Oh no Xi didn't?! China's hackers nick naval tech blueprints, diddle with foreign elections to boost trade – new claim Researchers claim to have uncovered a five-year Chinese hacking operation aimed at bolstering Beijing's naval might and trade deals to the detriment of the world's democracies and maritime hardware makers. In a report issued conveniently just in time for the RSA Security Conference in San Francisco this week, IT threat …
Yet again, the "benefit" of unencrypted TCP/IP everywhere, depending upon firewall and gateway rules, shows itself.
I think the world would have been better off sticking with an non-routable protocol with interpretive gateways only when and where needed. Yes, Yes, it would have added overhead, but 20+ years later we're all paying, quite dearly, for the convenience with the inherent lack of security. There's more to it than that, of course, but you need to start somewhere.
"In pointing the finger at China, FireEye identified the industries and location of the targets – which happened to be relevant to China's naval interests – and the particular time frame of the hacking: most operations took place during China business hours. The hackers also used servers located in China, and the command and control PCs probed by the researchers all ran Chinese language settings."
Aside from the "Every other nation would do this if they can get away with it" obviousness, this paragraph strikes me as extremely funny given the general notion the public has about hacking and nation-state intelligence operations.
If the "group" is indeed chinese, it's not a club of nefarious wizzkids doing James Bondish stuff, but simply a bunch of civil servants clocking in and out every day, griping about the coffee and the Boss insisting on Overtime, and jockeying for that desk promotion/pension security. Almost like any other intelligence agency in the world.
You can have crap IT security, and still design outstanding naval components.
Remember that China took a very long time and spent a lot just to be able to produce good balls for ballpoint pens. The "physical" realm can be far more complex than the "virtual" one, and the technology behind even apparently simple components (but needing high-precision manufacturing or other advanced technologies) may be hard to replicate.
I doubt that Chinese systems are invulnerable to western hacking, it is as important to spy on allies as potential enemies. Just call it normal procedure, call it intelligence sharing; some might believe sharing makes for a more peaceful world...possibly,
to the detriment of the world's democracies
At least that no longer includes the US if Trump's as yet unchallenged activities are anything to go by, and the pushback has now started to create some interesting side effects. In the context of naval events, the Pentagon apparently discussing mothballing the Nimitz-class supercarrier USS Harry S. Truman about two decades early. Oops.
That reference to "the world's democracies" and the use of the term 'blueprint' are a bit of a giveaway for me that this disclosure is primarily political and probably lacks substance.
Its not that there are legions of hackers out there probing around for whatever they can get their hands on; they're like flies, no matter how fast you swat them more seem to appear. Its what they're looking for. Typically naval blueprints are what you'd steal 100 years ago, today you're much more interested in materials and processes -- you know what such and such an item looks like but you need to know why it looks the way it does, how it enhances performance and how you can make it.
The notion of 'democracies' being some kind of bloc of righteousness is also wearing a bit thin.
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