As Cybersecurity Week begins, Beijing claims US attacked Uni doing military research

China has accused the United States of a savage cyber attack on a university famed for conducting aerospace research and linked to China's military. The National Computer Virus Emergency Response Centre (NCVERC) made its accusation on September 5, claiming that the Office of Tailored Access Operations at the USA's National …

[Paul Crawford]

NCVERC alleges the NSA used tools that target both x86 and Sun Solaris environments

Is the USA going against the Geneva convention and allowing Oracle's licensing lawyers to go after them?

[sitta_europea]

If the USA was *not* going after China's systems I'd be very surprised, and hugely disappointed.

[prh99]

Pot calling the kettle black. How much military research has China stolen from the west to advance it's military?

[vtcodger]

Military Secret theft

"How much military research has China stolen from the west to advance it's military?"

Surely not as much as you think. Nobody in their right mind puts military secrets on the open internet where the half-life of their secrecy would be measured in hours or days. In point of fact, the US spends tens, probably hundreds, of billions of dollars every year making sure secrets aren't trivially accessible to clever folk in (potentially) hostile nations. And every other major power surely does the same.

There has probably been a bit of leakage of military secrets through old fashioned espionage. But if so, either there wouldn't seem to be much of it or their spies are remarkably adept at not getting caught.

(China is accused, probably fairly, of spying on overseas Chinese communities, but apparently they are looking for supporters of causes/philosophes/whatever that are not considered appropriate in the People's Republic, not for military secrets).

[druck]

If this was a real intrusion, and not a bit of PR spin as mentioned in the article, perhaps one Chinese university is experiencing a little of what every western educational institute and defence company is experiencing day in and day out, emanating from behind the great firewall.

[VoiceOfTruth]

China

Should open a criminal case against the NSA and demand the extradition of the alleged offenders. They can face justice in China and stop being fugitives.

[Anonymous Coward]

Spell check

Shouldn't that spokesman be "Moa Ning"?

[An_Old_Dog]

"used in SPARC environments"

That wasn't an NSA hack. That was an Oracle license audit!

[crayon]

"The FBI rates China as the worst cyber threat faced by the US and claims to open an investigation into Beijing-driven attacks every twelve hours"

They can open an investigation every 12-seconds for whatever it's worth. It would be more educational to know how many of those investigations have actually resulted in prosecutions and convictions and hence how much time and expense was wasted on fishing expeditions.

"There is doubtless some truth in China's claims that the US uses information warfare to seek valuable information. But such activities are surely to be expected as just another tool of modern tradecraft, rather than an example of escalated belligerence."

It is mutually expected, but it doesn't stop the FBI (and other USGOV depts) in acting as if they have a hornet's nest up their arse whenever there is an alleged attack on their infrastructure.

[Clausewitz4.0]

Solaris 0-days

I would setup some new Solaris servers with dummy secrets to get those Solaris 0-days exploits into my hands.

Hopefully the Chinese did that before leaking the NSA op. to the press.