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It seems that the US was under a major cyber attack.

Hayabusa Rider

Hayabusa Rider

Admin Emeritus & Elite Member
Tip of the iceberg-
http://www.oakridger.com/highlight/...-shuts-down-access-after-infected-email-found

Doesn't look like much, but that's not quite the whole story according to some who would know. Oak Ridge was far from the only organization to have this problem. The others were high value government targets. The attacking code was also very very sophisticated, and it turns out the source was China.

It seems it's just a matter of time before a major attack works.
 
Yeah, its likely the Chinese who have been going nuts lately trying to hack into anything. First they focused on softer targets including in other countries like Canada. Now they've been trying for weapons research, but the US isn't exactly a virgin when it comes to hacking. The last report I heard was they've only managed to make a nuisance of themselves. I wouldn't doubt if were payback for a little hacking the US has done.
 
bamacre said:
Is there evidence linking these attacks to the Chinese gov't?
Click to expand...

We get a "required reading" IT security newsletter every quarter. Virtually every article in it is about how the Chinese govt is attempting to hack everything and anything that has an American flag on it.
 
Just kick them off of the international backbones every time a major attempt is detected.

The chinese WoW players would overthrow the govt in weeks.
 
NuclearNed said:
We get a "required reading" IT security newsletter every quarter. Virtually every article in it is about how the Chinese govt is attempting to hack everything and anything that has an American flag on it.
Click to expand...

Right but this isn't going to turn into something like Iraq? Will we be able to see this evidence should we (hopefully not) declare war on China? Or do we get the "its classified" excuse?
 
Systems/Networks with Sensitive Data should be Hard Wired, but with no Internet Connections. E-mail and other outside Transmitted Data should be on a separate Network.

Article #192

Sandorski's Laws of Know it alledness
 
PC Surgeon said:
Right but this isn't going to turn into something like Iraq? Will we be able to see this evidence should we (hopefully not) declare war on China? Or do we get the "its classified" excuse?
Click to expand...

yeah... not likely anything will be public if the US does anything. China holds 800B worth of US debt, enough to shock the global markets if they did anything other than buy more of it (and we need them to). Don't forget who owns US politicians... multinational corporations with big investments in China.
 
wuliheron said:
Yeah, its likely the Chinese who have been going nuts lately trying to hack into anything. First they focused on softer targets including in other countries like Canada. Now they've been trying for weapons research, but the US isn't exactly a virgin when it comes to hacking. The last report I heard was they've only managed to make a nuisance of themselves. I wouldn't doubt if were payback for a little hacking the US has done.
Click to expand...

The sad reality of the cyber battlefield is that the offense is so much more effective than any defense right now. In other words, it's so much easier to attack a system than it is to defend it.
 
bamacre said:
Is there evidence linking these attacks to the Chinese gov't?
Click to expand...

Probably will just end up being "misguided patriots" located inside China that are not affiliated with the government, but will never face prosecution and will enjoy an improved standard of living soon.
 
NuclearNed said:
We get a "required reading" IT security newsletter every quarter. Virtually every article in it is about how the Chinese govt is attempting to hack everything and anything that has an American flag on it.
Click to expand...

Same here. The Corporation I work for which is one of the top five defense contractors, claims we are their number one target. It doesn't help that one of our Chinese nationals employee did some lectures back at the home country without getting permission. He's in big trouble now.

Previously, in another one of our divisions, another Chinese national got caught getting on a plane with CD's full of classified data. He's in jail.

I should of said nationalized Chinese.
 
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sunzt said:
The sad reality of the cyber battlefield is that the offense is so much more effective than any defense right now. In other words, it's so much easier to attack a system than it is to defend it.
Click to expand...

huh???

You don't have a clue. If a system isn't plugged into an outside network there is no way to hack it. Even the cables and walls in sensitive areas have to be shielded so that any possible EM waves are stopped and can't be intercepted. The biggest threat to security is people either giving out secrets on purpose (eg spies) or being stupid and putting secure information on computers that aren't safe for them. As in moving classified data from a classified computer to a non classified computer or media.

Now it is easy to attack most people's home computers because they let the software in. But direct attacks rarely work when there is adequate protection.
 
How easily some call for war, or escalations increasing the chance of war.

The world needs to know how to compete peacefully, even if it means not pursuing 'opportunities' where the exercise of power at others' expense benefits a country.

If we adopt a 'we hack you, you hack us' approach, fine. If we pursue a global treaty restricting hacking, fine. War is not the answer to every damned offense.

FWIW, I think the threat is real, as far as it's possible. When one nation dominates military power multiple times any rival, alternatives will be investigated.

We'd do the same thing, and are doing at least some of the same thing IMO.

A little pursuit of peace can be pretty cost-effective, too.
 
I also work for a top defense contractor and all our stuff is hard-wired.
All laptops have an encrypted herd drive and any thumb drives are company-issued encrypted ones. Anyone caught with an unauthorized thumb drive, personal cellphone, camera or recording device will be immediately terminated.

Oh, ... and none of the computers have burners.
 
KGB said:
I also work for a top defense contractor and all our stuff is hard-wired.
All laptops have an encrypted herd drive and any thumb drives are company-issued encrypted ones. Anyone caught with an unauthorized thumb drive, personal cellphone, camera or recording device will be immediately terminated.

Oh, ... and none of the computers have burners.
Click to expand...

I wonder if at some point we're going to return to the days of 'spy gadgets' - something like, say, under-the-skin hard to detect USB's or image capture.

But on the other hand, I wonder how much use a lot of this information really is.

For example, let's say they got a snapshot of the location of all our military forces. That'd be extremely useful - in a war. But if they're not going to go to war and use it, how much harm was done? And they're not going to go to war, where even that ridiculously excessive amount of information couldn't begin to let them win.

There are a few useful things that could save them development costs and such, but most seems pretty useless.

I think about the massive expense and effort we went to in the cold war to try and track whether there were 20 or 40 missiles somewhere, whether a missile had 1 or 3 warheads, whether it could fly 1,500 or 2,000 miles, but how much difference did it really make, when the bottom line was whether you have a nuclear war?
 
sandorski said:
Systems/Networks with Sensitive Data should be Hard Wired, but with no Internet Connections. E-mail and other outside Transmitted Data should be on a separate Network.

Article #192

Sandorski's Laws of Know it alledness
Click to expand...

I figred thats how it always was. Why do people with sensitive data need internet on the same machine.

Its not like government doesn't have money for more than 1 computer.
 
sunzt said:
The sad reality of the cyber battlefield is that the offense is so much more effective than any defense right now. In other words, it's so much easier to attack a system than it is to defend it.
Click to expand...


Nothing sad about it. This spy-verses-spy stuff has been going on since the beginning of time and protecting your toothbrush has always been harder then stealing one. Europe has put quite a bit of money into cryptography in recent years after half a century of complaining about American spying. Bottom line is if you make too easy you make it too tempting.
 
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