US Warns Olympic Visitors of Chinese Cyber-Spying 231
An anonymous reader writes to tell us the US Government has issued a strong warning to travelers headed to the Beijing Olympics (PDF) with respect to electronic data. Part FUD, part awareness, the CBS article reads like 1984, urging travelers to treat all electronic devices (from fax to cellphone and back) as compromised, and proceeds to talk about China's aggressive cyber-espionage programs. "China is one of a number of countries pushing active cyber-espionage programs aimed primarily at cracking U.S. national security computers and stealing corporate trade secrets. Billions have already been lost. In addition, cyber-gangs and criminals, many based in Asia, have stolen bank accounts and credit card numbers from an untold number of Americans."
Re:In Soviet USA (Score:2, Informative)
The "pot" here is not talking to the "kettle". It is talking to us -- don't use fax or blackberry, if you don't want China to intercept the information.
You gotta be kidding. My blackberry uses 128-bit AES encryption to send information to/from my company's blackberry enterprise server.
I really doubt the Chinese can crack that. The blackberry platform [blackberry.com] has been audited from end-to-end by NATO, Communications Security Establishment (Canada), Communications Electronic Security Group (UK), Center for Secure Information Technology (Austria), Defense Signals Directorate (Australia), Government Communications Security Bureau (New Zealand), National Institute of Standards and Technology (USA).
Re:In Soviet USA (Score:5, Informative)
Because the US is one of the largest economies in the world? And... you do realize they also do this to Germany, France, Brazil, the UK, and everyone else, too, right?
Pure FUD
Wrong. In the past three months I've encountered some increasingly sophisticated attacks on web servers, all in the name of getting specific scripts in front of very specific visiting users, all so that their browsers will run off to a laundry list of Chinese IP addresses and slurp up Trojan-installing malware that in turn sniffs keystrokes and piles up local files system objects into ZIP files that are then sent to OTHER Chinese IP addresses. This is not script kiddies screwing around, and the very deliberate targeting of people in the defense, engineering, and law enforcement areas is not blind luck.
Re:Untill your own computer is seized. (Score:2, Informative)
In Canada, the title "Engineer" has a very specific and legally binding definition. There are no software engineers in Canada.
It would be like claiming that you are a "Martian Lawyer" when you are really not a lawyer at all.