is a condom that IT wears and guess what?
It's got a rip in it.
When IT's incompetence becomes the subject of litigation, let's revisit this with nostalgia.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
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.
You don't mess with Texas.
Exactly. It's not nice to pick on retards.
The Geology of each area is different so it's not really helping the Chinese with anything their scholars don't already know. The drilling tech hasn't changes too much in the past 10 years. The main difference is we frack and drill as we go instead run a huge frack job all at once (This means less waste and burn off). The main harm I think that can be done is watching land and jumping in on "standing titles". This is where a broker or company puts together 40 acres of land titles in a somewhat consolidated manner before the drilling can begin. By tieing up strategic strips of land they can jack up the price and make money as well as make the costs higher for us and dampen the attractiveness of our export prices.
Beware of those who profit off the docile and persecute the unbelievers.
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...
And how exactly are they going to create a spill over the _internet_?
Clogging the tubez wif pr0n?
Or maybe I am mistaken and the drilling equipment uses the Facebook API...
-- 29A the number of the Beast