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U.S. Federal employees information hacked. China suspected

blankslate

Diamond Member
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/2452...ficials-massive-breach-federal-personnel-data

WASHINGTON (AP) — China-based hackers are suspected of breaking into the computer networks of the U.S. government personnel office and stealing identifying information of at least 4 million federal workers, American officials said Thursday.

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that data from the Office of Personnel Management and the Interior Department had been compromised.

"The FBI is conducting an investigation to identify how and why this occurred," the statement said.

The hackers were believed to be based in China, said Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican.

Collins, a member of the Senate intelligence committee, said the breach was "yet another indication of a foreign power probing successfully and focusing on what appears to be data that would identify people with security clearances."

A U.S. official who declined to be identified said the data breach could potentially affect every federal agency. One key question is whether intelligence agency employee information was stolen.

"This is an attack against the nation," said Ken Ammon, chief strategy officer of Xceedium, who said the attack fit the pattern of those carried out by nation states for the purpose of espionage.


Looks like it could be the start of a new cold war. While this is primarily a cybersecurity story, it also touches on this countries manufacturing sector or lack of it.

It's foolish that we have much of our electronics made in other countries some of whom could be adversaries for the sake of cheaper prices. It costs us. Maybe we don't see the costs but when the Government hires security contractors to take apart electronics made outside the U.S. for government use to make sure there are no hardware, firmware, or software back-doors a serious misstep has been made.

Of course it would be naive to believe that the U.S. isn't trying to compromise China's governmental networks in the same way.

Free trade deals not only compromise this country's sovereignty but can also compromise its security when corporations decide its too expensive to have necessary manufacturing in this country.

U.S. waived laws and put Chinese parts in F-35

When the U.S. has to put parts made by a country that could very well be an adversary in a new weapons system to keep it on schedule we have another indication of how free trade's detrimental affect on domestic manufacturing has put made the U.S. a weaker nation.

....
 
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Nah, I think they still store those on really old disks.


Well maybe not the people with nuke code clearances but I suspect they will find the people and addresses of people with really high clearances and visit them or their families in the middle of the night
 
The Chinese did not wake up one day from this,

shangai-before-and-after.jpg

To this, overnight by themselves,

You can thank your corporate overlords, their lackey politicians, along with all Americans who were duped into believing that they are entitled to the latest technology at the cheapest price for helping build up the Chinese to what they are today technology wise, but they are still the same Chinese of Tienanmen Square massacre.

All Americans had to do was look at history to see what happens when you rely on someone else for the technology of critical systems without a complete understanding of how it works and how it can be used against you,

http://www.editinternational.com/read.php?id=47ddf19823b89

Xerox had just revolutionized world business with the invention of the copy machine. Carbon paper was suddenly obsolete and perfect copies were plentiful and cheap.

Inside their tightly guarded embassy Soviet cipher clerks, secretaries and KGB spy masters and other officials were suddenly relieved of the tedious task of hand-copying secret orders and decoded messages from the Kremlin and lists of spies operating in North and South America.

Everything the Soviet embassy staff routinely copied on their new photocopier was of vital intelligence value to the United States. And the CIA set out to get it.

The agency approached Xerox Corporation vice-president John Dessauer to see if something could be devised to record documents copied on the Russians’ copy machine. Perhaps it could be installed and retrieved by the Xerox repairman, who had ease of access to the embassy.

Mr. Dessauer put Donald Carey, who headed a U.S. government programs group at Xerox, in charge of the project.

Four engineers wee brought together and sworn to secrecy. A small bowling alley was acquired near the Rochester, New York Xerox plant. While guards stood watch outside, inside a research laboratory sprang to life. A bathroom was turned into a photographic darkroom.

The team was made up of Roy Zoppoth, a 36-year-old design engineer who had helped develop the Xerox Model 914 – the first push-button copier and the same machine the Russians were using: Douglas Webb, an electronics engineer; Kent Hemphill, an optics engineer; and James Young, an imaging technologist. Mr. Cary was the program manager.

Their mission: Get copies of the copies of Soviet secrets.

No papers could be carried away, no information radioed. The CIA told Mr. Zoppoth and his team that the Soviets had every room in their embassy bugged to capture unauthorized radio transmissions.

Mr. Zoppoth decided a photographic copy system was simplest and safest. He installed a Bell and Howell home movie camera in the big Xerox 914 machine.

A photographic cell circuit was added to the camera so it would shoot several frames of film each times the machine’s copy light went on. A bracket was installed so the movie camera, painted the same color as the rest of the hundreds of parts inside the machine, could be installed within a minute.

Mrs. Zoppoth now 79, retired and living near Dallas, Texas, recalls: “We met with two CIA agents and taught them how to remove a camera placed earlier and filled with secret negative images of anything copied and how to replace it by inserting a new camera filled with fresh film. The agents then taught a Xerox repairman how to do the same thing.”

The repairman’s job was to clean the entire Soviet machine every two weeks and make it perform as well as possible.

“He was very brave because if he was caught inside the Soviet Embassy, he would have been interrogated and tortured. The CIA warned us he would never leave alive,” Mr. Zoppoth said.

“The CIA told us the repairman must be able to exchange cameras right under the eyes of Soviet security agents. This was possible because the early Xerox machine was so big and complex that hardly anyone in the world understood it.

“There was fifty feet of film in the camera, providing room for hundreds of negatives of secret documents. They were very tiny and looked like microfiche.

Mr. Zoppoth made several trips to Washing. The CIA had dozens of buildings containing workshops and laboratories scattered around the US capital, he said.

“It was just like in the James Bond movies. They were developing new and secret weapons, tools and technologies. We used to meet in a building codenamed Disneyland East. After they closed all the doors, blocked off the elevators and cleared the halls, we were allowed inside.”

There were three CIA clearance ratings, Mr. Zoppoth said: Confidential, Secret and Top Secret. “Our Xerox camera project was Secret and we all were checked out for security clearances for weeks by the FBI.”

The CIA soon reported the secret camera was such a success it wanted the team to design a very tiny camera to do the same job in its new desktop copier. Mr. Zoppoth designed what he called a ‘slit camera’ and received a secret US patent on it.

“The project was so successful that the CIA ordered dozens more of the cameras, which were assembled in a bunch of CIA shops spread across America so no one knew what was being made,” Mr. Zoppoth said.

“We heard they were placed in every Soviet Embassy in the world with great success from Egypt to England. CIA-trained Xerox repairmen retrieved vital Russian secrets for years.

“From the numbers of cameras ordered, we later realized the CIA had placed secret cameras in every Xerox copy machine in all embassies in the world – friend and foe alike.”
but the profit only matters and cheapest is best mentality also known as greed is what will do us in.
 
You have to be pretty naive if you think everyone isn't spying on everyone, but at what point does it cross over the line and go from "spy vs spy" to an act of war? What, if anything, can the US even do about it?
 
What, if anything, can the US even do about it?

Not connect important systems (inc. ones with sensitive data) to the Internet.

Educate staff so that they don't fall for phishing scams, as well as teaching them what encryption actually is (eg. not "don't worry, I password protected this Excel spreadsheet!"), and how to transport data securely.

Obviously more security measures are needed to provide what I would regard to be high security, but these measures are a good starting point so that the average government's IT security doesn't resemble a bunch of morons driving around in a clown car.
 
132381_600.jpg

Cyber hacking went undetected for at least four months

Hackers broke into the federal government’s human-resources agency last December, but U.S. officials didn’t discover the cyberattack until April, the White House said Friday...

“Where is the leadership?” said Boehner spokesman Cory Fritz. “The federal government has just been hit by one of the largest thefts of sensitive data in history, and this White House is trying blame anyone but itself.

Nice to see that it only took the Feds 120 days to notice this...

Uno😎
 
Made in the USA means nothing. You are lucky if the frame and suspension is made in the USA. All the parts may be from Mexico and Canada.
 
Don't forget it can also be our allies hacking us and then leaving backdoors open.
Consider the mossad hacks our networks and gets in without any problems and the FBI and CIA are scared to report the hacks because it could mean their jobs are in jeopardy.

Since we allow the mossad on our networks and phone networks then of course things are broken and never repaired or patched. On top of that they use the same codes that the FBI and CIA use to trap calls and records them. Just google "ZOOM COPTER" lots of video of the spying which was worse than this chinese hack.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7545.htm
 
And, you can thank American Capitalism for it!

These shakers and movers are really going to love their new masters. If they thought paying 30% income was too much, wait until they lose 100% of their worth,..
 
That would be the dude standing near the president with the briefcase cuffed to his wrist.

Well yeah I know that....but how to get to convert?

If I have all his security clearance information, I know his family, his best friends, whether he has a history of gambling, booze, money issues, any vulnerability to try to get to him and convert him.
 
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/06/us/chinese-hackers-may-be-behind-anthem-premera-attacks.html

WASHINGTON — The inspector general at the Office of Personnel Management, which keeps the records and security clearance information for millions of current and retired federal employees, issued a report in November that essentially described the agency’s computer security system as a Chinese hacker’s dream.

But by the time the report was published, Chinese hackers had already cleaned out tens of thousands of files on sensitive security clearances, and were preparing for a much broader attack that ultimately obtained detailed personal information on at least four million current and former government employees. Even today, the agency is struggling to patch numerous vulnerabilities.

A number of administration officials on Friday painted a picture of a government office struggling to catch up, with the Chinese ahead of them at every step.
Continue reading the main story
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