Slashdot Mirror
China-based Campaign Breached Satellite Operators, Defense Contractors and Telecommunications Companies in US: Symantec (reuters.com)
A sophisticated hacking campaign launched from computers in China burrowed deeply into satellite operators, defense contractors and telecommunications companies in the United States and southeast Asia, security researchers at Symantec Corp said on Tuesday. Reuters: Symantec said the effort appeared to be driven by national espionage goals, such as the interception of military and civilian communications. Such interception capabilities are rare but not unheard of, and the researchers could not say what communications, if any, were taken. More disturbingly in this case, the hackers infected computers that controlled the satellites, so that they could have changed the positions of the orbiting devices and disrupted data traffic, Symantec said. "Disruption to satellites could leave civilian as well as military installations subject to huge [real world] disruptions," said Vikram Thakur, technical director at Symantec. "We are extremely dependent on their functionality." Satellites are critical to phone and some internet links as well as mapping and positioning data. Symantec, based in Mountain View, California, described its findings to Reuters exclusively ahead of a planned public release. It said the hackers had been removed from infected systems.
And did they also sabotage Tesla? Or was that the "shorts" doing that? There are so many bad guys out there. It is a good thing companies like Symantec are out there stopping all this from happening.
Getting rid of competition like Kasperski like Goldman Sachs got rid of Bank of America. Not only destroying them in the country, but making every blame them too. An age-old strategy, actually dating back to the OSS and Nazis, and well-documented in the Snowden leaks.
When I read that initially, I thought the article was saying that Symantec was also breached.
The Roman Rule: The one who says it cannot be done shall not interrupt the one who is doing it.
How dare they do to us what we are probably doing to them.
Table-ized A.I.
A sophisticated hacking campaign launched from computers in China burrowed deeply into satellite operators, defense contractors and telecommunications companies in the United States and southeast Asia, security researchers at Symantec Corp said on Tuesday.
I have no problem believing this. Seems legit. However, the TIMING of this report is extremely suspect. Why now? When there's a nasty trade-war brewing between China and the US. Yeah, suspect and shady as FUCK.
Why are these critical systems connected to a public network, THE INTERNET, in the first place? Air-gap these things!
What happens from this announcement, that Symantec cares about, is that their name is in the headlines. Free advertising.
Policy makers, the President and Congressional committees, already know from classified (an unclassified) intelligence that China is spying on the US all over the place. This latest marketing announcement by Symantec isn't going to make much difference to policy makers. Symantec doesn't care that much anyway - they don't have a major Chinese competitor they are trying to get rid of.
The free advertising is what Symantec cares about. If my company had uncovered this incident, we would absolutely put out a press release right away, in order to get our name in the press.
Heck, look at any of my CVEs, such as 2012-0206.
https://www.securityfocus.com/...
Do you think I thought about what the president was doing when I found and reported that? No, but I do very much like the first three words in the official description of the vulnerability.
... by ZTE.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Good for them; and a plague on both their houses!
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
Christ almighty pull the jack already. It makes no sense at all that this type of stuff is connected to the internet.
Know it. Use it. Love it.
When I worked in space control centers, we had air gapped control rooms. No VPN. No inbound traffic except through encrypted satellite links to the systems in space.
BTW, cell phones and cameras weren't allowed in the building either.
What has happened to our smart people? Do they need their diapers changed?
We had that for a long time. In fact, Cisco still has a plant here where they make equipment for the secured world. And long ago, we would only accept equipment from our allies to be put in the loop. The fact that we accept equipment from China, and programming from Russia (as well as Indians that worked with/for Russians for decades) is nothing less than ludicrous.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Just how sophisticated can this 'hacking campaign' be if it can so easily be traced all the way from China. Yet more Chinese commie cyber hacker bullshit re-spouted on the slashdot :]
You're willing to blame the Russian government?
"Following its customary stance, Symantec did not directly blame the Chinese government for the hack. It said the hackers launched their campaign from three computers on the mainland. In theory, those machines could have been compromised by someone elsewhere. "
If it quacks like a duck....