Slashdot Mirror
Did China Hack The CIA In A Massive Intelligence Breach From 2010 To 2012? (ibtimes.com)
schwit1 quotes the International Business Times:
Both the CIA and the FBI declined to comment on reports saying the Chinese government killed or imprisoned 18 to 20 CIA sources from 2010 to 2012 and dismantled the agency's spying operations in the country. It is described as one of the worst intelligence breaches in decades, current and former American officials told the New York Times.
Investigators were uncertain whether the breach was a result of a double agent within the CIA who had betrayed the U.S. or whether the Chinese had hacked the communications system used by the agency to be in contact with foreign sources. The Times reported Saturday citing former American officials from the final weeks of 2010 till the end of 2012, the Chinese killed up to 20 CIA sources.
Investigators were uncertain whether the breach was a result of a double agent within the CIA who had betrayed the U.S. or whether the Chinese had hacked the communications system used by the agency to be in contact with foreign sources. The Times reported Saturday citing former American officials from the final weeks of 2010 till the end of 2012, the Chinese killed up to 20 CIA sources.
Betteridge's law of headlines says "No."
For no particular reason we cannot have headlines written like that for at least the next 4 years...
Proper Headlines:
Massive Chinese Data Breach Cripples CIA
Administration in Chaos Over Chinese Hack
Did Russia Pass Hacked Information to China
Crippling CIA Hack Leaked, Did Trump Know?
Trump Failed to Act On Chinese Hacking Allegations
President Trump did say in an interview 2 months ago that the CIA had been hacked.
A) It's all a Russian plot. Ergo, Trump must be impeached.
B) Hillary's emails, which were all part of a Russian conspiracy, so Trump must be impeached
C) Obama spilled the beans, but it wasn't his fault. The Russians hacked his golf retreats, so Trump must be impeached.
D) Tim Cook of Apple was hacked, so... ditto
E) Trump did it.
China and Russia are strategic competitors. We should strive to have good relations with both, enhance partnership at points of shared interest, but also realize they are competitors. And for cryin' out loud, we should not be outsourcing a vast amount of our manufacturing base and knowledge to a strategic competitor. Enhancing economic partnership, certainly. Giving up our manufacturing base to one or the other is madness.
The pundits tell us we're a smart advanced country, manufacturing is beneath us. However, countries like China, Japan, and Germany, with national IQs equal to or greater than ours, cultivate manufacturing. So there's that.
It takes a special combination of arrogance and stupidity to believe that the U.S. can infiltrate and spy on every other intelligence organization on the planet, but somehow nobody is able to do the same to us using the same security vulnerabilities we leave in software specifically so people can be spied upon.
So yes, I do believe the CIA was breached.
Actually we just have our reporters emerging from their 8 year hibernation.
They are very cranky a little out of it.
For example, this one did not get the memo not to go back so far in time.
Perhaps if the NSA concentrated on cyber security instead of cyber attacks, this might not have happened?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
C_atastrophically I_gnorant A_ssholes...
Informants and Moles in:
CIA
DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency)
DNI
FBI
NSA
NRO (National Reconnaissance Office)
Contractors for all the above and Boeing, Cisco Systems, Honeywell, IBM, Intel, Lockheed, Microsoft, Northrop Grumman, Qualcomm, Raytheon, Rockwell, Siemens and TRW.
Department of Energy
Department of Interior (especially USGS)
Department of Commerce (especially NASA field centers)
Department of Treasury (especially the Internal Revenue Service)
Federal Communications Commission
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Cal. Inst. of Tech.)
Department of State
Department of the Army
Department of the Navy
Department of the Air Force
National Academy of Science
National Science Board
National Science Foundation.
Compromise is near complete.
They likely had an easy back door through then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's private email server.
We'll never know, due to all the deletion they did to hide evidence. (That is, after all, why she took Colin Powell's advice and got her own email server to begin with.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Do you really think Chinese nationals working in government IT are loyal to America first? What the hell did you expect when you started packing government IT with Chinese nationals on H1-B visas?
this is the only thing you trumpets have left to cling to?
Oh please, they spent every effort reporting ever single non-scandal that Republicans went into histrionic frenzy over.
To the point where some people even believed Obama started the Iraq War, that his birth certificate was never found, and madcap sprees of violence were a daily fact of life for most people
The Soviet Union went for the mids and politics of US/UK gov/mil/contractors. Someone to talk to, some cash, some politics.
Classic spy offers.
The UK and later the US tried to counter that with better working conditions, better wages and more testing of trusted staff to see if they had been turned.
From the 1920-1970's the UK leaked everything interesting to the Soviet Union.
The US tried to counter such efforts by fully understanding the past and politics of every applicant. That worked until the USA did not walk the past of every applicant and hired on contractor trust or because a vital skill was needed. The FBI and other agencies would also test trusted US staff with undercover cash offers and see if they reported any security contacts outside work.
The US needed translators, experts for Korea, Vietnam, France, China, the Soviet Union, its Middle East occupations. Generations of very interesting people got clearances based on skill not security. They did their job well and reported back US methods and got to understand how the US looked for staff and then how to move up the ranks of the US clandestine services.
The US could have stopped all that by not using contractors but that was not an option politically. Any new security that blocked a contractor was removed by US party political efforts to allow contractors back into the most secret parts of the US gov and mil.
It took China a long time to understand how the CIA, NSA and GCHQ spy in China.
Dont have radio, data networks or any chatter from base to base to a command structure, everything is been collected on by the NSA and GCHQ.
MI6 and the CIA used a different approach. Invite a lot of students from China to top US and UK universities and try and get the students to enjoy freedom and democracy. When they returned to the Communist gov in China they would recall the fun freedoms and might just consider working for the CIA, MI6 later in China.
What the CIA and MI6 did not consider is that China would flood the West with trusted Communists that would enter the US and UK educations systems, learn and take everything back to China.
China started to notice the efforts to turn its graduates in the UK and US. China allowed some of its graduates to be turned and waited, watched and slowly understood what the West needed and wanted from spies in China over the years.
It took a few decades but China finally saw the pattern of the US and UK spy efforts in China, different to NSA and GCHQ collect it all.
China now understands when and how the approach will take place and has flooded the West with people who seem to want to spy for the CIA and MI6.
What the West saw as very smart people finally wanting freedom, wanting to change politics in China was just China flooding the West with its own spies.
The other issue for the GCHQ and NSA is the quality and amount of data collected in China and translation needed. Local staff at US and UK collection sites, later working on material all needed China experts. The secure hiring of expert staff over generations was always an issue given the skills needed and the time needed for results, Korea, Vietnam, handover of Hong Kong and later decades.
The US and UK so needed staff and spies in China that they never had the time to fully consider the idea that hiring a lot of people without the best security practices was not a good idea.
Decades later the results are the same that the UK faced with spies from the Soviet Union in the 1920-1980's.
Is the CIA leaking from computer databases? If any nation had that easy access deep within the CIA they would not act. They would watch and alter the flow of information and use it as a disinformation strategy to flush out more spies. Why act now and get the CIA to consider its issues and then be totally locked out?
The data flow back from spies in China could be a weak point. Using the "internet" or contact with a foreigner in China.
China understands every network in and out and the server
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
this is the only thing you trumpets have left to cling to?
Some still haven't given up on the birther conspiracy
Because surely the Window$ they use are that much better than anyone else's. If you need a scape goat, blame Bill for creating a shitty OS and using contracts and backscratching to keep people locked in. Linux is far more human friendly than it used to be, but heaven forbid if Micro$oft would let anyone find out. Since we still use COBOL, assembly, and 5 1/4 floppies for our defense, using Micro$oft tech wouldn't surprise me. IT gotta make a living too and you know any country that charges $100 for a gov issued hammer (they really do that in the military) pays IT very well. I wish people knew how many important places like hospitals, gov buildings, etc. get lazy with PowerShell and how file permissions can be changed in a snap and that's just a simple example. No government should use Window$ for anything. If your employees can't learn Linux in 2017 and learn to be more proactive in their computing, especially with that kind of job, then they are not equipped for the job. I wouldn't hire anyone that couldn't learn how to use Linux if I had an intelligence agency.
The story talks about the execution of more than a dozen spies, but doesn't mention that this is perfectly acceptable under the Geneva Conventions. Leaving people to perhaps be a little outraged that "how dare they execute someone." The US has a history of doing the same thing (and so does pretty much everyone else on the q.t.) - I just find it interesting that neither the story, nor the comments, reflect on the consequences of this. Someone blackmails you into spying for them, you could end up dead. Why not just say "screw it" instead? You might even get your would-be blackmailer swinging at the end or a noose instead, or with, you.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Noticed some hello kitty program with strong encryption and put 1+1 together.
Or 1 betrayed them, told the Chinese security how to find the communication channel and that's it.
Remember the comments that the three letter agencies were just "doing their job" when Snowden exposed that they have been spying every other countries, including allies?
So, Chinese spies hacking the CIA, they are just doing their job. What's the big deal?
"we should not be outsourcing a vast amount of our manufacturing base and knowledge to a strategic competitor. " More than "Strategic competitor", these countries are "mono identity" - e.g Han 95%. However, a country like India is "multi-identity", India is like an artificial country (not nation-state) with multitudes of identites, so such a nation is usually not a threat for US, because, within that nation there are many us-vs-them, though they have a single citizenship. Everyone is a minority in India. Less of a collective threat. For some unknown reason, US gets attracted only to mono-ethnic enemies, rather than to a multi-identity democracy. US sanctioned and delayed so much of India's development while the Chinese were steeling from under their nose and now starting to overtly move against US. Dumb US?
Just in case you are too young to remember.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_and_Ethel_Rosenberg
Don't confuse the teagaggers with facts.
It's annoying the pig and wasting your time
BARK!!!
Thanks
Obama was a great president, but he never really understood the importance of technology. This and the healthcare rollout are two huge examples.
>Oh please, they spent every effort reporting ever single non-scandal that Republicans went into histrionic frenzy over.
You actually believe this! Amazing.
But Seriously... Anyone know anything about launch codes?
it's not going to work. The people reading slashdot is much more level-headed than the average American as yourself.
I bet Windows 10 will play into this somehow. Don't be surprised when your grand scheme of spying on every PC in the world backfires on you. There's a reason why OS's should not cooperate with state agencies and why vulnerabilities should be patched instead of exploited. This, this right here is why. If true anyway, people have died because of security failures and a culture of deception.
Investigators were uncertain whether the breach was a result of a double agent within the CIA who had betrayed the U.S. or whether the Chinese had hacked the communications system used by the agency to be in contact with foreign sources.
Yahoo Messenger with a ROT-13 plugin?
Secretary of State wouldn't have had operational details of that level (names of sources, etc) generally, and certainly not sent to her by email. Unless somebody in the CIA was breaking protocol even more egregiously by sending it that way - those briefings get done in person. She obviously had something unflattering there, but there is no reason to believe it goes beyond the usual politicking about campaign finances, or something similar. Inferring what you have sounds more like a 4chanesque conspiracy theory than something supported by a reasoned consideration of the situation.
You mean besides the House, Senate, presidency, a new Supreme Court Justice, and the complete destruction of the Left in America?
Yes. It's all we have.
Chinese spies are doing their job, that's right. But Snowden's treason, likely, made that job easier. The asshole has blood on his hands — blood of Americans and those foreigners, who chose to help us, be it for money or to destroy the Communist regime, or both.
That said, I can't wait for Snowden and Manning to come out condemning Trump for sharing intelligence with Russia.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
We've seen how slack Obama and the Dems were with THEIR OWN security, so it stands to reason they slacked off on other security. This is along the same lines as those FBI/EPA/CIA wankers needing therapy when Trump was elected. The gravy train is over, and the are reaping the whirlwind. NOW can we move forward by removing the Democratic party as a going concern and get back to doing things right?
Pax Vobiscum
Unlike all you on the civvy side, we've been in Cold War II for quite a while.
And now we are on to Cold War III.
Hope you feel happy about outing all the NATO operatives for your masters in China and Russia.
Must make you feel proud.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Inferring what you have sounds more like a 4chanesque conspiracy theory than something supported by a reasoned consideration of the situation.
All I'm sure about is that her personal email server was specifically for the purpose of whitewashing history, and that they went ahead and took the opportunity to destroy a bunch of what they knew would be evidence if there was a trial. I don't know that they specifically intended to destroy evidence when it was created.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The timeframe corresponds to Clinton's time as SOS and her criminal breach of security. Maybe one of the 22 SAP emails on her server contained info needed to intercept CIA communications, or maybe they even contained names of assets. Maybe one of her missing devices, or one of the ones "secured" by whacking it with a hammer. Maybe the laptop that was "lost in the mail". Maybe one of the encrypted faxes she asked sent in the clear. Maybe one of the emails sent to Huma on Weiner's laptop to be printed. Maybe they hacked her in the three months her server had no encryption at all.
China is starting to look like an enemy, but the NSA is being limited in their abilities to be able to thwart them.