Chinese Hack Attacks on DoD Networks Coordinated 295
An anonymous reader writes " The Naval Network Warfare Command says that Chinese hackers are relentlessly targeting Defense Department networks with cyber attacks. The 'volume, proficiency and sophistication' of the attacks supports the theory that the attacks are government supported. The motives of the attacks emanating from China include technology theft, intelligence gathering, exfiltration, research on DOD operations and the creation of dormant presences in DOD network for future action. Onlookers warn that current US defenses against these attacks are 'dysfunctional', and that more aggressive measures should be taken to ensure government network safety."
Far outstripping other attackers (Score:5, Insightful)
Gee, ya think? China has more than a billion people. I know they're not all running around with shiny new laptops, but come on - this is akin to saying that the majority of low-temperature attacks on the United States come from Canada. Well, duh!
I can make the same "cyberattack" claims about my not-worth-cracking dedicated servers and the dinky firewall machine sitting on my cable modem, too, but that doesn't mean I'm engaged in a "cyberwar" with anyone. The majority of rooted machines trying to root mine are in China. Most of this comes in the form of automated attempts to bruteforce ssh, but I've seen targeted attempts where there's clearly a human on the other end of the wire.
While I don't doubt that DoD machines are probably being targeted intentionally, there's an overwhelming amount of garbage traffic coming out of central and eastern Asia, and it hits everyone. Nearly half of all my rejected SMTP traffic is from Chinese netspace, but most of it's trying to peddle western products to American consumers, the Chinese people have nothing to do with it. China's so full of compromised hosts that whoever's actually cracking DoD machines is probably sitting in an internet cafe in Milan, piping data through some rooted
Oh, and the next person to use "spear phishing" in an article is getting a swift kick in the nuts!
Re:Far outstripping other attackers (Score:4, Interesting)
"China's so full of compromised hosts that whoever's actually cracking DoD machines is probably sitting in an internet cafe in Milan, piping data through some rooted
I wonder how easy it would be to pin this on MS products that have been pirated?
Its an interesting twist of thought to think that MS is responsible for cyber attacks on the DOD. While that isn't true, it's still interesting in a 'haha' kind of way.
Makes me believe that there will be counter-attack strategies that include government sponsored worms traversing the Internet trying to secure those compromised hosts.
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No, most online, public-facing servers are at least theoretically hackable, depending on the value one assigns to 'hack'.
But that's not the point GP is making. The important element here is that, in many cases, if you can find an exploit in the Windows operating system, you can attack millions of them with little more effort than it would take to pwn one. This is a result of the Windows monoculture [wikipedia.org], and it's inherently unhealthy.
This is not
Re:Far outstripping other attackers (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, and of those, only 137 million Chinese are online. In contrast, the US has about 185 million online. So, the fact that the majority of the attacks are coming from China is indeed significant. That is particularly true given the sophistication of the attacks cited and the military targets they are going after.
Re:Far outstripping other attackers (Score:5, Interesting)
It is widely known that the Chinese want our secrets and technology, especially those surrounding the military. It is widely known that the Chinese actually do copy and steal US trade and military secrets and technology. And it is widely known that as friendly as the Chinese act toward the US, that the Chinese work behind the scenes to subvert US influence and control.
Given the number of sophisticated attacks coming from a single country against US military targets, especially coming from a country that has been militarily hostile to us in the recent past [cnn.com], then I'd say we probably are getting attacked.
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So your saying the US strategy is to wait until China is "in front" of the US and then start spying, the US sure are good sports about this stuff wouldn't you agree?
"That's almost completely negated by the US sending tons of business their way."
Ahhhh, I see. The US is not losing bussiness to a competitor they're being generous to the underdog, what kind souls they are.
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Seriously, the idea that a functioning non-capit
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China could overtake the economy because they have a work force that is paid low wages, has a lower standard of living, and is less educated. Another reason they can overtake is because our own American CEO's are falling all over themselves to have everything manufactured over there at the expense of American workers' jobs. Let's see what else? Oh yeah, did I mention that American compan
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In the above, I think you misspelled USA....
The premier of China has threatened to nuke Los Angeles
You seem to have misspelled North Korea
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http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/04/01/us.china.pl a ne/ [cnn.com]
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/05/18/ep3.ceremony
In April of 2001, a Chinese fighter jet "accidentally" hit a US Navy surveillance plane flying over international waters, forcing that plane to make an emergency landing in China. The crew was detained for 11 days. Chinese technicians examined in detail
Huh? (Score:2)
I think I know what you are trying to say, but your statement as written above is probably not accurate..
Most "western products" (including the USA's flag), that I've have seen say "Made in China" on the bottom/back. I would say there would be those residing in China who would be interested in bumping up sales through all possible means.
So what? (Score:2)
Not even addressing how many of these have Internet, and how many of those are "sophisticated" users, we're talking about Chinese government hackers here. How many Chinese there are is irrelivent.
Attacks? We know what to do (Score:3, Funny)
Back to uunet or fidonet, where our bits can be safe.
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Or perhaps DoD should have secondary network physically separated from internet, where workstations with important data are kept. These workstations wouldn't be allowed direct access to internet, instead you'd have another computer sitting next to them, and if you need to move data between, you do it by burning it on dvd or using usb drive. Didn't look if they actually use that kind of system but I would assume they do. It would be
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SIPRNet is mostly separate. From what I've heard, people aren't allowed to move information between SIPRNet computers and other 'insecure' computers at all.
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Sure (Score:5, Funny)
Sure... drop some bombs. What could possibly go wrong?
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Onlookers? (Score:4, Insightful)
However, I would like to know who these "onlookers" are... The defense measures (can't say specifically of course) that we take are plenty effective against all types of attacks we get. One of our top priorities is writing code that is solid and secure. We run scans (again, specifics are classified) nightly to test the security of our infrastructure and applications.
Whoever these "onlookers" are, I would love to hear about how THEY successfully hacked into our network instead of just criticizing with no actual knowledge.
Re:Onlookers? (Score:4, Informative)
Separate systems, separate networks, separate terminals.
I can tell you from my experience as a person who contracts as a "Q" that not only is the DOE stepping up their security methods, they're cutting funding to places that don't keep the mustard. LANL may be cut at the end of this FY -- thanks to the fiasco a few weeks ago where someone walked out of the labs with thumb drives of info. Needless to say, they were audited, and they brought out a lot of epoxy to glue down the USB/Firewire ports.
Also, weak passwords should be pretty much a thing of a past -- now that DOE's mandating that everyone use CryptoCards in the next year-ish (no, not those expensive RSA things -- they're out of a company in Canada).
Re:Onlookers? (Score:4, Interesting)
To answer you, the guy is speaking out of his ass. He's probably an EDS sub-contractor on the NMCI handling help desk calls about email and web proxies and probably thinks SNORT ACID is something he can get busted for.
Mr. ChooseAnother probably doesn't realize that commenting on this, attributing to himself as an insider is a sure-fire way to get his nads hooked to some 'trodes and get his non-clearance revoked.
But, man, he does sound so C O O L don't you want to be just like him when you grow up?
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Re:Onlookers? (Score:5, Funny)
Our lasers are plenty effective. Don't criticize me with no actual knowledge.
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weylin
A Military Attack is Military Attack (Score:2, Interesting)
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http://science.slashdot.org/science/07/02/18/13592 14.shtml [slashdot.org]
Only when humans decide to get out of and deprive governments and wealthy of the "defense" industry will humans have money and worthiness of being allowed doe DESERVE an interstellar ark.
Elevating Chinese attempts to breach a DOD (or any government) database to the level of military attack is just ASKING for excuses to wage war. Since vastly many interconnected ties exist in economics, land, and employment schemes, t
Re:A Military Attack is Military Attack (Score:4, Insightful)
I think that's the sort of logic the OP is going for at least...
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Re:A Military Attack is Military Attack (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, but we pray to Jesus before we do it. Makes all the difference.
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Tit for Tat [wikipedia.org] is the most successful strategy for the iterated prisoner's dilemma.
Granted, that is in a very simplified situation compared to the world at large.
Even in the schoolyard, though, it's more true than not. If you get bullied and you pop him in the nose *every time* and do not initiate violence yourself, then he'll tend to pick on easier targets. It worked well for me and I got quite a bit of practic
"more aggressive measures should be taken" .... (Score:2)
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They reap what they sow (Score:3, Insightful)
Speculation? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I think the character you're looking for is Henny Penny.
Nethack Terminus (Score:3, Interesting)
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thanks.
Re:Nethack Terminus (Score:4, Interesting)
counterattack? (Score:5, Interesting)
mitigate the problems (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:mitigate the problems (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Create a honeypot that doesn't look like a honeypot.
2. Fire off press releases complaining about how intelligent and crafty those 1337 Chinese Hackers are.
3. Watch and learn.
I can't think of a better way to assess the level of skill the Chinese possess. I seriously doubt that valuable classified information is within reach of internet connected machines. This article and probably most like it are misinformation designed to encourage the Chinese.
Re:mitigate the problems (Score:5, Insightful)
But only in the most literal sense.
There are multiple levels of classification and squarely in the middle of unclassified and secret is sensitive information. If you add enough of it together, you can end up with information that can be considered secret.
The best example i can think of is this story:
Grad Student's Work Reveals National Infrastructure [slashdot.org]
Duped the next day: Fiber-Optic Map: A Classified Dissertation? [slashdot.org]
Just because information isn't classified as secret, doesn't mean it's useless.
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Personally, I'd go with this as the "truth" behind the story. However...
Never underestimate the power of stupidity. It's happened in the past, and history has a tendency of repeating itself.
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Just out of curiosity, which is the IP range for North Korea?
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Thats a little hard to believe given most North Korean's dont have computers let alone internet access. If they really are attacks from North Korea, your dad must be involved in more than a "dinky little small business".
PC Anywhere (Score:3, Funny)
Takeout food, anyone? (Score:2, Funny)
view from a different perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
Another thing is, as of now, China doesn't even need to fire a single bullet to beat the crap out of us if we decide to launch a war on them.
China currently has 1000 billion US dollar foreign reserve, that is somewhere 1/5 to 1/4 of ALL US dollar reserve held by foreign countries. At the onset of the war, China will have three options: one is conventional warfare, two is nuclear warfare, three is financial warfare.
Conventional warfare is something US would avoid, think Korean War. Nuclear Warfare is something both would avoid, unless the fat lady sings(the absolute last resort.)
At the beginning, we of course would bomb the crap out of their infrastructure and military installation, given our air superiority, as we did in Iraq. And China knows this and know they would not win in this course of action.
All they need to do is to make a threat or actually dump US dollar reserve on the international market.
Don't think this would happen? Brush up your knowledge of Suez Canal crisis of 1956. That was exactly what happened when British and French forces rapily withdrew after successful military invasion after Eisnehower threathened to sell US reserves of British pound and thereby to collapse the British currency. Of course the British pound was already under pressure after decades of British colonial expansions that spent a lot of money, not unlike the current US national debt of today. Most historians agree the Suez Canal is the major milestone of the demise of British empire.
When you have 25% of another country's currency on the market, that is a pretty powerful hand. All you need to do is dump all that at once onto the international market. It effectively and immediately collapses the US currency and the whole American economy. Do you think other countries will have the capacity and more importantly the willingness to buy those currency. Do you think other nations would be willing to lend us money by buying up treasury bills, knowing our money would be worthless on the market.Hell no. People all over the world will be dumping US dollar like crazy. US stockmarket will crash; there will be endless runs to the bank.
The economy as we know of will cease to exist.
Some people of course will doubt that China woud do this. But when you are been bombed crap out of you a-ss and you are getting desperate. Trust me, you'lldo anything.
This, my friend, is how the war between China and US will play out NOW. But very very unlikely to happen. It is like two big boys on the playground. Of course it is nice to be the only king of THE playground. But sometimes it easier to share it a little with someone as strong as you are. That is, the essence of international relation. Boy, I just hope we don't have some airheads in the administration thinking otherwise.
So for those people ignorant of economy and internation politics, you can stop making those senseless remarks. Brush up on your knowledge before making a fool out of yourself.
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China currently has 1000 billion US dollar foreign reserve, that is somewhere 1/5 to 1/4 of ALL US dollar reserve held by foreign countries. At the onset of the war, China will have three options: one is conventional warfare, two is nuclear warfare, three is financial warfare.
Their reserves include US treasury bonds and other debt instruments, which makes financial warfare a case of Mutually Assured Destruction. At the outset of war, renege: declare all bonds in their hands to be enemy assets: void,worthle
I am the Decider. (Score:5, Funny)
Despite our warrantless wiretaps, I don't think we know who picked up the phone and said
Secretary of States Bill Gates added "For the umpteenth time, we are not looking for an excuse to go to war with China. We are not planning a war with China. Yes, we do have contingency plans for wars with every other country in the world, but not China. And even it we did, we have not taken any actual final decisions to act on them in the immediately foreseeable future. We have just sent elint-equipped cruisers to the East China Sea, but those are just there to help Taiwan with its streaming internet video capacity."
In response to a question from reporters as to whether cyberattacks originating from other countries, such as Saudi Arabia, had been observed, Gates said "That's classified information. And besides, who cares? We're not talking about Saudi Arabia, we're talking about China."
Once upon a time (Score:3, Insightful)
Why aren't they running hardened clients on the inside? Why are they running systems against which phishing is useful? Why aren't they deploying advanced OS technology in which stealing a password or compromising a browser doesn't give away the entire machine?
Not to mention that the whole article doesn't make sense. Either the source IP addresses are in China or they aren't. If they are, why haven't they simply dropped all packets from China, and why are they so convinced that a Chinese IP means a Chinese attacker? If the IP addresses aren't from China, what is their reason for believing it's a Chinese-0wned set of machines?
WTF are computers with sensitive info... (Score:2, Insightful)
If China did it, it wouldn't use Chinese IPs (Score:5, Insightful)
This is most likely a coordinated attack by someone who wants US information (could be any country/organization in the world) and developed a botnet which happens to mostly reside in China, since China's computers tend not to get frequent security updates. The fact that the IP addresses are originating from China indicates that it's probably anyone but China.
However...China-bashing does score political points right now.
Need to pull a japanese type mis information (Score:3, Insightful)
We need to do the same. China is bright enough to not run Windows in their equipment (frightening that USA does on our ships which will be used in defending Tiawan). But we can provide ideas/plans that we will not use or that we found subtly flawed. Basically, disinformation. I would be surprised if we are not doing just that.
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proficiency and sophistication' == Gov't??? (Score:2)
Bullshit, Bullshit, Bullshit. (Score:2, Insightful)
Blah. (Score:3, Interesting)
MS and China ! (Score:2)
Now if the US government used mostly Open Source software, this would not be an issue. The code would be available. The exploits would be found. Fixes would come quick. Not only that, being Open source, the governments top programmers could just fix the crap themselves.
So why exactly does the
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BEGIN Speculation
The government might even have some kind of intelligent system (im not saying AI) that is able to recognise new and unfamilure traffic, and take actions accordingly to
so? (Score:3, Insightful)
Everybody knows that all of this is - of course - merely a part of fighting terrorism, since industrial and military espionage require different, more sophisticated and technically more complex and costly measures. Calling any of these measures disproportionate is considered heresy.
Sarcasm aside: protect your networks, or prepare to be hacked. [slashdot.org]
asses versus elbows (Score:5, Insightful)
After the Iraq WMD fiasco I don't trust the US to know its ass from its elbow when it comes to these sorts of things.
The standards of evidence are obviously so low that nowadays all you have to do is imagine a threat and suddenly it's real and all sorts of circumstantial evidence points to it being true.
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The theory is that free trade will turn them into a democracy. So far its proven to be hooey. Are we going to allow this shit to keep going on decade after decade w
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The theory is that free trade will turn them into a democracy.
This has never been the reason the U.S. promotes "free trade". You shouldn't repeat it without thinking about it.
Bullshit - China has made huge strides (Score:2)
> The theory is that free trade will turn them into a democracy. So far its proven to be hooey.
This has never been the reason the U.S. promotes "free trade". You shouldn't repeat it without thinking about it.
Nonetheless it has been demonstrably true. Compare the China of today to the China the 1987 Tienamen Square incident, and that in turn to the 1969 cultural revolution. That nation is dramatically more free than it was, the government has had to significantly loosen its grip, and there is a rapidl
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The US is just as bad - look at the Australia/US free trade agreement regarding extending patent terms and its affect on generic medicines.
Don't play the human rights card because every nation has abuses eg
What makes you think democracy is so great? The US is the best examples of its failures. At least in China when an official is caught taking bribes/etc he/she is placed under house arrest... too bad th
Re:Idiots (Score:4, Informative)
Be careful of what you wish for my friend.
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It is so obviously wrong to compare one country's exceptional behavior to another's systematic behavior, that you must be either a liar or a fool.
Indeed, look at the very public arguments that Americans are having over the abuses you cited. Do you suppose there are similar arguments conducted in Chinese newspapers over the Tianenmen Square incident?
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Seemingly what you call exceptional is now happening on a systematic basis.
Just remember Tiananmen was several decades ago, it would probably be mentioned more in China had it not been beaten up by the West as some crusade to bring democracy to China which it was not (rather, concerned workers worried about the economic changes that have lead to China becoming t
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The US rendition program is systemic.
Guantanamo Bay - systemic.
The comparison is fair.
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Short term gain vs. long term goals (Score:5, Insightful)
Some decades in the future, China will turn out to be a real and formidable rival (economically, geopolitically, culturally,
Meanwhile, instead of preparing for such a prospect, the US has forsaken the obvious means of combating terrorism, for example intelligence, infiltration, disruption, and targeted strikes, and went into a full all out war on two countries, draining its budget, increasing its dead, and earning it the wrath of much of the world.
Go figure
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Frankly, yes. The effects of soft power, barring "breaking point" moments, really can't be measured by any finer unit than decades. When dealing with China, it's probably safest to measure in 20-year increments, at least. Ask yourself: is the China of today honestly no better than the
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Re:Idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
If we screw with the exchange rates, why do we have a trade and credit deficit? As far as being difficult for outsiders to do business, we have one of the most open-to-business countries there is. It is not perfect, but one of the top in that regard. And although we slipped on the human rights with Gitmo etc., it is still far more open a proces than what China has. Our system is a B-, their's is an F. And, our polution regulations are much tougher than theirs. I've been there and seen a red moon directly overhead (it was not an eclipse). True, US regs are weaker than Europe's, but Europe is not the issue here.
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There are many examples of why this is incorrect - sugar, steel and beef for a start. Why do you think many US foods are full of a more expensive sweetener made from corn which doesn't taste as good? Geological history has left the USA with sulphur rich coal which results in the cheap steel being of very low quality and unsuitable for some roles (Liberty ships were the most exhaustively docu
Oh nonsense. Here are the biggest problems. (Score:5, Interesting)
The amount of confusion and damage that this could do would be enormous. And it would have the added benefit (to the attacker) of leaving the hard assets (buildings, people) in place, unlike an actual war. These could be simply bought up later, rather cheaply.
There are different ways to root a country. Actual destruction is the most expensive and inefficent approach there is.
The real cause of these cyberspace attacks is that the U.S. government has actively encouraged them. First, the Feds have actually punished Government employees who have tried to stop these attacks. Read The Invasion of the Chinese Cyberspies (And the Man Who Tried to Stop Them) [time.com] This is a variation on a common theme of the attitude of the U.S. government, unfortunately. Protecting the U.S. appears not to be a priority.
The second biggest problem is that the Federal Government has set up a hostile enviroment to discourage Security Research. Security researches are threatened with prosecution, jail time and civil lawsuits that can bankrupt them. The common occurance is when a Researcher reports a problem with a flaw in a product. There are no Safe Harbor procedures or provisions in any Federal law which allow this to happen so that society in general can benefit.
This has had a rather chilling effort on the IT industry as a whole. There is no safe way to study real cracking, so our students (and industry workers) really don't understand how the bad guys work. This also has the added downside that new technologies are developed without any real understanding (or even concern) of what the attack vectors are. MS Windows is the best known example. Javascript is the second best.
Had the U.S. implemented Safe Harbor provisions, we'd be in far better shape to deal with hostile attacks, throughout the entire industry.
While the offshoring of jobs has had an effect, without the above two points we'd still have this problem. Furthermore, if we had shored up and expanded our efforts in Security Research, we would be a lot more resistant to backoffice exploits.
It is also obvious that security can't be offshored. So if the Federal government had made security a priority, your original point would be moot.
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"Security Researchers" are threatened with prosecution? Oh, mean hackers .
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Good idea, but if taking out the US economy is your goal, there's an "easier" way: just try and make the oil business move away from the Dollar, thus destabilizing the Dollar (even more) and consequently ruining the US economy and the country. By chance, Iran is just trying to do that by establishing Iran's upcoming oil bourse [energybulletin.net] based on the Euro rather than on the Doll
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Thats a fun mastabatory game you are playing there.
Do you seriously think that?
While not a fan of our current policies and actions, if the U.S. decided to tell the U.N. to take a flying-f*ck at the moon, absolutely nothing, aside from a vote to tell the U.S. that other people are peeved at us, would hap
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The United States of America, as a country, is wholly dependent upon other countries for its own prosperity. Look around you; Virtually everything that you can afford to buy is manufactured in China, (SOMETIMES) Japan, Mexico, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and so on and so forth. Most of those electronics are also designed in Japan (Sony, Hitachi, Pioneer, Panasonic, Nintendo), Europe (Philips), K
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considering what happened last time the US showed "proofs" of something to the world, I wouldn't be in a hurry to see those ones.
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