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China says is information shows hacking attacks originating from the US

Recently, security company Mandiant accused the Chinese military of conducting hack attacks against numerous businesses within the United States. Mandiant claimed that the People's Liberation Army Unit 61398 was likely the driving force behind the hacking attacks.

The security firm maintains that this unit has carried out sustained attacks on a wide range of industries around the world. The Chinese Defense Ministry has denied the charges and recently issued a statement condemning Mandiant's claims.

"The report, in only relying on linking IP address to reach a conclusion the hacking attacks originated from China, lacks technical proof," the ministry said in a statement on its website (www.mod.gov.cn).

"Everyone knows that the use of usurped IP addresses to carry out hacking attacks happens on an almost daily basis," it added.

"Second, there is still no internationally clear, unified definition of what consists of a 'hacking attack'. There is no legal evidence behind the report subjectively inducing that the everyday gathering of online (information) is online spying."

Mandiant maintains that Unit 61398 has stolen "hundreds of terabytes of data from at least 141 organizations” for the past seven years. The security firm says that most of the victims of the located in the United States with smaller numbers of victims in Canada and Britain. The allegedly stolen data includes things such as details on mergers and acquisitions as well as e-mails of employees.

The Chinese Defense Ministry also says that its own information shows that a number of the hacking attacks against it originate from the United States. The ministry added, "But we don't use this as a reason to criticize the United States."

Source: Reuters


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China's Politician's Sound Like Ours
By hood6558 on 2/20/2013 10:14:49 AM , Rating: 3
Like a child who didn't quite get caught with a hand actually in the cookie jar, and is busily swallowing the evidence, complete denial sounds hollow, especially with all those cookie crumbs spraying forth. Remember Nixon and how well he got along with the Chinese...
It's all a deadly game, the new cold war is in cyberspace, and we imprison our smartest hackers, while they train theirs in elite teams of military specialists. Time to wake up & get busy...oh wait, it doesn't matter, the pols already sold most of our country to China! Game over....




RE: China's Politician's Sound Like Ours
By Brandon Hill (blog) on 2/20/2013 10:16:47 AM , Rating: 4
The Chinese copy, err I mean learn, from the best ;)


RE: China's Politician's Sound Like Ours
By ShaolinSoccer on 2/20/2013 10:38:02 AM , Rating: 2
Maybe China should use proxies in North Korea. North Korea would love to be accused of hacking into US computers. Then again, that would probably be impossible considering the lack of internet in North Korea.


By GulWestfale on 2/20/2013 11:17:40 AM , Rating: 2
north korea cannot hack anybody, they only have one IP address. everyone would know who did it.


By NellyFromMA on 2/20/2013 2:06:05 PM , Rating: 2
For all you know, North Korea is China's proxy for any and perhaps all cyber attacks from the US. You don't know because experts don't know because it's not something you can really determine.

The internet is great obviously, but if this is the other edge of the blade I think its time to start having a conversation on where we go from here and what the future state of the "internet" is going to be.

We need ways to trust and not trust a source or at a minimum ID a user.

The internet as it exists now doesn't necessarily have to go away (how could it) but we now know things from having done this for 30 years in the real world.

I know its terribly painful to consider an alternative to the internet for obvious reasons but perhaps we are ready for an "extranet" that is more secure in nature and requires authentication by some means to even use.

Obviously something like this could be integrated into HTTP but I can't help but feel like if its an afterthought bolt-on it could be easily superceded.

I'm curious as to what others think about the current state of our IT infrastructure and what we as a nation can do to fix it.


RE: China's Politician's Sound Like Ours
By dsx724 on 2/20/13, Rating: -1
By BifurcatedBoat on 2/20/2013 1:16:54 PM , Rating: 1
You can download a terabyte on a slow connection if you have 8 years to do it.


RE: China's Politician's Sound Like Ours
By NellyFromMA on 2/20/2013 1:46:30 PM , Rating: 2
Who DIDNT think this would be China's response?

My only question is WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO about it?

If current infrastructure and protocols do not ever offer the ability to determine an attacker with confidence, that is a HUGE security risk in and of itself. In a world where malicious nations will exploit this to attack us, WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO.

That's where we're at in my eyes. Why isn't anyone even trying to answer that?


By dsx724 on 2/21/2013 1:22:07 AM , Rating: 2
Shane McGlaun previously wrote similar sensational pieces about Chinese "hacking":
http://www.tgdaily.com/security-brief/63684-report...

When in reality it was probably a testing facility built in the original design for debugging.
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4374624/Mi...

It's way too expensive and difficult to redesign lithography masks for someone to simply change it like a software program. Just like it is way too difficult to determine who is carrying out an attack on the internet. Otherwise every member of Anonymous would have been found already.

We already have people who specialize in network security that do very good jobs. The biggest problem in security is the human factor.


RE: China's Politician's Sound Like Ours
By MrBlastman on 2/20/2013 3:08:41 PM , Rating: 2
Get busy?

Put an end to the WTO for a start. Stop outsourcing everything and make it here. Stop sending them money. Cut them off. We can do it--we're already going to see ridiculous amounts of inflation.

We might as well put money back in our own pockets than shipping it overseas.


By wordsworm on 2/20/2013 6:27:48 PM , Rating: 2
You got it mixed up: They're sending money to the US so that the US can buy from China. So, more apt might be, "Make them stop sending us money!"


By Strunf on 2/21/2013 11:40:41 AM , Rating: 2
The US doesn't respect the WTO anyways... it's the usual do as I say not as I do!


I love a non-denial denial
By W00dmann on 2/20/2013 11:40:14 AM , Rating: 2
I love a non-denial denial, a la "there is no evidence to support... allegations are spurious and outrageous!... In over 50 years nobody has ever come forward with conclusive evidence to prove this has ever happened" and so forth. Blah blah blah. Note that they avoid saying something direct like "we (the gov't) have never endorsed, supported, or engaged in any kind of computer hacking or espionage on the United States". Instead, they dance on the head of a pin and go to great lengths to tell you why it MIGHT be shockingly unlikely this has happened, without ever actually coming out and saying "no we never did it". Lance Armstrong used to do exactly the same thing, and we all know how that turned out.

Honestly. Do they really take us for idiots? I can only hope that the US is stealing THEIR sh*t as fast as they steal ours.




RE: I love a non-denial denial
By drlumen on 2/20/2013 11:57:17 AM , Rating: 3
Part of the problem with "stealing their (shtuff)" is that their shtuff isn't worth stealing. Technology wise, everything they currently have they got from us or some other country. If we were to hack into their companies to "steal" tech it would only yield something they stole from Boeing or Raytheon or ...

Then, once the NSA or CIA or whomever has their shtuff, like info on solar cells, what are they supposed to do with it? Give it to one of our some PV companies only to find out it is their design?

It would be really funny if their were a honey pot out there with slews of fake tech. They would then have to wade through all the crap and hopefully spend money finding out it's crap.


RE: I love a non-denial denial
By theapparition on 2/20/2013 12:58:43 PM , Rating: 2
Make no mistake, the US is actively hacking China.

Now it's not for company proprietary information, secrets on their military tech (which is mostly ours), or looking for vulnerabilities in their utility infrastructure.

But I suspect that we are looking for high level espionage information, just so we can slow them down.


RE: I love a non-denial denial
By drlumen on 2/21/2013 3:45:51 PM , Rating: 2
I have no doubt we are hacking some Chinese systems for government information on N Korea for example. Perhaps some trade secrets (however unlikely) may be gained on some china tech. But I do believe the overwhelming majority of china's hacking is for IP.


Hey PRC,
By Integral9 on 2/20/2013 10:34:48 AM , Rating: 2
??????
"your pants are on fire"




Makes sense
By bug77 on 2/20/2013 10:38:42 AM , Rating: 2
I mean, it could be that PLA's IPs are so badly protected, that every script kid in the world is hijacking one when spying on industrial entities. Shame on me for thinking otherwise.




who believes them
By MadMan007 on 2/20/2013 2:02:09 PM , Rating: 2
I guess they are only saying this because they have to, or maybe to convince themselves. With the Great Firewall of China all their excuses are utter bullpoop.




And they know this because
By Solandri on 2/20/2013 3:20:42 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
China Says the U.S. Has No Evidence That Its Military is Behind Hacks

And they know this because they hacked our systems and saw we had no hard evidence.




Of Course...
By Newspapercrane on 2/20/2013 4:27:12 PM , Rating: 2
Of course the US has no evidence that China was behind the hacks... they hacked us again just to get rid of that.




Chinese Justice
By mike66 on 2/20/2013 4:41:08 PM , Rating: 2
In the chinese legal system, normally the guilty have to prove their innocense when they are the accused, they could do an investigation of their IP address and find the guilty in whatever country. It will never happen. Anyway the blame should go to any idiot who believes the internet is a secure system and connected their network to the internet. The internet is not designed for commerce, some want to beleive it is and that's why business push for regulation of the internet.




As lawyers so eloquently put it...
By masamasa on 2/20/2013 6:07:23 PM , Rating: 2
Ignorance does not prove innocence.




Cut the cable?
By Rob94hawk on 2/21/2013 1:29:13 AM , Rating: 2
Can we cut the cable? What would they do if China was completely blocked off from the US?! They would go out of their minds like when people go nuts when facebook goes down for a few minutes.




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