Re: Chinese hackers

on 3/29/09 5:54 PM Awaken21 said the following:
On Mar 29, 6:20 am, ausound <auso...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Chicom Cyber Bomb Thrown at Capitol Hill

Chinese hackers attacked the office computers of Senator Bill Nelson
recently sparking a push at recent hearings for more to be done about
cyber intrusions, our friend Josh Rogin reports at Congressional
Quarterly.

The enterprising reporter heard a seemingly throw away line in a hearing
last week and dove into the story, uncovering a focused push by hackers
with IP addresses originating in China to penetrate the Senator's
computer.

In three separate attacks, two in March and one in February, cyberhackers
targeted the work stations of Nelson’s foreign policy aide, his deputy
legislative director, and “a former Nelson NASA adviser,” Nelson’s office
said in a statement.

The hackers did not steal any classified information, which is not stored
on office computers, the statement said.

A Nelson aide said the attacks were traced to China through Internet
Protocol (IP) information, which could have been masked. The Office of
Senate Security and the Senate Sergeant at Arms Information Technology
Security Branch responded to the attacks, the aide said, by wiping clean
malicious code from the affected systems.

Nelson first disclosed the attacks March 19 at an Armed Services
Committee hearing that featured testimony by senior military officials
with domain over cyberwarfare.

“I have had my office computers invaded three times in the last month,
and one of them we think is very serious,” Nelson said at the hearing.

At another hearing the same day, this time held by the Commerce, Science
and Transportation Committee, Nelson said his computer seemed to be
“talking to a computer in some international arena.”

The cyber warfare battlefield should be taken more seriously. A lot of
our readers feel like this is the Internet equivalent of a North Korean
nuke -- a glorified firecracker that will sputter to a halt in boost
phase over Pyongyang, raining radiation from derelict X-Ray machines all
over the three cars driving past the world's largest Kim Jong Il statue.

But our own Kevin Coleman warns in private conversations with me that the
cyber threat is very real and is being taken seriously by more and more
government officials -- the DoD, intel community, White House and
Congress. There's movement afoot to create a cabinet level cyber warfare
Czar which would clearly elevate the issue to the highest levels.

Poo poo it all you want, but as the Nelson cyber attack from Chinese IPs
points out, there's some serious probing going on here. And as you know,
once the reactionary sleeping giant of Capitol Hill is awakened to the
threat, it's only a matter of time before resources are thrown at the
problem.

Geroge Bush attempted to address the problem by assigning what
amounted to a top geek. Our top geek resigned in early March saying we
have a systemic problem with the power of the NSA. He and many other
critics are contending the NSA has too much power and it is hindering
efforts at securing government cyberspace. So powerful in fact is the
NSA that he resigned because he felt unable to ever accomplish or even
move towards doing the job he was assigned to do.

Here's one article on the resignation...

http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/09/rod-beckstrom-security-technology-security-beckstrom.html

Most government computers, even is high security level areas, have malfunctioning av and the like. In fact, most of these idiot government workers don't even use PGP for email. And most Americans want the government to run health care...
.

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