Look, I dont want anyone to get the impression that this is turning into a China threat site…its not and never will notwithstanding the earlier post today on Chinese development of a hyper-sonic weapon.
But our sister site Military.com posted a story this morning about a computer attack against a DoD site that came to light this weekend, and we wanted to post the Pentagons response today.
Defense spokesman Bryan Whitman confirmed the attack, but he also said DoD sites are a regular target of a wide variety of computer network attacks both amateur and military in nature. But whats amazing is that Whitman confirmed that it was an attack by the Chinese military.
Now, were not saying thats an act of war, but it is at least significant that the Pentagon would dive head first into that pot of geo-strategic boiling oil.
Again, dont read with the impression that the DT staff is warmongering. But we feel that this story may be a bit underreported and that a serious debate needs to occur over whether a computer network attack such as this is indeed an aggressive act or worse.
From Armed Forces Press Service:
The Defense Department receives many attempted cyber attacks each day and has measures in place to aggressively respond to and deter these attacks, a department spokesman said today.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman addressed media reports that a computer system in the Office of the Secretary of Defense was hacked into by the Chinese military earlier this year. Whitman confirmed that an attack did occur in June but declined to identify the origin of the threat. It is often difficult to pinpoint the true origin of an intrusion into computer systems and even more difficult to tie the intrusion to a specific nation or government, he noted.
“Cyber or non-kinetic type threats to military computer networks are viewed as just as real and just as significant as physical or kinetic threats,” Whitman said. “The department aggressively responds to deter all intrusions to defend what is known as the GIG, the global information grid.”
When the intrusion occurred in June, elements of an unclassified e-mail system in the Office of the Secretary of Defense were taken off-line briefly, Whitman said. However, the department has redundant systems in place, so ongoing operations were not disrupted, he said. The system was restored to full service within two or three weeks.
There are hundreds of attempted intrusions into the Defense Department computer network each day, the majority of which are detected and stopped, Whitman said. The nature of the threat is large and diverse and includes recreational hackers, self-styled cyber vigilantes, various groups with nationalistic or ideological agendas, transnational actors, and nation states. When appropriate, the department turns cases over to law enforcement officials for investigation, he said.
“We continue to aggressively monitor our networks for intrusions,” Whitman said. “We have appropriate procedures to address events of this nature.”
Since the incident in June, Whitman said, he knows of no successful intrusions into the Defense Department computer system.
{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }
I would hope the DOD has plans for initiating cyber attacks against the chinese, both civilian and military!
In fact, I hope they are doing it now.
Goose/gander thang!
Well, if jamming a countries communications is an act of war, ‘hacking’ surely is as well. That said, then China may very well have declared a Virtual Cold War on the US, Germany, and probably others. Then again, physical attacks on the USS Cole & the US embassy didn’t cause much of a response.
The cost of cleaning up, a forensic review, will probably be in the millions & more than likely won’t include what’s been taken. I wonder if the ‘hackers’ left anything behind?
If the US doesn’t respond aggressively, such as trade sanctions, then things will just get worse from here.
“Report: Germans spot Chinese spy attacks”
http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/577
“China on hot seat over alleged hacks”
http://www.securityfocus.com/news/11485
“Golden Shield Project”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_firewall_of_china
Y’know, I think you’re reading this wrong. The excerpt posted doesn’t actually say anywhere that Whitman admitted the attack was from the Chinese military. It says he addressed reports that it did, but he himself refused to identify the source of the threat.
Proving the origin of the attack would be a pain without access to the infrastructure & computers involved… and that’s no fun. Others might find the timing of the report suspicious, with the APEC meeting in Australia & all… eh… who knows.
Bush to hold APEC talks with Hu
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/08/31/2020357.htm
this is just another example of a aggressive posture from china. they talk about we are just modernizing our military abilities. but in reality its just a cover for eventual conflict with the US. one does not buy a hammer with the intention of not needing or using it. more and more we should take note of chinas increasing aggressive incidents against free nations.
why not just initiate a dos attack on china from the us. would be interesting to see what would happen if the civilians were doing it and not the gov :P
I don’t mean to harp on you about this Christian, I don’t agree with accusations that DefTech is war mongering or fear mongering or anything besides tech-mongering. But I don’t read any confirmation in that report by Whitman that is was chinese, let alone chinese military. In fact the report says he “declined to identify the origin of the threat”. Methinks there was a breakdown in communication somewhere.
As an IT professional with more than a passing interest in IT security, I would say that the folks in charge of IT security at the Pentagon might be a tad embarassed here. Though the email supposedly exposed was unclassified, it’s still pretty sad.
As for ths being an act of war, I think not. As far as I understand it we do not necesarily classify any and all covert and/or infiltration activity directed against us as acts of war.
So, hack back! Infiltrate their stuff. I just hope the guys the DoD hires to do their hacking are better than the ones they hired to protect themselves.
-Chris
Should anyone be suprised? This is standard Chinese military doctrine and should be expected of our adversaries.This is just one leg of a multi-prong strategy to pry secrets from the US military-industrial complex and has been happening for well over a decade (only it continually increases in sophistication and frequency). It is far easier and cheaper for China to steal US technology secrets than to invest time and money in R&D in technologies the US has already mastered.
When one considers the adeptness of their manufacturing sector to copy US technology, no one should be suprised that they are duplicating those same efforts in the military sector.
In addition, they are probing for vulnerabilities in our supposedly secure military/intelligence network infrastructures in order to exploit them for secrets as well as gathering data for contingency planning for a future attack, if necessary.
Why risk the arrest of a valuable Chinese asset (Wen Ho Lee-type confederate) at Los Alamos if you can break in and steal out secrets remotely?
The US is not below conducting these types of attacks if it is in our national interest to do so.Surely we have been disabling and exploiting AQ/Hezbollah networks/servers/mirrors for years in an attempt to impede the flow of propaganda to their members and recruits. It has also been reported in the press that the US has infected computer networks in cybercafes throughout the ME and Europe in order to obtain intel on our enemies.
There really is nothing nefarious about these Chinese actions…they should be expected and a counter-strategy to prevent or minimize the damage caused has surely been implemented.
Spying is the second oldest profession.
I also agree it is not war mongering to report these incidents, nor to report Iran’s intransigence when it comes to IAEA inspections and the acquisition of a nuclear capability. They will do what they believe is in their best interest, regardless.
No matter who occupies the White House and the halls of Congress, China and Iran continue down their separate roads with the same objective in mind-Modernized, technologically advanced military capabilities and a strong nuclear deterrent.
Let’s not forget Iran sits between 2 countries presently occupied by US military forces and is faced with an overwhelming thermonuclear advantage by Israel. If you were Ahmadinejad, you may consider a nuclear deterrent to be the only option you have to keep US forces out of Iran and keep Israel mulling the consequences of an attack as well, not to mention the prestige of joining the nuclear club.
The precedent has already been set…DPRK set one off and what did the US do? Upped the anty on foreign aid and incentives to give them up….no attack, no invasion.
From the perspective of any nuclear member state in existence thus far, deterrence works.
War/fear mongering, stop it! It is not my intention to insult ducks but… China: If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck. Come on? The Eye on China section of this site is very appropriate to discuss current and pre-1970s technology. In addition to intellectual and physical property theft perpetrated by China. From the perspective of a taxpayer, not the least of a war fighter, how can we mitigate this risk? Obviously it helps to back technical solutions with strong political action or legal recourse. Nevertheless, it is appropriate to label it as such.
Incidentally for everyone curious, if you click the link to that actual story at military.com you’ll read that the chinese military was identified as the source of the attacks by an “unnamed senior US official”. I presume that is where Christian got the “confirmed” bit from, although as I understand it Whitman hasn’t confirmed it.
Heh, what, like we’re not hacking the chinese network?
also, war with china = great way to completely destroy the world economy which we’ve been building for 40-50 years.
so maybe y’all should take a cold shower before you start hopping up and down and letting slip the dogs of war over a denial-of-service attack.
oh, and the DoD could stop sucking, tech-wise. That would be helpful too.
I think China is on the verge of ruining their own economy on their own. Cheap bastards.
As well as this craziness, about a week and a half ago I heard a very brief radio news headline about an incident where “Anonymous Army sources confirmed that unknown persons successfully infiltrated a U.S. Army base here in the United States, infiltrated a flight operations building, and stole flight plans and associated details for a number of planned helicopter flights.” That’s all the report said, and I’ve not been able to find anything more on it since. Anyone know anything?
China is, and always has been, the enemy! They have undercut American goods with inferior cheaper ones (lets all realize the hundreds of thousands of toys that American kids have been using that are known to contain lead as of late) and will trade materials and tech with any enemy of the west. Lets thank Bush for opening free trade with them too.
lol…world economy
May your job be outsourced to some nice Chinese person.
I run a boat for a living. We have recent started having a rash of leaking fuel filters.
Why? Defective “rubber” seals from China. I sure hope our military isn’t using the same ones!
Other rubber products/seals failing also.
Why? So some of our wonderful elected officials can enjoy weekends on their favorite China lobbyist? So the Waltons can build factories in China and import more cheap crap?
So our blind leadership cna increase our trade deficit to numbers we don’t even comprehend?
We’ll be paying em tribute soon………….
OK
Yes let the hackers give it their best shot.
Just remember; Captain America is alive, well and on call.
He lives in Washington DC with his best friends Superman, Silver surfer, Batman, Fantastic four and Aqua-man.
To Thor:
For God’s sake man, get your facts straight. Don’t blame Bush for opening up trade with China.
That goes back a long way, though it was with some
restrictions until Clinton came along and sold our
computer technology (a bunch of IBM’s biggest computers) to them in violation of a ban on that
particular activity that had been in effect a LONG time. The Chinese loved Clinton so much they
donated a lot of dollars to his second presidential campaign. Your statement identifies
you as a Liberal Democrat with a blind fury toward
President Bush. I would be the first to agree he
is not the best President we ever had, but blaming him for EVERYTHING (including hurricanes and tornadoes) shows insanity from blind, or
tunnel vision, hatred. You probably are going to vote for another Clinton in the upcoming election, and I can tell you that you will be getting EXACTLY what you vote for. Clear the blinders and cobwebs from your eyes and see the truth instead of media foisted BS. It would do
ALL of you Liberals a great deal of good to learn
to read, find facts, and apply them. As it is, liberals never let facts distort their decisions,
or mar their viewpoints.
This is not going ot go away, I am suffering port scans every 1.5-4 mins apart from three sources in beijing, the same three sources are attacking a server in south Carolina, a server in Holland aswell as other systems here in UK. This is bigger than people realise and will get worse, I am proposing to put a price on the head of the registrant of these attackers.
Need to down Afganistan, Irak, Iran, Pakistan or they or we USA.
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