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Details Emerge On the 2006 Hacking of Congress 77

Posted by kdawson from the by-party-or-parties-unknown dept.
The National Journal just published an article with details about the hacking of Congress in 2006, possibly by agents in China, though the attack's origin is uncertain. The article notes the difficult work of the House Information Systems Security Office, which must set security policies and then try to enforce them on a population of the equivalent of C-level executives. The few members who have called attention to the issue of Congressional cyber-security have been advised to shut up about it, by whom the reporter did not discover. "Armed with this information about how the virus worked, the security officers scanned the House network again. This time, they found more machines that seemed to match the profile — they, too, were infected. Investigators found at least one infected computer in a member's district office, indicating that the virus had traveled through the House network and may have breached machines far away from Washington. Eventually, the security office determined that eight members' offices were affected; in most of the offices, the virus had invaded only one machine, but in some offices, it hit multiple computers. It also struck seven committee offices, including Commerce; Transportation and Infrastructure; Homeland Security; and Ways and Means; plus the Commission on China, which monitors human rights and laws in China."
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Details Emerge On the 2006 Hacking of Congress More

Details Emerge On the 2006 Hacking of Congress

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  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2009 @09:12AM (#26544829)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Only a paranoid totalitarian state would waste time penetrating Congress. There's not much there that isn't accessible via the news. Anyone who had half a brain would target the Executive branch, where there is data that is not publically accessible.

      Silly commies.

      Or maybe they just did it for the lulz?

    • Re:It had to be the Chinese (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Chrisq ( 894406 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2009 @09:28AM (#26544917)

      Only a paranoid totalitarian state would waste time penetrating Congress. There's not much there that isn't accessible via the news. Anyone who had half a brain would target the Executive branch, where there is data that is not publically accessible.

      Silly commies.

      Or maybe they are hoping finding this will divert attention from the real stealth virus in the Pentagon.

    • Re:It had to be the Chinese (Score:4, Insightful)

      by morgan_greywolf ( 835522 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2009 @09:43AM (#26545027) Homepage Journal

      Anybody could have hacked Congress for any number of reasons. Why did Mitnick hack the phone system? Why does anybody attempt to gain unauthorized access to systems they're not supposed to be messing with?

      Many years ago, when I was a youngster, people were doing it just to prove they could.

    • Re:It had to be the Chinese (Score:5, Informative)

      by colfer ( 619105 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2009 @09:46AM (#26545057)

      Negotiations over trade policy, for one thing, were compromised. What makes you say there's not much there? Congressional committees monitor all the executive agencies, and keep tons of confidential info.

    • You would have to be a total idiot to believe that (Score:5, Insightful)

      by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2009 @09:49AM (#26545079) Journal
      Congress overseas ALL of what is going on. That is THEIR job. If the old white house, Pelosi and Reid are dumb enough to use Window boxes, then a lot of information has most likely been sent to China. They will be aware of operations throughout the world (though not necessarily who is in them). Pelosi will have access to very UNIQUE information about NK, Russia, and China that will have been fed to her from CIA, NSA, and NRO. By having access to that info, somebody in CHina or Russia could narrow suspects down. In fact, China has been at this for over a decade. My guess is that they have BEEN narrowing the trap for a long time (or have them).

      It is a disaster to America and most likely to the west to have this information get out. Sadly, NSA has been usurp by DHS who is LOADED with total idiots.
      • All that info can't be kept on random pcs. Depending on the classification, it could even not be allowed to be seen on anything but physically at the computer containing the info. Also, why would her running windows automatically make her computer compromised? Is that an automatic assumption? Oh and by her looks she's probably a Mac User ;p

        • Re:You would have to be a total idiot to believe t (Score:5, Insightful)

          by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2009 @10:14AM (#26545313) Journal
          LOTS of information gets out. Far too much. The names of many projects are known all over. What is not known is all objectives, who all is involved (typically, the top person who is running it is known), and all the results. But far too often, congress members are given and sometimes leaked information that does make it on their system. They pass it in emails to each other, etc.

          Yes, Windows is the surest sign of an easy compromise. Even this virus was designed for Windows. Nearly all the virus on goods coming from China are for Windows. It will remain that way as long as Windows is easy to crack and dominant. The fact that a number of EU countries, Russia, and China are switching their govs to Linux (and some mac) should have generated LOADS of virus for these systems IF it were easy. Do you see them? NOPE. Get past your silly prejudice and bias and look at the facts. Virus are written for easy targets that yield information.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dbIII ( 701233 )

            LOTS of information gets out. Far too much.

            If you have too much secrecy it make embezzlement far too easy, and then the criminal can still scream that they are a wronged patriot because the evidence is hard to get to. No matter what you think about selling US weapons to Iran to get funds to supply central american terrorists, we still have a couple of guys (North and Poindexter) stealing from the state for home airconditioning, cars etc.

            It's very likely that such a dumb scheme could never have happened wit

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Hillgiant ( 916436 )

        Congress overseas ALL

        I really think we need to cut back on this outsourcing craze. I am not convinced foreign politicians are any more efficient than their American counterparts.

        Oh, "oversees"? nevermind.

      • Re:You would have to be a total idiot to believe t (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        You need to reread the Constitution. Congress does not oversea everything, and that is not their job. They are responsible for legislating (creating laws & regulations, including defining budgets). That's it. The Constitution is quite clear that the role of the Executive branch is to execute those laws (and spend only the money allocated by Congress).

        Together, both branches settle their differences in the Judicial branch (i.e. the courts).

        This is the beauty of the US Constitution - the founders know tha

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by juan2074 ( 312848 )
          This is the beauty of the US Constitution - the founders know that governments are corrupt, and designed a government that would be difficult to completely corrupt (unlike a dictatorship, which while it could be clean, is easy to completely corrupt).

          And yet, our elected officials have found many ways to massively -- if not completely -- corrupt the government.

      • Congress overseas ALL of what is going on.

        Sending Congress overseas could SAVE AMERICA.

    • Only a paranoid totalitarian state would waste time penetrating Congress

      So you're saying the US hacked itself?

      • First, Nixon comes to mind.
        • Nixon had nothing on Bush. Nixon kept COINTELPRO hidden, and denied it's existence. Bush not only admitted to it, he defended it. We have secret agents infiltrating Code Pink for Christ's sake. Even Hoover wasn't that paranoid.

    • Re:It had to be the Chinese (Score:4, Interesting)

      by jandersen ( 462034 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2009 @10:38AM (#26545569)

      Only a paranoid totalitarian state would waste time penetrating Congress. There's not much there that isn't accessible via the news. Anyone who had half a brain would target the Executive branch, where there is data that is not publically accessible.

      How about some of your own, homegrown extremists and quasi-terrorists? Or for that matter, other members of Congress? No other country in the world houses so many groups of people with extreme agendas as the US, sadly: ultra-rightwing Christians, anti-abortionists, this-or-that rights campaigners, neo-nazis etc. There is no need to go abroad to likely braindeads who would hack into Congress.

      It seems more likely to me that people who do this are after finding personal information on the PCs of members of Congress, something that could be used for extortion.

      • well, sounds like the US fits the definition of diversity pretty well... remember, diversity means people you disagree with, not just black and white people holding hands.

    • the PLA more or less had access to everything through the mid 1990's - and more than likely still do today since we owe them so much money. why even hack? other than to make headlines to divert attention? what we need is more paranoia!

    • Actually there is private information such as diplomatic stances and personal discussions on international matters between congressmen and the president that the other countries involved would like to know. You can get a leg up in negotiations if you know what the other side is willing to concede, what they aren't, etc. It can also help if you know what actions they might be planning (e.g. discussing possible arms sales to Taiwan), who is sympathetic to you on an important issue and what they know about y

  • If someone had told congressmen that buying mass-quantities of Viagra (and Vimax!) from canadian pharmacies was a bad idea, they may not have been exposed to so many security threats...

    But what's a horny old-guy to do...

  • Proofs? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by VincenzoRomano ( 881055 )
    Any proof about the Chinese origin?
    Why not the Italian Mafia, the Muslim Jihad or whatever else?
    Sounds more like FUD than real investigation!

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by betterunixthanunix ( 980855 )
      Perhaps because the Chinese are known to be engaged in an active espionage campaign and have attempted to gain access to government computer systems multiple times in the past (at least that is what is publicly acknowledged)? Frankly, as others have pointed out, invading congress is pointless since channels like CSPAN broadcast congressional meetings, including committee hearings, and the minutes from congressional meetings are available at the LOC.

      • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        OK, wait, reality check. Here's an experiment: take any two random countries, and then check whether country A is engaged in an "active espionage campaign" against country B at the moment.

        Unless it's, I don't know, Kiribati and Iceland, chances are that the answer will pretty much always be "yes".

        Of COURSE China is spying on the USA, and has been for ages. Of COURSE the USA is spying on China, too, and have been for ages. And the same goes for Germany, France, the UK, Australia, Brazil, Russia, Japan, India

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by colfer ( 619105 )

      The summary does link to an article.

    • If real, then yes, it is known where it originates from. Of course, that calls into question who controls all the gateways that packets go through. Just because a packet claims to have originated at a certain box and traveled a certain path, does not mean that it has.
      Sadly, so few posters here understand this issue.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by pmarini ( 989354 )
      just a quickie here, the Mafia nowadays is mostly situated in the USA (easier to do business there and larger "customer base")
      in Italy the criminals do not operate undercover/ground anymore...

  • The virus is DENIAL (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Bob_Who ( 926234 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2009 @09:31AM (#26544935) Journal
    Its simple folks - there is no such thing complete security. Its a negotiation. If you want a sterile network, then neuter it. Congress can be completely free of network attacks if they disconnect from the Internet, and reality....which defeats the purpose. Short of that I think its a fair assumption that information is a virus. We need to understand that on line is like a public restroom in a football stadium. Relative privacy is available, but don't write any important phone numbers on the wall.
    • With the exception of a government IT departments wounded pride, I doubt it was much of an incident. All the juicy government stuff is kept separate, with more stringent controls, i.e. SIPR, JWICS, NSAnet, etc. It was probably less harmful than a corporation being compromised. What they would have seen would have been day to day business and possibly personal information on people.

      Although it is possible to piece together unclassified information to get classified information, the intruder would have to

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by jeffshoaf ( 611794 ) *

      Congress can be completely free of network attacks if they disconnect from the Internet, and reality....

      Half way there!

  • Why?... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by whisper_jeff ( 680366 )
    "...possibly by agents in China, though the attack's origin is uncertain."

    Why mention that it was possibly by agents in China when, immediately afterwards, you admit their origin is unknown? They could be agents from Russia. Or Iran. Or Canada. If you don't know, that means they could be from anywhere. Sure, it's fun to paint China as the badguy and gawd knows it's en vogue right now but, if it's unknown who was behind the attack, leave it at that.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by novakyu ( 636495 )

        It's known where the attack originated from. No one wants to reveal *how* they know that, so it's left ambiguous.

        I would think it's fairly obvious how they find where attack originated. You find the attacking IP (or the IP to which information is being sent), since as long as there is traffic it is not possible to hide it, and any given IP belongs in a geographical region (which happened to be China).

        What wouldn't be obvious is whether this is, e.g. work of Russian hackers who had access to compromised machines in China. If they knew that, then there would be no doubt as to the perpetrators (I suppose we could go back

  • Get Jack, They have the CIP Device!

  • It doesn't surprise me (Score:5, Informative)

    by CXI ( 46706 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2009 @10:16AM (#26545343) Homepage

    We've had to deal with a number of government agencies where I work. It's not surprising they get hacked. The Defense Security Service, for instance, tried to force us to "get a .com address if you want to interact with our online tools, because .edu addresses are insecure". After laughing to their face it took three weeks to convince them they had no clue what they were talking about. They also asked me to contact them any time we saw "anomalous" traffic on our network. I offered to forward them a copy of the 90% of our packets that are anomalous, but they weren't amused. As another example, the State Department is basing export restriction management on broken Active X that requires users to be Administrators to use. :/ The list goes on.

    I was going to go check something on their site, and discovered that it's now running a self signed cert. *sigh* Check out the mission of DSS, and the irony is... scary: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Security_Service [wikipedia.org]

    DSS is tasked with facilitating personnel security investigations, supervising industrial security, and performing security education and awareness training.

    Doomed I tell you, doomed.

  • Imagine the potential for disaster if our elected officials were tech savvy enough to actual use technologies such as "e-mail" and the "world wide web" and that "http" thing!

  • ... where X is the closest to rival the power of the US. In the old days, it was always the Russians. Nowadays, it is the Chinese. Now it could very well be the Chinese, but if it was then they did a sloppy job. Infiltrating a computer network using a virus is probably the worst idea in terms of being low profile. Perhaps a passive network sniffer, a backdoor, some MAC-layer attack or just plain old social engineering or spies are much lower profile. By the tone of the original article, I call FUD.

  • "The public security services in China can turn your telephone on and activate its microphone when you think it's off."

    Now if only they can emit a tone outside of human hearing and record the echoes to be centrally processed in one massive computer displaying real time video of anyone anywhere in astounding detail.

    Actually, I think this is probably too much power for anybody to have. Let's blow it up.

  • We are at war with Eastasia ... (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    we have always been at war with Eastasia.

    Bin Laden is not the enemy we are looking for (*).

    * - see http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/03/20020313-8.html

  • When people first start taking seriously the spread of organized computer crime, by national and by private groups, it usually appears the Chinese are the root of all evil. Taking into account that China manufactures the overwhelming majority of computer systems and components only deepens this suspicion.

    Only with deeper experience do we start to appreciate that China is an easy target and that it's in a lot of other people's interest to reinforce views of China as the world's cyberboogeyman. The Chinese d

  • What did china have to do with anything? There was nothing pointing to them. But hey guilty until proven innocent right? Why not point at non-spy civilian hackers? Congress is a fun target. Or how about one of the hundreds of other countries? What about Israel? Pointing fingers with no proof like this is embarassing /.

    • For the PR and covering up of their own incompetency, the best strategy is always to stick bad things to the biggest public enemy. Israel? Their people run this country; who's dare to accuse their own bosses. Russia, nobody remember them much any more. China, of course, everybody hates it. Other countries, who care.

      • We could blame India... i'm sure at this point they have the tech savvy and numbers to pull it off :P

  • This is where I should've made my point regarding foreign IT contracts rather than the open source topic above. At any rate, we've been awarding government IT infrastructure contracts to foreign companies over the last decade. That this might be a problem shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone and should be regarded as criminal neglect by those who've let it happen. As for HBI's assertion that the executive branch is where the goods are, I want to point out that the Chinese and other foreign governments

  • Homeland security was amongst one of the departments within the government to have been compromised...
    Are you kidding....of all people to not get caught by the virus or trojan or even hacking, I would think they were the ones to not get hit (along with the NSA).

    The geniuses that work in those places would be the first to say
    "HEY YOU SHOULD NOT DO THAT....OPEN THE EMAIL ATTACHMENT I MEAN."

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