Cyber warfare is part of every developed country’s 21st century arsenal. Although no U.S. official will admit it, the Pentagon, CIA, and NSA regularly probe and try to hack into China’s military and industrial computer networks to obtain the information that years ago were brought back by the James Bonds of spy services. The U.S., and many of our European allies, try to find ways to wreck some havoc in the Chinese computer grid if a conflict ever takes place. The difference is that the Chinese are better than anyone else and lead the way in technological breakthroughs for the cyber battlefield. An FBI report concludes that a massive Chinese cyberattack could “be in the magnitude of a weapon of mass destruction,” says the analyst, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about it, adding that it would do substantial damage to the American economy, telecommunications, electric power grid, and military preparedness.
The FBI report estimates that since 2003, the Chinese Army has specifically developed a network of over 30,000 Chinese military cyberspies, plus more than 150,000 private-sector computer experts, whose mission is to steal American military and technological secrets and cause mischief in government and financial services. China’s goal, says the FBI report, is to have the world’s premier “informationized armed forces” by 2020. According to the bureau’s classified information, the Chinese hackers are adept at implanting malicious computer code, and in 2009 companies in diverse industries such as oil and gas, banking, aerospace, and telecommunications encountered costly and at times debilitating problems with Chinese-implanted “malware.” The FBI analyst would not name the affected companies.
The idiots who insist on connecting critical military and infrastructure systems to public networks make it easy for these guys.
2, ECA, IMPORTANT machines should NEVER be allowed NEAR the net.
That’s not always practical in a network-centric world.
9, Skeptic Ask yourself this… Why would China financially incapacitate it’s biggest customer?
China is currently a regional power. China desires to be a global power and has a “100-year” plan to get there. In the big picture, they realize we will eventually try to put them in check when they start to expand their sphere of influence as a global power. They things they are doing today help setup the framework for their vision of the future. They will not overtly “incapacitate” us in the near future.
If they ever needed to engage us militarily, they would take us out at our weakest point. I forget the name of the Chinese General they’re following, but they believe in what is called asymmetric warfare when engaging a technologically superior enemy. In other words, you take your enemy out at their weakest link. In this case, they will likely use the technological infrastructure they’ve manufactured for us against us.
This all being said, I’m pretty certain that many U.S. tech companies have also intentionally developed back doors and kill switches at the request of the U.S. government.
11, GetReal, Some think our government can’t do anything right. They do many things right and many things wrong; but at least they don’t willingly sell out their country for money.
That distinction belongs to private enterprise, senators and representatives – not government employees.
Google how the 3Com deal went down in the past year or so and what the ramifications were on that.
15, Mike Strong, I almost never see anyone mention the amount of computer hardware made in China as being a massive problem. All those chips down on the mother board and in how many places? Should never have been any wonder. I wondered why almost 30 years ago.
BINGO!!! COTS drove a lot of this too. What has happened is the MBA-mindset amongst civilian leadership within the DOD. When you reduce national defense down to just a bottom line, then you invite cutting corners in order to save money. Not a good idea when it comes to national defense. The key concerns are:
1. Kill Switches
2. Back Doors
3. Unreliable performance (poor quality)
The tragic part is the DOD civilians who sold the idea of using COTS within the military probably got promoted due to their sales pitch of how they saved everyone money.
DARPA is looking into the first two concerns through a program called “Trust in Integrated Circuits”. Google it.
How concerned is the Pentagon? “Despite a six-year effort to build trusted computer chips for military systems, the Pentagon now manufactures in secure facilities run by American companies only about 2 percent of the more than $3.5 billion of integrated circuits bought annually for use in military gear.“
http://tinyurl.com/ye5e7gt
19, Pikachu, If the Chinese are such great software engineers, why do they need to STEAL source code?
That’s how they close the technological gap they have with us. Rather than spend tons of time and money closing the gap, they’re simply stealing it from us. They want to learn everything thing that took us years to develop in a fraction of the time. It’s part of their “100-year” plan.
#12 Camacho For President <-Love the name.
China's intelligence efforts are based on the idea of "a thousand grains of sand." This means that they try to recruit almost anyone with technical aptitude who is western bound. Successful recruits tend not to be intelligence goldmines, but if everybody brings back a bit then the overall take is pretty good.
#15 Actually chips of Chinese manufacture are a known security concern.
Every post on here about isolation, sandboxing or unplugging vital systems from the net are about 10 years behind reality. Everything is ultimately connected through a very complex weave of market-based networks, monitoring sensors, corporate networks, etc. It is near impossible today to have an ‘air-gapped’ LAN. As the inside of that core network gets complex and more ‘IT’, there is ever the more need for it to integrate with corporate, vendor lans, and even the internet. I tend to agree that we are pretty much doomed but you should be educated experienced with working in critical systems to come up with this educated assessment.
#21 GUYVER..
yES IT IS..
If you have a computer that YOU THINK will be a major target, DONT allow it on the net.
USE a Second machine as a CRASH machine. LOAD UP and test and RUn what you wish..ONLY transfer progs/data tot he MAIn machine after its tested and CLEANED and verified.
The 2 machines should run almost the same, really. UNLESS an infection or attempt is made to kill it.
AND if this happens, GUESS WHAT. you still have the MAIN as a backup.
CLEAN the CRASH computer, ERASE and start over, as the MAIN is running the site, and install what IS’ still alive on the main to the CRASH computer(the NEW MAIN). as the OLD main, is NOW the CRASH computer.
Its just a RUNNING backup computer, that you KNOW is clean and working.
If you are foolish enough to let the MAIn computer have access to the NET, you are aiming for a crash. There are to many ways to crash it. esp with WINDOWS.
Re: Mike Strong – hardware chips from China
Here is how much of chumps we are in the US. My wife works in procurement of a major fortune 500 company that has businesses in China. Four years ago, China refused her company to send servers from the US to her company’s datacenters in China — instead, the government said in order to continue business, you must buy servers from China. These were hundreds of servers a month, owned by the company, just for support within China.
Imagine if the US did this? The Chinese have been preparing for cyberwar for years. I am not a political person but jesus christ did this country f#ck up and sleep behind the wheel.
#25 Chilico
If US companies weren’t so eager to exploit cheap Chinese labour and lax environmental / labour standards, then perhaps things might have been different. As it stands, corporate greed and mindless consumption is killing the US. Sometimes less is more.
#25, 26…
ummm!!!
hold IT…
think only 1 thought..
In the 1940-50′s…GUESS WHO TAUGHT THEM???
the USA.
In the 1970′s GUESSSSSSSSS WHO TAUGHT THEM ECONOMY????
the USA…
NOW, the lesson..
3 ways to SCREW a country…
WAR
ECONOMICS…
ANd……………..
24, ECA, in an ad hoc wireless battlefield, what you’re proposing isn’t practical…. at least not yet.
That being said, the previous administration reduced the number of domestic DOD servers having access to the outside world to curb cyber attacks from the likes of China. But connections to the outside world are still needed. By reducing the number of outside connections, they’ve forced the bad guys to concentrate their efforts in only a few entry points which is much easier to monitor from our end.