China's Cyber-Militia 196
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..."
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.
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...
Washington is full of pussies (Score:0, Insightful)
I hope the Chinese own Washington's computers and shuts down the Shithouse (Whitehouse) then possibly(?) Washington will grow a pair and get us the fuck out of the middle east to focus on more imporatant issues.
And the point of the article is...? (Score:1, Insightful)
China isn't the only country hacking US interests so whats the big deal here? I'm pretty sure we have just as many hackers hacking into not only Chinese systems, but probably every country out there that doesn't align with our interests.
This just seems like more propaganda.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 act.
Re:of course (Score:5, Insightful)
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 crane made in China. ZPMC has something approaching a monopoly on container handling equipment. We can't even build the infrastructure to participate in the world economy independently anymore.
Unfortunately, the actions of the PRC government do a grave disservice to the Chinese people, who I'm sure would love to interact with the rest of the world in a fair (possibly democratic) way.
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.
Re:And the point of the article is...? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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.
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:Huh!? (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 same investment of dollars into the software as the commercial world can afford, so you have less money to fix said bugs when they were discovered.
Similarly the software would likely be less functional, given that even the defense budget is not infinite. It just makes sense to leverage COTS, provided you can ensure adequate supply of parts in a major conflict. That is a challenge with the effects of globalization.
Using COTS where it makes sense doesn't mean you should hook everything up the Internet though.
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.
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.
Re:I hope this guy isn't getting paid (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Did Red China really hire the hackers? (Score:1, Insightful)
If China continues to grow at its current rate - economically, technology, and in terms of its military abilities (militarily? is that a word?), it'll eat the USA and Europe for breakfast in a generation or two at most.
Brace yourself for a US-led war against China in the mid-term future. This is really just the foundations - the FUD that is supposed to ingrain the "evil Chinese are our enemies" thinking in the general population.
Re:Or.... (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?
Re:When will we retailate? As soon as... (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 to us. They have enough nuclear warheads to pepper every population center with deliciously lethal Uranium goodness, and they can launch theirs five to ten minutes after we launch ours. Considering that an ICBM would take twenty to forty five minutes to travel to its intended target, that's more than enough reaction time. That's why we buy their cheap shit, take their insults and attacks, and let the Communist thing slide.
Re:wake up people (Score:4, Insightful)
Thank you China (Score:4, Insightful)
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:Washington is full of pussies (Score:4, Insightful)
Funnily enough, that's what everyone in Europe was saying in 1913.
Re:Washington is full of pussies (Score:1, Insightful)
1934 as well. The problem is that when at least 1 country has decided to fight, it will happen. Bush invaded and occupied Iraq on false pretenses. Many did not reason it out beforehand because of 9/11. Yet, the same thing will happen in China. Even now, China is gearing up for war to take Taiwan. They have a number of new nuke subs and are building at a MUCH faster rate than they admit to. These are designed to park off of japan, south korea, and USA to launch nukes. They are indending to threaten US interests when they want to take over Taiwan. Sadly, with US so involved in an iraqi occupation, we will almost certainly not have the ability to stop this BEFORE it gets started.
One of Americas big advantage is that we were the big kid on the block. But we were expected to use this force WISELY. W. has shown the world that it only takes one idiot to do otherwise. IOW, when China decides to go after Taiwan, many (mostly 3rd world countries ) will cheer for China. Others will sit on the sideline (mostly EU) and wait to pick apart the carcass.