6 ms·

Hacking U.S. Secrets, China Pushes for Drones

26 points by sethbannon 13y ago

r0h1n 13y ago
Amazing how fast China has started looking like a Johnny-come-lately, now that Snowden has opened our eyes to how the US/NSA/GCHQ were targeting their citizens, allies, enemies and the Internet itself (by coercing service providers and by weakening underlying cryptography).
- anologwintermut 13y ago
  I don't think that shoe has dropped yet. As far as domestic surveillance goes, NSA seems to be approaching the level in terms of capabilities of Chinese MSS. In terms of foreign surveillance, although we can safely assume NSA has access to more fiber and hence internet traffic, there seems little reason to think their hacking activities are any more prevalent than any other large intelligence agency. Those capabilities are, after all, rather cheap. What we haven't learned of, at least yet, is rampant industrial espionage by NSA to steal R&D and a pipeline for dealing with the stolen results. China, at least according to US allegations, has precisely that.
  - VladRussian2 13y ago
    >What we haven't learned of, at least yet, is rampant industrial espionage by NSA to steal R&D and a pipeline for dealing with the stolen results. i wouldn't mind if NSA was doing something really useful like that instead of building total surveilance and instilling fears of it into its own citizenry
  - tanzam75 13y ago
    > What we haven't learned of, at least yet, is rampant industrial espionage by NSA to steal R&D and a pipeline for dealing with the stolen results. China, at least according to US allegations, has precisely that. China would still be late to that game. France and Israel were famous for doing government-sponsored industrial espionage in the 1980s-1990s. Again, according to US allegations.
gaius 13y ago
Question: why were these computers connected to the Internet in the first place? So the drone design engineers could check their Facebooks? Computers doing real work should be airgapped, this is a no-brainer.
- jonnathanson 13y ago
  My guess is that some social engineering is involved. That's how the Soviets hacked the Manhattan Project in the 1940s: planting spies, and/or bribing scientists involved in the R&D. Another guess is that, because so many defense contractors and manufacturers are interdependent these days -- almost nobody designs or builds complete systems anymore -- they are tied to each other through communication channels and networks. A really good hacker-spy could piece together bits of information from Source A with information from Sources B, C, D, and discover or infer vulnerabilities from there. Air-gapping does seem like an obvious choice, however, and I'm legitimately puzzled if it's not being done for the most sensitive design systems.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- wikiburner 13y ago
  Just curious, how would airgapping be practical if you need Internet connectivity for your "real work"? For example, let's say you run a quant trading firm and the algorithms you're concerned about being stolen need connectivity to download live trading info, and then after processing that info they need to communicate buy/sell orders to the outside world. Are there any methods that could be used that would prevent all communication with a secure system (with an airgap level of certainty) besides the strictly defined data you need to do your "real work"?
  - gaius 13y ago
    Sure, you would just use Radianz, and that is in fact what everyone does. This is a very solved problem! Bloomberg also operates a private network, and there are others too. These systems can operate perfectly well without access to the public Internet. A couple of jobs ago I worked at a financial services firm with 2 networks and 2 PCs on everyone's desk. Rednet for outside connectivity, and an internal network for real work, and never the twain shall meet. NO-ONE needs the Internet for real work, let's be honest, just for goofing off. Time we all started to prioritize security over mere convenience.
xkiwi 13y ago
Hacking Unite nation. Media: China was doing that, too. Hacking Encrypt Fax, Media: Quiet we developed drone, attacks in pakistan. Media: Quiet China developed drone, doing nothing, yet. Media: Hacking U.S. Secrets, China Pushes for Drones Enforce human rights to third world countries. U.S.: -airline reservations are used to target illegal searches. -cellphone tracking by tower -20 miles interior check points, -100-miles Border Zone as "Consitution-free". As a result, San Francisco, Los Angles, Seattle, Chicago, New York, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Miami, Houston are Consitution-free. Now what was the news again?
Asterick6 13y ago
Why not drop a mention of the NSA/CIA's spying and hacking on other countries and American citizens? Seems that it's only news for the media when China does it. Bunch of hypocrites.
- wavefunction 13y ago
  The NYT and other major US media are pretty regularly reporting on the ongoing revelations from the Snowden whistle-blowing. I believe HN has instituted a "no NSA spying" story policy in general due to political arguments rather than discussions of the technical aspects involved. I could be wrong though.
hosh 13y ago
Hmmm. I wonder if maritime drone fleets are going to make carrier task forces obsolete, the same way carriers had been rendering battleships obsolete.
- wikiburner 13y ago
  I think China's R&D in "Carrier Killer Missiles" is probably more likely to do it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_killer_missile http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_killer_missile
  - dm2 13y ago
    A CIWS will kick in at about 3 miles and has a 100% kill radius of over 1 mile. This will increase when the system has been upgrade to use lasers (soon). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close-in_weapon_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close-in_weapon_system The CIWS is only used if the SeaSparrow missiles (which have a 40+ mile range) and RAMs do not hit their target. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESSM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESSM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIM-116_Rolling_Airframe_Missile http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIM-116_Rolling_Airframe_Missil... Those would only be used if the jamming equipment/planes failed. Don't forget that carriers always have several ships traveling with them with even more anti-missile firepower. It would literally take a nuclear missile, severe incompetence, or numerous malfunctions on multiple well-tested systems to hit an aircraft carrier with a missile. Plus balls, the US will come after you hard if you mess with one of it's carriers. But yeah, shooting a missile with multiple nuclear warheads is about the only thing that can be done to take out a carrier, and that's a pretty awesome claim. Oh, I guess a railgun would work too, those would be the real carrier killers. The US DoD should definitely assign some extra IT security personnel to the contractors working on railguns.
    - wikiburner 13y ago
      Just wondering, why do you think the U.S. military seems so paranoid about China's research into this? Everything I know about carrier killer missiles comes from mainstream media coverage in response to various U.S. generals sounding the alarm about China's progress in this technology, and its potential to end the U.S.'s dominance of the Pacific. Is it just budgetary saber-rattling? Also, what happens if China fires, say, a few dozen of those missiles at once at a carrier group? After all, those missiles are a hell of a lot cheaper than a carrier.

26 points by sethbannon 13y ago

r0h1n 13y ago

Amazing how fast China has started looking like a Johnny-come-lately, now that Snowden has opened our eyes to how the US/NSA/GCHQ were targeting their citizens, allies, enemies and the Internet itself (by coercing service providers and by weakening underlying cryptography).

anologwintermut 13y ago
I don't think that shoe has dropped yet. As far as domestic surveillance goes, NSA seems to be approaching the level in terms of capabilities of Chinese MSS. In terms of foreign surveillance, although we can safely assume NSA has access to more fiber and hence internet traffic, there seems little reason to think their hacking activities are any more prevalent than any other large intelligence agency. Those capabilities are, after all, rather cheap. What we haven't learned of, at least yet, is rampant industrial espionage by NSA to steal R&D and a pipeline for dealing with the stolen results. China, at least according to US allegations, has precisely that.
- VladRussian2 13y ago
  >What we haven't learned of, at least yet, is rampant industrial espionage by NSA to steal R&D and a pipeline for dealing with the stolen results. i wouldn't mind if NSA was doing something really useful like that instead of building total surveilance and instilling fears of it into its own citizenry
- tanzam75 13y ago
  > What we haven't learned of, at least yet, is rampant industrial espionage by NSA to steal R&D and a pipeline for dealing with the stolen results. China, at least according to US allegations, has precisely that. China would still be late to that game. France and Israel were famous for doing government-sponsored industrial espionage in the 1980s-1990s. Again, according to US allegations.

gaius 13y ago

Question: why were these computers connected to the Internet in the first place? So the drone design engineers could check their Facebooks? Computers doing real work should be airgapped, this is a no-brainer.

jonnathanson 13y ago
My guess is that some social engineering is involved. That's how the Soviets hacked the Manhattan Project in the 1940s: planting spies, and/or bribing scientists involved in the R&D. Another guess is that, because so many defense contractors and manufacturers are interdependent these days -- almost nobody designs or builds complete systems anymore -- they are tied to each other through communication channels and networks. A really good hacker-spy could piece together bits of information from Source A with information from Sources B, C, D, and discover or infer vulnerabilities from there. Air-gapping does seem like an obvious choice, however, and I'm legitimately puzzled if it's not being done for the most sensitive design systems.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
wikiburner 13y ago
Just curious, how would airgapping be practical if you need Internet connectivity for your "real work"? For example, let's say you run a quant trading firm and the algorithms you're concerned about being stolen need connectivity to download live trading info, and then after processing that info they need to communicate buy/sell orders to the outside world. Are there any methods that could be used that would prevent all communication with a secure system (with an airgap level of certainty) besides the strictly defined data you need to do your "real work"?
- gaius 13y ago
  Sure, you would just use Radianz, and that is in fact what everyone does. This is a very solved problem! Bloomberg also operates a private network, and there are others too. These systems can operate perfectly well without access to the public Internet. A couple of jobs ago I worked at a financial services firm with 2 networks and 2 PCs on everyone's desk. Rednet for outside connectivity, and an internal network for real work, and never the twain shall meet. NO-ONE needs the Internet for real work, let's be honest, just for goofing off. Time we all started to prioritize security over mere convenience.

xkiwi 13y ago

Hacking Unite nation. Media: China was doing that, too. Hacking Encrypt Fax, Media: Quiet we developed drone, attacks in pakistan. Media: Quiet China developed drone, doing nothing, yet. Media: Hacking U.S. Secrets, China Pushes for Drones Enforce human rights to third world countries. U.S.: -airline reservations are used to target illegal searches. -cellphone tracking by tower -20 miles interior check points, -100-miles Border Zone as "Consitution-free". As a result, San Francisco, Los Angles, Seattle, Chicago, New York, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Miami, Houston are Consitution-free. Now what was the news again?

Asterick6 13y ago

Why not drop a mention of the NSA/CIA's spying and hacking on other countries and American citizens? Seems that it's only news for the media when China does it. Bunch of hypocrites.

wavefunction 13y ago
The NYT and other major US media are pretty regularly reporting on the ongoing revelations from the Snowden whistle-blowing. I believe HN has instituted a "no NSA spying" story policy in general due to political arguments rather than discussions of the technical aspects involved. I could be wrong though.

hosh 13y ago

Hmmm. I wonder if maritime drone fleets are going to make carrier task forces obsolete, the same way carriers had been rendering battleships obsolete.

wikiburner 13y ago
I think China's R&D in "Carrier Killer Missiles" is probably more likely to do it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_killer_missile http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_killer_missile
- dm2 13y ago
  A CIWS will kick in at about 3 miles and has a 100% kill radius of over 1 mile. This will increase when the system has been upgrade to use lasers (soon). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close-in_weapon_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close-in_weapon_system The CIWS is only used if the SeaSparrow missiles (which have a 40+ mile range) and RAMs do not hit their target. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESSM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESSM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIM-116_Rolling_Airframe_Missile http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIM-116_Rolling_Airframe_Missil... Those would only be used if the jamming equipment/planes failed. Don't forget that carriers always have several ships traveling with them with even more anti-missile firepower. It would literally take a nuclear missile, severe incompetence, or numerous malfunctions on multiple well-tested systems to hit an aircraft carrier with a missile. Plus balls, the US will come after you hard if you mess with one of it's carriers. But yeah, shooting a missile with multiple nuclear warheads is about the only thing that can be done to take out a carrier, and that's a pretty awesome claim. Oh, I guess a railgun would work too, those would be the real carrier killers. The US DoD should definitely assign some extra IT security personnel to the contractors working on railguns.
  - wikiburner 13y ago
    Just wondering, why do you think the U.S. military seems so paranoid about China's research into this? Everything I know about carrier killer missiles comes from mainstream media coverage in response to various U.S. generals sounding the alarm about China's progress in this technology, and its potential to end the U.S.'s dominance of the Pacific. Is it just budgetary saber-rattling? Also, what happens if China fires, say, a few dozen of those missiles at once at a carrier group? After all, those missiles are a hell of a lot cheaper than a carrier.