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US Weather System and Satellite Network Hacked
mpicpp writes with this story about Chinese hackers breaching the federal weather network. "Hackers attacked the U.S. weather system in October, causing a disruption in satellite feeds and several pivotal websites. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, said that four of its websites were hacked in recent weeks. To block the attackers, government officials were forced to shut down some of its services. This explains why satellite data was mysteriously cut off in October, as well as why the National Ice Center website and others were down for more than a week. During that time, federal officials merely stated a need for "unscheduled maintenance." Still, NOAA spokesman Scott Smullen insisted that the aftermath of the attack "did not prevent us from delivering forecasts to the public." Little more is publicly known about the attack, which was first revealed by The Washington Post. It's unclear what damage, if any, was caused by the hack. But hackers managed to penetrate what's considered one of the most vital aspects of the U.S. government. The nation's military, businesses and local governments all rely on nonstop reports from the U.S. weather service."
so did the NOAA get hacked or just 4 of their websites.
If the NSA weren't so distracted by its mass surveillance of innocent US citizens it may have been able to prevent this from happening.
I mean, who would even notice.
to fake data for global warming or keep us from finding out about chem trails or keep us from finding out about space aliens or something like that.
See, there is no global warming. It's those liberal, Obama-loving hackers. If it wasn't for them, it would be 75 F outside in Denver right now.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
I just don't see how it's so easy to accomplish these insurgencies when lesser systems managed by organisations with smaller funding are able to keep their systems better protected. It's not like we don't already know 99++% of the possible attack vectors, and not like the US government won't have enough bandwidth to fend off any sort of DoS attack.
Perhaps we'll soon get wind of an appropriation bill floated by the meteorological agencies...
"Still, NOAA spokesman Scott Smullen insisted that the aftermath of the attack "did not prevent us from delivering forecasts to the public."
Picking temperatures and precipitation states out of a hat and then telling people it technically is delivering a forecast. Note that he never said "accurate."
Time to hurt the chi.com mandarins ... take away their money by closing off all imports. I'd also level North Korea as a **message** .. but that's just me.
They're trying to destroy the coffee crops!
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Well at least no plane crashed because it flew into an undetected storm...
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
There is no country that engages in so much propaganda and spying on monumental levels as the U.S; if it comes out of the mouth of the U.S government, be skeptical.
They all happened more-or-less simultaneously, too.
How long until Hurrican "Hitler did nothing wrong" hits land?
XDInd
No Evidence what so ever that it is Chinese hackers, but we have a hunch so we'll report it as fact.
Maybe the USA needs to build a firewall that blocks all of China.... What I don't get, is how do we always know it is China, when all they need to do is use some VPN's and proxies to hide their location? They can break into satellites and every damn other thing, yet they don't take 2 seconds to hide their trail. Makes me think China is an easy scape-goat, otherwise China is giving a big middle finger to the US... Or maybe another country wants the USA to get pissed at China, by making the attacks all look like they are coming from China.
It seems that NOAA's administration has become dysfunctional. They should have notified Commerce Department Inspector General immediately but they did not. I wonder why they felt they had to shut down a variety of data feeds. Minimal impact they claim but there was definitely an impact. Money has been tight for them but Congress gave them $25 million for a new supercomputer. That was 18 months ago and it looks like nothing has been done on that front. They will lose the money in September 2015 if they don't do something. You can sign a petition asking the Whitehouse to get them to spend the money for that needed supercomputer.
Next they will hack the satellites with the nukes.
From the article:
The impact of the hack was real: Scientists at Atmospheric and Environmental Research in Lexington, Massachusetts were unable to send a preliminary report about weather patterns to traders and investors earlier this year.
So some traders did not bring an umbrella and got wet walking from their BMW to their office? Why can't they look out of the window like everybody else?
...Maybe the oil industry, desperate to fake "evidence" that climate change isn't happening?
XKCD did it first
(Seriously, is there a geek-topic that guy hasn't written a cartoon about?)
All you see looking at China is blue skies --- no, wait, that's a blue screen ...
It's preventative.
best to do it in middle of there fine reality shows
What Operating System did these NOAA websites run on?
TFA contains nothing about how they broke in (through US control center or through their own antenna?) and how they were evicted from the satellite.
No, they did not hack the weather.....
But what happens when the CYBER TERRYRISTS control the weather and send hurricanes? The wind could catch the flag waving Americans, and wrap the flags around their heads, turning them into terrorists too.
This is just the start people!
I saw it on Fox, so it must be true!
It was Americans using Chinese owned computers.
Tech sites sure are stupid uninformed speculating niggers.
Then again the majority of the stories written by the Associated press affiliated site are written by the CIA.
Facts
Please explain what constitutes a "hack" on NOAA websites.
In fact the "data" at NOAA web sites are all wrong. So. Why would a foreign government or any hacker-group want to waste time with anything NOAA!
NOAA is just a failure.
We should move on and forget NOAA.
It's either.
In Canada we use what is known as a weather stick for forecasting. If the stick is wet it is raining. If the stick is white it is snowing. If the stick can not be seen then it is night time.
These hacks sponsored by the Russian and/or Chinese governments are acts of war.
Look, if we want to prevent this sort of thing, we need to stop scaring ourselves with stolen words.
Write what you know, without vaguely scary words of bad vagueness, thanks.
Not true, not "just websites" were impacted. I work for a non-US national meteorological center. Those recent hacks meant for us that important satellite data that was usually provided by the NOAA suddenly stopped being accessible, having real impacts on weather forecasting quality. It took a few days to find alternatives. We learned and are in the process of making certain that such a situation does not happen once again. In other words, for some major 'foreign' weather forecasting operations, the impacts were real and important, not overblown as you state.
Unrelated, Slashdot's commenting system sucks in mobile devices... We can't quote or even see the original comments while replying... And the comment box doesn't resize while replying, we can't even review our own replies! Lots of room for improvement...
Animoog.org
It's time to quarantine malicious actor countries. We need to study innovative means, methods, and architectures to isolate, contain or somehow filter extremely maliciously behaving countries. A "Great Firewall of China" is becoming a more and more obvious need.
Crap! The Chinese have hacked into the weather satellites. Now they control the CIA's Weather Dominator and will be able to make the polar vortex a permanent feature over North America! Oh well, at least this will expose "global warming" hoax that the Obama administration has been perpetrating with it. So much for giving this country the climate of his native Kenya.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
lately