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Chinese Compiling "Facebook" of US Government Employees
schwit1 writes: According to private security firm CrowdStrike's founder, Dmitri Alperovitch, the Chinese are compiling a massive 'Facebook' like database on American federal government employees for use in espionage and blackmail. The data was stolen from high profile attacks against the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, as well as intrusions into the Anthem and CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield health insurance networks. "That can now be used to embarrass you publicly and force you to work for the Chinese government," Alperovitch says. "It's, in effect, a private version of Facebook with much more detail about your life than even Facebook has that the Chinese now have access to."
As opposed to a regular database...
Facebook proves embarrassment will fail.
Why don't they just use actual Facebook for this? Lots of people have been publicly shamed through Facebook, to the point of losing their careers, their marriages, or even committing suicide.
They're using the pre-2004, non-proper-noun sense of "facebook".
In general, embarrassing personal information is already known by the government, because you already told them. This story makes kinda no sense. So the Chinese are going to bribe you with already known things?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I'm already embarrassed working for the US government.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
I'm surprised how this is actually news, every government keeps dossiers on foreign government officials in a database. There have been reports of nefarious web crawling data collecting networks for years, many tracked back to government owned networks. Do you think the personal data the FBI gets from prosecuting hackers is actually thrown away, no they add it to their database.
There is nothing in what the Chinese have stolen that isn't already known by the government and hence has no blackmail value. The first time they try to blackmail someone with that information the person attempting to do it will be arrested on the second contact.
Christ, they could get more detailed personal information from the actual facebook than what they stole. It's hidden stuff like Ashley Madison that could cause someone to be susceptible to blackmail, not publicly known information from a government database. Even confidential medical records aren't going to be a thing you could get reliable actionable intelligence or blackmail material from.
The article summary is fucking stupid.
Truth is that up-to-date, accurate and detailed, organizational structure of army or other organization that participates in national defense is a prized reference tool useful both in peace and in a war time. Many of the organizations take extra precautions to distort, obfuscate real org chart and to hide key areas, such as communications/network, nuclear etc.
If enough time and efforts are invested all the org charts can be recreated, however in reality, due to the resource limitations only generals and top-lieutenants are in a typical org tree. Chinese made their own life easier since they have now a significant details and granularity of the information. Be sure that selected individuals will be targeted for intelligence and recruitment operations.
America has tolerated too many belligerent cyberattacks from China and Russia. It is time to draw on the computing talent in this country to create a counterinsurgency against these agents and to deal with them straight-on. Enough.
Its not "staggering" given the access demands needed to find and upgrade contractors and skill sets needed for US global mil operations.
"Top secret " details placed in a simple, readable, network facing database in plain text.... ?
Great for finding needed no bid contractors via a cloud..
Any other US mil or gov sector would have kept its own data secure, encrypted and not on the public facing 'net'
Why was this done, when was it done and what was allowed to drift out in plain text?
Plain text letters of commendation listing secure project names in English on an open network?
What has the US really lost? Lists from staff from what wars and over what decade of contractors?
The US has entire new services with total domestic support to stop foreign intelligence operations and espionage.
Too many new services that got created over the past decade to totally replace the decades of experts that had kept all this data totally secure in the past?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
In Naruto, they call it a Bingo Book.
"According to private security firm CrowdStrike's founder, Dmitri Alperovitch, the Chinese are compiling a massive 'Facebook' like database on American federal government employees"
The Feds simply need to stop caring about what you do in your personal life.
Shoot heroin occasionally? Fine. Fucking rent-boys on the side even though you're married? Fine. You're a closet coprophage? Who cares?
Do you do good work for the US government? Then we support you and accept you.
Thus it would seem that you now owe your fascist masters an apology... and their pocket change back.
Imbecile.
Techincally one of the reasons why the government does a background check on you is to make sure there is nothing there that can be used to blackmail you. So in theory there shouldn't be anything im there 'too' bad. My SF86 is a pretty boring read...
Are you a complete idiot (no, really)? You've utterly failed to get the point: This claim isn't dubious or far-fetched in the slightest; rather, it's completely fucking redundant (virtually all nations do this) and this isn't even remotely newsworthy.
I don't know which bothers me more, xenophobic headlines on the front page of /. or xenophobic US presidential candidates.
...Facebook compiles you!
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
layoffs and early retirements to clean out the crud, the vulnerable, the exploitable... and replace with new hires... people who do not go plastering personal info on the internets and don't have the urge to twit and post about every fucking thing that happens every day.
If you can't protect it, don't collect it.
We know who the real Chineese hackers are.
Ok, so they've got this super secret info from a government employee database and some medical records, maybe? And? How is this supposed to be something to worry about as far as national security threats go? The info was in an HR database, so the government already knows about that info, and with the possible exception of STDs and maybe psychiatrists what on earth could be used in the medical records to blackmail anyone? On top of that, it's only federal government employees, and only a subset of those. So how does that affect the 100 million or so other non-federal employees that could take the place of anyone in the federal government position that's been compromised? The whole thing is simply FUD for PR purposes and the idiots that wrote the article and approved the summary are the only ones being duped into doing something they shouldn't.
No. I'm surprised /. even fell for this. I mean, you saw that it was from The Washington Times, right? I barely trust the Washington Post, but a website that quotes Fox News as an authoritative source, has a poll for who will win the next SuperBowl in September, and finally has links to this hysterical piece of shit website on the side....no. Just no.
Serious question: how do you tell a website that it's retarded?
After scrolling past ads for Chinese testosterone, Chinese intelligence booster pills and a database of sex offenders living in by basement, I finally made it to the "meat" of the advertisements, errrr, story - An ad suggesting that I join Facebook.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
I think that the only dubious part of the claim is calling Facebook like. States have been collecting information about the people involved with other states for as long as there have been states. It's only recently that they've been able to greatly expand the number of people included and the amount of information contained.
TFA claims that Chinese is compiling a facebook of US government employees
TFA links to an article on Washington Times http://www.washingtontimes.com... , which said that according to Fox News, a guy, with the name of Dmitri Alperovitch, claims that China is compiling a MASSIVE facebook-like database of US government employees
Fox News article ( http://www.foxnews.com/politic... ) carries a similar claim
Where's the beef?
Neither of the three articles (Slashdot, Washington Times and Fox News) bother to provide any proof to back up Mr. Alperovitch's allegation
To the editors of Slashdot -
Are you trying to push Slashdot down to the miscreant level of Fox News??
Started thinking about how will this affect that guy's project, if a lot of Chinese girls enter this new Facebook (of course, it's a different thing, but stay with me for a while...)
Then I thought "what are the chances that the most beautiful girl on Earth is Chinese? Or from India?" -- which reminds me of this: http://www.fastcocreate.com/1682915/infographic-majority-of-earth-s-population-resides-in-this-one-relatively-small-circle
I need access to update my status.
And I want to look around it for the best places to work.
fewest psychopath in management.
quiet working environment.
best area to live in.
not using Windows.
relaxed dress code.
thanks for your interest,
please "like" my page
This is my opinion based on what little I know and understand of the rumors and lies Thanks, Randal
Didn't care for it on my badge as it was.
I knew a married pair of govvies in DC once, one who wrote a book about wireless security.
Both definitely were profiled, and followed everywhere in DC by asian-looking folks, who guiltily would look away if you turned suddenly in their direction. (Even more insane stories as well, regarding the Chinese)
Granted, I gather that's a DC thing. I tagged along once to a conference and met the personification of 419 scams. It was awesome.
They get a "Like" button? -AC
Who would have thought it eh?
Facebook, Twitter, SnapChat, Instagram and even LinkedIn.
Put all the data that they have on you together and who knows who might be 'open' to becoming a spy for the other side
More like Anti-Social Media if you ask me but as I'm not signed up to any of them, I can't make a proper judgement.
Think I'm pontificating? No. I was recently interviewed for a job that required security clearance. I got a lot of kudos when I confiemed that I didn't have accounts on any of those sites. I don't even have an account here.
I start the new job at the beginning of October.
I really like the phrase using information to force people to work for the Chinese government. And the collecting government i.e. not the Chinese but the American government was going to use said "embarrasing" information for what ? Why would they be collecting "embarrasing" information in the first place. Everyone really should get over themselves thinking their particular government are the good guys. Politics is and has always been nothing but a dirty game of chess to retain or attain power. Loosing your toys in the playground (i.e. your embarrasing information) is not something you should cry about in public -That in my humble opinion is embarrasing
MS, ALS, Aphasia ? http://globability.org - Me http://einarpetersen.com
and nothing else. What is verified however, is how the U.S themselves have been doing this very thing for decades. Stop trying to make China and Russia out as the bad buys. They are not the ones waging wars around the world for the last 70 years.
So how is this different from the "facebook-like" database US agencies are creating on the Chinese government employees? (Assuming they're doing their job right)
Or is someone really surprised that Chinese intelligence is doing their job?
And why not enrich this data by actual facebook data? If someone you know works for the gouvernment "friends" his colleagues on facebook, they don't need to give their employer there explicitly.
bickerdyke
We should also probably steal theirs so we have an idea who China might be going after.
I think the Federal penalties are a lot shorter for embarrassment. If you work for a foreign government, even under duress, you are still committing treason. That carries a hefty price.
CAPTCHA: privates
It will be awesome if they make it readable to the whole world. Would also be nice if they added wiki features so that we could do our best to help keep it up-to-date.
These federal aholes know every last detail about us. It would be poetic justice if their detailed personal information was available for our perusal. Perhaps the Chinese managed to acquire that data which was copied from the federal office of personnel management? I want to see names, addresses, photos, work responsibilities, (outrageous) salaries, etc. etc. Especially people in the NSA, ATF, IRS and other criminal organizations, as well as the corrupt and incompetent employees of the FDIC, SEC, OTS and OCC. Everyone that deserve to be fired and/or imprisoned.
Yeah, I believe it. In fact, as a Top Security Consultant myself*, I'll give you a quote:
"$country Compiling "Facebook" of $other_country Government Employees"
Where $country may possibly even be equal to $other_country, and both can be picked from this list: http://www.listofcountriesofth...
* that statement is probably no more true than any of CrowdStrike's credentials, but I've got products and services for sale ;-)
Gov't employees in China are now emulating their American counterparts by wasting most of their office hours posting on Facebook (after they watch the latest pron),
Most people in government are democrats. Things you could blackmail a conservative over are points of pride for democrats. :/
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
That's funny. I get an entirely different set of targeted ads in that space... Oh, you didn't realize that this was code for targeted ads fueled by Google/Facebook/et al? What a joke. OK, run home and play with your blocks then.
HAHAHHAHAHAA
Your comment violated the "postersubj" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition in the subject line.
Your comment violated the "postersubj" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition in the subject line.
Nothing new here - not even storing such information on a database. The Roman Emperors did the same without calling it a database, just calling it "politics".
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
So Chinese espionage units got a huge trove of data on US Gov employees, they are now making that data useful to themselves.
How is this even news? Just that we now have confirmation that they did what they were obviously going to do?