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China's Cyber-Militia
Posted by
kdawson
on Sat May 31, 2008 02:31 PM
from the less-power-to-you dept.
from the less-power-to-you dept.
D. J. Keenan notes that the cover story of the current issue of National Journal reports in depth on China's cyber-aggression against US targets in the government, military, and business. We have discussed China's actions on numerous occasions over the years. The news in this report is the suggestion that Chinese cyber-attackers may have been involved in major power outages in the US. "Computer hackers in China, including those working on behalf of the Chinese government and military, have penetrated deeply into the information systems of US companies and government agencies, stolen proprietary information from American executives in advance of their business meetings in China, and, in a few cases, gained access to electric power plants in the United States, possibly triggering two recent and widespread blackouts in Florida and the Northeast, according to US government officials and computer-security experts..."
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[+]
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Microsoft? Windows? (Score:3, Insightful)
"A computer virus" is as close as this article came to the reason power companies are so wide open to any aggressor.
It's not just power companies. (Score:3, Insightful)
The article mentions large scale government, military and industry intrusions. They also mention criminal gangs and others besides China as those responsible.
This is an odd issue that gives neo-conservatives fits. They like trading with China, so they don't like hearing old school anti-Communist and human rights complaints. They place the interests of large American companies above those of American people, so they don't like hearing bad things about Microsoft. This leads to a large scale head in sand
Re:It's not just power companies. (Score:5, Insightful)
The article mentions large scale government, military and industry intrusions. They also mention criminal gangs and others besides China as those responsible.
Parent
China is well situated. (Score:4, Insightful)
The submitter quotes the most frightening parts of the article [slashdot.org] and our current "trade partner" China is well positioned to spy. We trust them to make equipment and non free software like Cisco routere has proved itself impossible to check.
Still, most of the hacks are common and anyone could do it. Time and time again we read about autopropagating botnets for Windows and how they cover large parts of the internet [usatoday.com]. When that system is used on corporate and government desktops, anyone can exploit it.
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My power went out for an hour yesterday (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That'll teach them reds! Oh, wait.
Huh!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Huh!? (Score:5, Insightful)
That ANY major infrastructure would be connected to the internet is shocking, and I'd really like to believe that people aren't that stupid...
Parent
of course (Score:2)
draw a line, cutting off more-vital parts from the
less-vital parts.
There mechanical protection systems, so you won't
be making meltdowns over the net.
Re:of course (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
The computers which control the plant should be physically separated from the computers which are needed/wanted for connection with the internet. Otherwise you are begging for disasters.
It's more like the trees which grow next to the powerlines should be kept trimmed.
Otherwise you are begging for disasters.
Did Hackers Cause the 2003 Northeast Blackout? Umm, No
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/05/did-hackers-cau.html [wired.com]
So China would have to have planted the race condition in a [General Electric] product used around the world, then, using the most devious malware ever devised, arranged for trees to grow up into exactly the right power lines at precisely the right time to trigger the cascade.
Re: (Score:2)
Why does communication need to be on the same network as the critical systems? Surely critical systems should be kept off ANY system connected to the internet. Hell, even communications should probably be done over a private network/system that isn't integrated with the main internet...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a lot of reason to believe that doing so would result in less secure software. The software would have less people trying to break it, thus less opportunity to find and fix the inevitable bugs. There's something to be said for the trial-by-fire that is a public release of software. And in many cases it probably wouldn't get the
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I've always heard it as "Commercial Off The Shelf" - and Google seems to agree with me. (Yes, even Linux use would generally be commercial, because it usually comes with support contracts from someone.)
But anyway, part of the reason for using COTS products in general is that people bitch about "government waste" and things like "$500 hammers" - so in response, the government and the DOD started a mandate to use more COTS products.
The idea is to save money by not reinventing the wheel where it isn't need
I hope this guy isn't getting paid (Score:5, Funny)
Wow, has professional writing ever gone downhill. Ever heard of a period?
Re:I hope this guy isn't getting paid (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:I hope this guy isn't getting paid (Score:5, Informative)
Professional writing used to be a competition to put on paper the longest sentence with the least amount of punctuation possible.
What we call a paragraph, they called a sentence.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
No
Some quotes from the article (Score:5, Interesting)
It is a long article, but worth reading. The suspicion of Chinese involvement in two major U.S. power outages is extremely worrying. Following are quotes on related aspects.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If you don't want to go there, the short version is that the data for hacking into the power systems is pretty darn weak.
Since we can't beat up Iran anymore, we have to have somebody to hate.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The content is too breathless. The words fed us smell like the b.s. we had before on lesser security issues. This all makes me dubious. I find it har
Ahhh anger at China (Score:2)
oh...wait...familiar that.....sounds like a good chunk of humanity.
Not saying its not wrong, just putting a perspective stick in the spokes.
Re: (Score:2)
This is not the worst thing done in preparation for a (possible) war.
Just wait (Score:5, Funny)
"hacked by chinese" (Score:4, Funny)
We are at war... (Score:2, Insightful)
If you go to any US port, you will find that almost every single shipping container in almost every US port is loaded and moved with a container
What kind of un-patched Windows crap... (Score:4, Insightful)
What kind of un-patched Windows crap is running the power grid?
Of course the attackers are guilty; but that doesn't excuse foolish security practices. Nevermind bad security on the end-point, or in the software. It seems like the power company, with all its rights-of-way, shouldn't even have to route over the public network. Routing over a private network would provide physical security. Breaking into that requires putting your actual body at the point of attack. Since the power company came before the Internet, I would have thought they had a private network of some kind in place already, or close cooperation with telcos. I guess not.
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If you are operating a system under configuration control, you can't just apply patches to Windows without a process to test and approve them. Testing can be very expensive, and third-party software vendors may only provide support for their software in configurations that have been tested in their own lab.
Re: (Score:2)
Or.... (Score:2, Insightful)
And the recent power outages are due to badly maintained and or out of date hardware thats not very fault tolerant.
I might have my cynical head on though.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You may find it instructive to research how England got its first tea plants from China. That is possibly one of the finest feats of industrial espionage in history.
Also, check out the antics of the East India company, and ponder what happened to all that money and power, think it evaporated away and england is all cuddles and sweetness now?
Did Red China really hire the hackers? (Score:4, Insightful)
Computer hackers in China, including those working on behalf of the Chinese government and military
Can they prove that? This sounds like regular old corporate espionage -- nothing unusual or even foreign there. Is xenophobia starting to take hold, or are those statements substantiated? No time to RTFA.
Re: (Score:2)
In short, to say it's regular old corporate espionage when you're talking about a communist country is pretty much the same as saying "those working on behalf of the government and military" because most of the corporations are in fact owned by the government or military.
Wow, that is an excellent point. Those damn commies.
Re: (Score:2)
Just to touch on the power outage issue, that's not the sort of thing corporate spies do.
You must have forgotten about Enron already. Granted, they had some unique motivations (energy in cali was deregulated so they could turn off the power to create artificial price spikes), but I could probably stretch my imagination and name a few foreign companies that would benefit from power shortages in the U.S. ... like Japanese automobile manufacturers!
Complain all you want... (Score:2)
Even if it is Chinese Government sponsored hackers, the american people still want their cheap goods.
Just like most americans we care more about the price of gas, than what type of government is in Iraq.
We want fresh fruit picked by illegal immigrants who have no healthcare.
We want cheap power, but as long as the nuclear power plant is built in someone elses backyard.
solution .. (Score:2)
Solution is, don't put your SCADA units on the Internet. And even if this were true the more likely explanation is that they didn't have enough spare capacity.
What really happened .. (Score:3, Informative)
No, what really happened was the grid was overloaded and the SQL virus was playing havoc with connectivity, then a tree fell over and tripped out a line, which spread in a domino effect all the way to Canada. A similar virus tripped out the control system in a Nuclear power plant.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/cs_20080531_6948.php [nationaljournal.com]
"During the hour before the Aug. 14 blackout, engineers in the control center of an Ohio utility struggled to figure out why transmission lines were failing and complained that a computer failure was making it difficult to determine what was going on, transcripts of telephone communications released Wednesday show"
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2003/09/60285 [wired.com]
"Software failure cited in August blackout investigation
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/gen-comm/info-notices/2003/in200314.pdf [nrc.gov]
http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/recovery/story/0,10801,87400,00.html [computerworld.com]
Thank you China (Score:4, Insightful)
good old propaganda (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, if I was a Chinese spy, I'd infiltrate General Electric, install a bug in the operating software responsible for the control of the energy distribution network, wait till those dumb ol americans had got complacent and then, for no strategic advantage whatsoever, cripple their energy distribution network, and then laugh my black communist heart out.
Scaremongering (Score:5, Insightful)
Apart from that, it isn't exactly difficult to break in to this kind of system - in the past we have seen hackers walk all over the place where they aren't supposed to have been. If script kiddies can do it, is isn't surprising if higly trained miltary personnel can do it too.
But I sincerely doubt that they would leave lots of traces and clues lying around for the more paranoid factions on slashdot to play with. Script-kiddies, yes, but if you are professional, whether criminal or some foreign government, you don't just blunder stupidly in and trigger alarms, or leave your droppings all over the place.
I can see how this kind of nonsense is politically useful. Hasn't the American public caught on to this yet?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
In the generic sense, there is "nothing wrong with" this, but whatever can get people to realize that outsourcing and free trade, especially with commies like China is bad for us, then I'm cool with attention being brought.
It's only an issue if they start making stuff up. I'm not cool with being lied
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
right?
So, how do you seriously get to the point where a couple of blackouts and some economic competition justifies bombing around 1 billion people because you're paying too much for gas? Do you kick puppies for training, or are you just born that much of an asshole naturally?
When will we retailate? As soon as... (Score:5, Insightful)
Till then, they get to do as they please, same as any nuclear-armed country.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The concept of M.A.D. is what is keep the world in one piece, and not a giant puddle of radioactive sludge. Thanks to modern intelligence tech, all countries capable of launching ICBMs are also capable of knowing when OTHER ICBMs are launched, within minutes. If one gets launch, then other countries will launch retaliatory strikes, and eventually, EVERYONE will launch their weapons, hoping to at least destroy the enemy before they are destroyed themselves.
China is a threat t
Re: (Score:2)
You are clueless and naive to a degree that is both astounding and frightening. Good job.
Re:wake up people (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Washington is full of pussies (Score:4, Insightful)
Funnily enough, that's what everyone in Europe was saying in 1913.
Parent