Cyber Attacks On US Military Jump Sharply In 2009 76
angry tapir writes "Cyber attacks on the US Department of Defense — many of them coming from China — have jumped sharply in 2009, a US congressional committee has reported. Citing data provided by the US Strategic Command, the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission said that there were 43,785 malicious cyber incidents targeting Defense systems in the first half of the year. That's a big jump. In all of 2008, there were 54,640 such incidents. If cyber attacks maintain this pace, the yearly increase will be around 60 percent. The full report (PDF) is available online."
targeted attacks? (Score:2, Interesting)
What would be interesting to know is that if these are targeted attacks specifically against US military networks, or just random scanning for vulnerabilities by every day botnets? I think it's the later case, because if they were targeted attacks they would be stupid not to hide their origins and you wouldn't know they are from china or similar country. Or maybe they're just playing with people's image of bad china and north korea.
And since when North Korean's have had internet?
define "attack" (Score:5, Interesting)
A New Approach: Bait and Strike (Score:2, Interesting)
A better approach may be to rig some computers so that they are easy to hack. We install some deliberately malicious software on those fake computers. Then, we disperse those fake computers among the real computers.
Here is the ideal scenario. A typical Chinese hacker will probe all the computers at the Department of Defense. The probe will easily succeed in penetrating one of the rigged computers. He downloads plenty of software. He will then try to run them. One of the ill-gotten applications then replicates itself and spreads throughout the Chinese Ministry of War.
The rogue application disables the safety mechanism in a Chinese nuclear warhead. On the anniversary of the Chinese invasion of Tibet, the warhead explodes. It melts (literally) the entire military base and kills thousands of Chinese citizens in the nearby town.
On the day of that fire ball, the Chinese hackers will cease their activities for several months.
One obvious question ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Are there actually that many more attacks, or are they just detecting more of them? I wouldn't be at all surprised if in years past, a lot of military computers have been pwned without anyone knowing it happened ... especially given the DoD's ongoing love affair with Windows.
Re:Garbage (Score:3, Interesting)
The PRC is also recruiting from its growing population of technically skilled people, including those from the private sector, to increase its network capabilities. It is recruiting skilled network operators from information technology firms and computer science programs into the ranks of numerous Information Warfare Militia units.
“network operators”.. “Information Warfare Militia”.. What?
Try actually reading the linked PDF and see if you can take it seriously. All this stuff about increased “network attack incidences” and I can find absolutely nothing explicitly linking any incident with the Chinese government or anything even making explicit what a “network attack incident” is. (Also “network warfare” is a pretty small part of the report itself; the report isn’t about “network-warfare”, but US-China relations.)
What’s wrong with that?
Oooohhh... I seee... Well, there’s a “app“ for that [userscripts.org]! :D
Re:define "attack" (Score:3, Interesting)
Nope. You are not targeted (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Garbage (Score:2, Interesting)
Don't dismiss something at face value because you "feel" there is a political motive behind it. It might hurt, but try to remain objective.