Hacking U.S. Secrets, China Pushes for Drones

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/21/world/asia/hacking-us-secrets-china-pushes-for-drones.html

by sethbannon • 13 years ago

26 19 13 years ago

r0h1n• 13 years 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• 13 years 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• 13 years 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• 13 years 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.

gaius2• 13 years 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• 13 years 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.

wikiburner4• 13 years 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"?

gaius2• 13 years 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• 13 years 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• 13 years 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• 13 years 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.

hosh3• 13 years 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.

wikiburner4• 13 years 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

dm2• 13 years 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

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/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.

hosh3• 13 years ago

I was thinking of an offensive mobile platform rather than defensive, but the CKM is interesting.

I have not looked at this in depth. Apparently, carriers are costly to produce and requires a significant technical skills and discipline among the crew. A drone carrier that can pack the same offensive capability, yet doesn't require the level of skilled and disciplined crew, and is cheaper, is significant. Particularly, combined with the "carrier killer missiles".

Hacking U.S. Secrets, China Pushes for Drones

Related Stories