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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.
It is very easy to see how this happens. "US Government" computers don't come from the same pile. There is no centralized, underground server farm protected by SEAL teams and NSA contractors, powered by triply redundant nuclear reactors and run through six proxies. It is thousands of separate systems run by agencies how often are pretty strapped for cash, often have systems that haven't been updated in decades and often run by people who don't live and breath security.
So it's no real surprise that NOAA (which could be a poster child for those underfunded, overstretched agencies) got hacked. Probably happens more times than anybody knows. Certainly is happening more times than anybody is saying.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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.
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.
You should travel the world more.
XKCD did it first
(Seriously, is there a geek-topic that guy hasn't written a cartoon about?)
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...
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