Chinese Cyber (war)fare (merged thread)

[AdamG]

Glad someone else has been paying attention.

Meanwhile, happyfuntime soon to commence. Enjoy darkness, Imperial Running Dog Lackies.

(Reuters) - China will next month conduct its first "digital" technology military exercise, state media said on Wednesday, against growing concern in Washington and elsewhere about Chinese hacking attacks.

A brief report by the official Xinhua news agency said the exercise, in north China's remote Inner Mongolia region, will "test new types of combat forces including units using digital technology amid efforts to adjust to informationalized war".

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...Name=worldNews

[AdamG]

Inside Harvard Business School's McArthur Hall, executive MBA student and CEO Kevin Mandia held a 60-page report in his hands and weighed a risky decision: Should he go public with the document, a detailed expos of Chinese theft of American trade secrets, based on seven years of work for nearly 150 corporate clients? The report's allegations -- that a Chinese military unit was likely engaged in systematic hacking and surveillance of U.S. companies -- not only would make Mandia and his young cybersecurity firm a target for potential retaliation but would also test Washington's already strained relations with Beijing. The 42-year-old former Air Force intelligence officer had a high tolerance for risk, but as he pondered his options that February evening, he wasn't sure that disclosure was a smart move. "We'd have a gigantic bull's-eye on our back," he kept thinking.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/07/08/tech...une/index.html

[AdamG]

A Chinese hacking group accused this February of being tied to the Chinese army was caught last December infiltrating a decoy water control system for a U.S. municipality, a researcher revealed on Wednesday.

The group, known as APT1, was caught by a research project that provides the most significant proof yet that people are actively trying to exploit the vulnerabilities in industrial control systems. Many of these systems are connected to the Internet to allow remote access (see “Hacking Industrial Systems Turns Out to Be Easy”). APT1, also known as Comment Crew, was lured by a dummy control system set up by Kyle Wilhoit, a researcher with security company Trend Micro, who gave a talk on his findings at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news...y-water-plant/

[AdamG]

WASHINGTON — In the Obama administration’s most direct confrontation with China over its theft of corporate secrets, the Justice Department on Monday unsealed an indictment of five members of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army and charged them with hacking into the networks of Westinghouse Electric, the United States Steel Corporation and other companies.

The indictment named members of Unit 61398, which was publicly identified last year as the Shanghai-based cyberunit of the People’s Liberation Army, including its best-known hackers known online by the noms de guerre “UglyGorilla” and “KandyGoo.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/20/us...w&rref=us&_r=0

[AdamG]

SAN FRANCISCO — The email attachment looked like a brochure for a yoga studio in Toulouse, France, the center of the European aerospace industry. But once it was opened, it allowed hackers to sidestep their victim’s network security and steal closely guarded satellite technology.

The fake yoga brochure was one of many clever come-ons used by a stealth Chinese military unit for hacking, said researchers at CrowdStrike, an Irvine, Calif., security company. Their targets were the networks of European, American and Japanese government entities, military contractors and research companies in the space and satellite industry, systematically broken into for seven years.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/10/te...acks.html?_r=1

[AdamG]

FBI director James Comey talked about Chinese hacking -- and how basically every American company has been targeted -- last night on 60 Minutes. Comey said that it's not the Chinese are so good, it's that they're "prolific." He likened their hacking style to a "drunk burglar."

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/...ar_808569.html

[AdamG]

Washington (CNN) -- China and "probably one or two other" countries have the capacity to shut down the nation's power grid and other critical infrastructure through a cyber attack, the head of the National Security Agency told a Congressional panel Thursday.

Admiral Michael Rogers, who also serves the dual role as head of U.S. Cyber Command, said the United States has detected malware from China and elsewhere on U.S. computers systems that affect the daily lives of every American.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/20/politi...rid/index.html