I am far less worried about the Chinese military, than I am about like this. There is some ambiguity about who exactly they are talking about, but the indications all point directly to China.
If you aren't concerned about this, you should be.
There is a reason that part of our recent defense doctrine has directly equated cyberattacks to physical attacks, and allowed for the "full range" of military responses to such attacks. I will see if I can find that NPR story and link it in a later edit to this post.
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BOSTON (Reuters) - Security experts have discovered the biggest series of cyber attacks to date, involving the infiltration of the networks of 72 organizations including the United Nations, governments and companies around the world.
Security company McAfee, which uncovered the intrusions, said it believed there was one "state actor" behind the attacks but declined to name it, though one security expert who has been briefed on the hacking said the evidence points to China.
The long list of victims in the five-year campaign include the governments of the United States, Taiwan, India, South Korea, Vietnam and Canada; the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN); the International Olympic Committee (IOC); the World Anti-Doping Agency; and an array of companies, from defense contractors to high-tech enterprises.
In the case of the United Nations, the hackers broke into the computer system of its secretariat in Geneva in 2008, hid there for nearly two years, and quietly combed through reams of secret data, according to McAfee.
"Even we were surprised by the enormous diversity of the victim organizations and were taken aback by the audacity of the perpetrators," McAfee's vice president of threat research, Dmitri Alperovitch, wrote in a 14-page report released on Wednesday.
"What is happening to all this data ... is still largely an open question. However, if even a fraction of it is used to build better competing products or beat a compe or at a key negotiation (due to having stolen the other team's playbook), the loss represents a massive economic threat."
McAfee learned of the extent of the hacking campaign in March this year, when its researchers discovered logs of the attacks while reviewing the contents of a "command and control" server that they had discovered in 2009 as part of an investigation into security breaches at defense companies.
It dubbed the attacks "Operation Shady RAT" and said the earliest breaches date back to mid-2006, though there might have been other intrusions. (RAT stands for "remote access tool," a type of software that hackers and security experts use to access computer networks from afar).
Some of the attacks lasted just a month, but the longest -- on the Olympic Committee of an unidentified Asian nation -- went on and off for 28 months, according to McAfee.
"Companies and government agencies are getting raped and pillaged every day. They are losing economic advantage and national secrets to unscrupulous compe ors," Alperovitch told Reuters.
"This is the biggest transfer of wealth in terms of intellectual property in history," he said. "The scale at which this is occurring is really, really frightening."
CHINA CONNECTION?
Alperovitch said that McAfee had notified all 72 victims of the attacks, which are under investigation by law enforcement agencies around the world. He declined to give more details.
Jim Lewis, a cyber expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said it was very likely China was behind the campaign because some of the targets had information that would be of particular interest to Beijing.
The systems of the IOC and several national Olympic Committees were breached before the 2008 Beijing Games. And China views Taiwan as a renegade province, and political issues between them remain contentious even as economic ties have strengthened in recent years.
"Everything points to China. It could be the Russians, but there is more that points to China than Russia," Lewis said.
McAfee, acquired by Intel Corp this year, would not comment on whether China was responsible.
There was no comment from China on the report.
In Taiwan, an official of the Criminal Investigation Bureau, which has a cyber crime unit, said he had no knowledge of the McAfee report but added there had been no cases in recent years of hacking of government websites.
An official from the Japanese trade ministry's information security policy team said it was difficult to determine whether a specific government lay behind a cyber attack "although we see which countries the attacks originate from."
A team put together to investigate hacking was "finalizing some guidelines. We aim to raise the security level as a whole and build a partnership between private sector organizations where information can be shared to prevent such attacks."
STONE AGE
Vijay Mukhi, a cyber-expert based in India, says some South Asian governments were highly vulnerable to hacking from China.
"I'm not surprised because that's what China does, they are gradually dominating the cyberworld," he said. "I would call it child's play (for a hacker to get access to Indian government data) ... I would say we're in the stone age."
An Indian telecommunications ministry official declined to say whether he was aware of the hacking on the government.
The U.N. said it was aware of the report, and had started an investigation to ascertain if there was an intrusion.
McAfee released the report to coincide with the start of the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas, an annual meeting of security professionals who promote security and fight cyber crime.
(Additional reporting from Tom Miles in Geneva, Jack Kim in Seoul and James Pomfret in New Delhi, editing by Tiffany Wu, Martin Howell, Ron Popeski and Ed Lane)
http://news.yahoo.com/biggest-ever-s...040749882.html
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The only question is what should we do about this?
(edit)
Pentagon Strategy Prepares For War In Cyberspace
(edit) Update with a few important bits:The U.S. military can fight on land, in the air, at sea and in space. Now it has a strategy for operations in a new domain: cyberspace.
Under a new plan unveiled Thursday, the Defense Department said it is preparing to treat cyberspace "as an operational domain," with forces specially organized, trained and equipped to deal with cyberthreats and opportunities.
The strategy presumes that "cyberattacks will be a significant component of any future conflict" and that the United States must be prepared to retaliate, possibly even with military force.
"The United States reserves the right, under the laws of armed conflict, to respond to serious cyberattacks with a proportional and justified military response at the time and place of its choosing," Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn said.
A cyberattack on the United States could prompt a military response under the Pentagon guidelines, however, only if it qualified as "an act of war," with effects comparable to those brought about under a traditional "kinetic" or physical attack, and it would be up to the president to make that judgment.
With a follow up Q & A
http://news.yahoo.com/q-massive-cybe...041142146.html
Along with some information from an insider source:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/has-th...01?tag=nl.e550
The white paper referenced makes for a very good read, and is fairly short:
http://www.mcafee.com/us/resources/w...-shady-rat.pdf
Last edited by RandomGuy; 08-05-2011 at 07:56 AM.
What can we do, besides counter-cyber?
The AF is currently working on creating one giant AF domain that each computer will fall under, in order to standardize architecture and centralize info trends. (Also, to cut costs).
Stuff like this is why I'm thinking about trying to cross train into 1B4 though.
It's simple. Stop networking important systems to the world.
smil.mil is networked to the world. They used Sidewinder double-walled firewalls when I worked on a contract for MDA.
Sounds "simple".
In the same way the "simple" solution to crime is to arrest all criminals.
Ha! Good luck with that grandpa! Generals want SIPR/NIPR capable CELL PHONES now.
What do you mean by "to the world"? To the Internet, or just to other SIPR networks worldwide?
Has the United States already suffered its cyberwar Pearl Harbor?
“Having investigated intrusions such as Operation Aurora [China's attack on Google) and Night Dragon (systemic long-term compromise of Western oil and gas industry), as well as numerous others that have not been disclosed publicly, I am convinced that every company in every conceivable industry with significant size and valuable intellectual property and trade secrets has been compromised (or will be shortly), with the great majority of the victims rarely discovering the intrusion or its impact. In fact, I divide the entire set of Fortune Global 2000 firms into two categories: those that know they've been compromised and those that don't yet know. "
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/has-th...01?tag=nl.e550
Then you use dedicated networks. Not the internet.
Haven't really done a lot of reading on it yet, but this looks to be what amounts to a massive economic warfare offensive on the part of some element of the Chinese government.
I would be willing to bet that the scale wasn't quite the will of those at the top.
Even so, this may very well be this really would be the economic equivalent of a Pearl Harbor.
At the risk of waving the old bloody shirt (yeah, I went there).
The Chinese government has some explaining to do.
The president should be having some serious talks with the Chinese embassador ASAFP.
I would be seriously considering economic sanctions and punitive tariffs.
"economic equivalent of a Pearl Harbor"
It's really nothing economically compared to disaster the UCA and the financial sector have already visited on USA and the world. That is truly and practically an economic war.
Anyway, UCA, eg GE, are already freely exporting technology and manufacturring transfers to China and India, building up those two countries industrial bases while UCA corrodes America's industrial base, a fundamental aspect of American empire's declining power, trustworthiness, and influence in the world.
ala the old school Battlestars?
The whole "you can't secure a public network" is a myth. There are well proven methods to do so.
Also, the government works with way too many contractors to be able to deploy and fully control dedicated networks (and they certainly have some, even though LnGrrrR might not be able to talk about it).
What the government is lacking is in the security conscious talent department. But they're doing something about it. I heard both the NSA and the DoD are recruiting at BlackHat these days. The CIA didn't advertise it, but it's probably a given too, seeing Hayden comments on the Aspen Security Conference.
2 months ago, it took down vietnam ISPs out for a day due to hacking..
china has 485m internet users, it only needs 1% of that population and is enough trouble for most countries authorities to deal with in cyberspace...they also pay jobless ppl to troll on forums to promote its govts ideals and propaganda bull .
i wonder with all the technology bull they make and export, is there backdoor button they can access and just turn the off and attack without knowing...lol australia using chinas products to build its new fibre network infrastructure..fail.
Right, and spend how much more money creating a brand new dedicated network? Lines, maintenance etc etc. They'll use the internet for whatever they can.
Well, they do have the NSA....and I know the AF has been making "cyber" a big push as part of our core capabilities the past few years. (Probably because it's a good way to funding, since dropping giant bombs doesn't have as much use against insurgents as it does a regular army.)
The new 1B4 career field I mentioned above is another push in that direction. It's an interesting time to be a Cyber Transport tech in the AF right now.
Hayden is pushing a "Digital Blackwater". I wonder if I should apply, hmmm.
Adama was right you know.
Indeed he was, indeed he was.
With a follow up Q & A
http://news.yahoo.com/q-massive-cybe...041142146.html
Along with some information from an insider source:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/has-th...01?tag=nl.e550
The white paper referenced makes for a very good read, and is fairly short:
http://www.mcafee.com/us/resources/w...-shady-rat.pdf
Keep in mind this rather important new development in military policy:
Put this in context with:
http://www.npr.org/2011/07/15/137928...space-strategy
In the real world, some Admiral would've told Commander Adama to shut up and upgrade his ship.
Adama was lucky that the ship was so old that it wasn't worth the upgrade
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