Chinese Cyber (war)fare (merged thread)

[AdamG]

Police in Kenya say they are holding 77 Chinese nationals who are accused of running a cyber crime network and mysterious "command centre" from upmarket houses in the capital Nairobi.

Kenya's foreign ministry also summoned China's top diplomat in Nairobi as it sought to establish if Beijing was in anyway linked to the affair.

Local police said they believed the gang was "preparing to raid the country's communication systems".

The Daily Nation newspaper said a series of raids turned up equipment capable of infiltrating bank accounts, Kenya's M-Pesa mobile banking system and ATMs.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-0...r-bust/5945610

[AdamG]

A federal weather service employee charged with stealing sensitive infrastructure data from an Army Corps of Engineers database met a Chinese government official in Beijing, according to court documents that reveal the case to be part of an FBI probe of Chinese economic espionage.

Xiafen “Sherry” Chen, an employee of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) office in Ohio, was arrested in October and charged in a federal grand jury indictment with illegally accessing the Army’s National Inventory of Dams (NID).

The NID is a sensitive database containing information on all U.S. dams. U.S. intelligence officials have said the database was compromised by Chinese hackers in 2013 as part of covert efforts by Beijing to gather sensitive information on critical U.S. infrastructure for possible use in a future conflict.

http://freebeacon.com/national-secur...al-in-beijing/

[AdamG]

How utterly embarrassing for the Obama administration.

Hackers working for the Chinese state breached the computer system of the Office of Personnel Management in December, U.S. officials said Thursday, and the agency will notify about 4 million current and former federal employees that their personal data may have been compromised.

The hack was the largest breach of federal employee data in recent years. It was the second major intrusion of the same agency by China in less than a year and the second significant foreign breach into U.S. government networks in recent months.Last year, Russia compromised White House and State Department e-mail systems in a campaign of cyber#espionage.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...44e_story.html

[Invictus_88]

Am I the only one concerned that, looking back in five years' time, we might wish that this is the worst that ever happened?

[davidbfpo]

I have only read the WaPo report, which has very little detail and a good dollop of speculation. So OPM are notifying 4m US citizens / residents of 'potential' problems. Somehow I expect other database losses are just as significant.

This type of reporting IMHO only adds to worry and speculation. I do wonder OPM notification announcement was prompted by the WaPo story.

[AdamG]

WASHINGTON — The inspector general at the Office of Personnel Management, which keeps the records and security clearance information for millions of current and retired federal employees, issued a report in November that essentially described the agency’s computer security system as a Chinese hacker’s dream.

But by the time the report was published, Chinese hackers had already cleaned out tens of thousands of files on sensitive security clearances, and were preparing for a much broader attack that ultimately obtained detailed personal information on at least four million current and former government employees. Even today, the agency is struggling to patch numerous vulnerabilities.

A number of administration officials on Friday painted a picture of a government office struggling to catch up, with the Chinese ahead of them at every step.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/06/us...acks.html?_r=0

[AdamG]

Anyone who is surprised by this has not been paying attention.
http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ad.php?t=21600


There's a very specific reason I posted this article in a thread separate from the one I started in 2011.
http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ad.php?t=14610

[AdamG]

Am I the only one concerned that, looking back in five years' time, we might wish that this is the worst that ever happened?

You mean that if someone where to read through all the threads on SWJ, correlating the implications of everything posted from the lack of competence with the USAF nuclear forces to the conveyor belt relief of senior officers across all branches of the military (combined with the studies on Toxic leadership), to the gradual degradation of our abilities to Force Project running parallel with our land and sea forces now playing catch-up training in conventional warfare, as related to loss of credibility overseas with our Department of State reflected back to the Security Theater practiced in the United States since 2001 (which has been demonstrated to have more holes than a brick of Swiss cheese) along with our massive vulnerabilities to offensive hacking? All of which could lead - even with only a marginally competent OPFORCE orchestrating it - to a combination Pearl Harbor/Task Force Smith/Iron Bottom Sound of epic proportions, or '9-11 times a hundred' if you will?

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/da...wall_chart.jpg



Haven't given it a second's thought.

[AdamG]

J. David Cox, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said in a letter Thursday to OPM director Katherine Archuleta that based on incomplete information OPM provided to the union, "we believe that the Central Personnel Data File was the targeted database, and that the hackers are now in possession of all personnel data for every federal employee, every federal retiree, and up to 1 million former federal employees."

The OPM data file contains the records of non-military, non-intelligence executive branch employees, which covers most federal civilian employees but not, for example, members of Congress and their staffs.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...06-11-15-58-33

As officials of the Obama administration announced that millions of sensitive records associated with current and past federal employees and contractors had been exposed by a long-running infiltration of the networks and systems of the Office of Personnel Management on June 4, they claimed the breach had been found during a government effort to correct problems with OPM's security. An OPM statement on the attack said that the agency discovered the breach as it had "undertaken an aggressive effort to update its cybersecurity posture." And a DHS spokesperson told Ars that "interagency partners" were helping the OPM improve its network monitoring "through which OPM detected new malicious activity affecting its information technology systems and data in April 2015."

http://arstechnica.com/security/2015...-product-demo/

[AdamG]

Oh sure, Beijing isn't at war with America

WASHINGTON (AP) — Hackers linked to China have gained access to the sensitive background information submitted by intelligence and military personnel for security clearances, U.S. officials said Friday, describing a cyberbreach of federal records dramatically worse than first acknowledged.

The forms authorities believed may have been stolen en masse, known as Standard Form 86, require applicants to fill out deeply personal information about mental illnesses, drug and alcohol use, past arrests and bankruptcies. They also require the listing of contacts and relatives, potentially exposing any foreign relatives of U.S. intelligence employees to coercion. Both the applicant's Social Security number and that of his or her cohabitant is required.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/d842d...victim-hackers

[OUTLAW 09]

http://20committee.com/2015/06/13/op...-worker-trust/

OPM Hack Is Serious Breach Of Worker Trust

June 13, 2015

“We cannot undo this damage. What’s done is done, and it will take decades to fix.”

This morning National Public Radio had me on to discuss the impact of the mega-hacks of OPM, which I’ve written about here, here and here this week. I discussed several things, including the grave violation of the trust (and the personal secrets) of millions of Americans that this failure has caused.

I said from the outset that this incident was a very big deal, indeed disastrous, from any security or counterintelligence perspective, and sadly this week’s ever-worse revelations have demonstrated that my pessimism was correct.

You can listen to my interview with NPR’s Scott Simon here.

Link to NPR:http://www.npr.org/2015/06/13/414149...f-worker-trust

[AdamG]

1. Can we get the following thread unlocked?
http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ad.php?t=14610

2. Can we get this thread combined with the above, this post inclusive?

Great Firewall rising: How China wages its war on the Internet

Since China began controlling its citizens' Internet access in the mid-1990s, the censors have been engaged in an arms race with activists and developers to block tools that helped people jump over the Firewall and close loopholes that popped up.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/25/asia/c...all/index.html

[davidbfpo]

AdamG,

AS requested below I have been at work. I have merged the requested thread plus another and have changed the thread's title. It wasUndercover Researchers Expose Chinese Internet Water Army and now will be 'Chinese Cyber (war)fare (merged thread)'.

1. Can we get the following thread unlocked?
http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ad.php?t=14610

2. Can we get this thread combined with the above, this post inclusive?

[AdamG]

Awesome.

Have some content.

State-backed hackers in China are still carrying out a string of cyber espionage attacks on many U.S. companies, violating the pact that the two countries' signed just recently. The U.S. technology and pharmaceutical sectors have reportedly been subject to precision attacks aimed at the "theft of intellectual property and trade secrets" in the course of three weeks.

http://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/x...ite+Cyber+Pact

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), which is a private and nonprofit facility doing scientific research focused on the world's oceans, revealed that it was the recipient of an aggressive hacking attack that can seemingly be traced back to China.

The hackers were able to access the data and email of Woods Hole, WHOI Director and President Mark Abbott said to the institution's staff earlier this week.

WHOI general counsel and internal investigation head Christopher Land said that so far, there are no signs that the data stolen by the hackers have been used for malicious purposes.

Why would a Chinese hacker attempt to break into Woods Hole's systems? It might have something to do with the fact that the institution also does classified research for the Department of Defense.

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/96...er-huh-why.htm