OT: Cyberattack, who should be scared of who?

[RN7]

By Robert Windrem, Senior Investigative Producer, NBC News

The United States is locked in a tight race with China and Russia to build destructive cyberweapons capable of seriously damaging other nations’ critical infrastructure, according to a leading expert on hostilities waged via the Internet. Scott Borg, CEO of the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit, a nonprofit institute that advises the U.S. government and businesses on cybersecurity, said all three nations have built arsenals of sophisticated computer viruses, worms, Trojan horses and other tools that place them atop the rest of the world in the ability to inflict serious damage on one another, or lesser powers.

For example the US rarely discuss offensive cyberwar capability, but it is believed that it could shut down the electrical grid of a smaller nation such as Iran example if it chose to do so.

Ranked just below the Big Three in offensive cyberwarfare are Britain, Germany and Israel.

[RN7]

China and Russia are believed to have a similar capacity to the US to cause mayhem through cyber attack, but both have different priorities and skill sets.

According to Scott Borg, CEO of the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit, Russia is best at military espionage and operations, while China is looking for crucial business information and technology, and its main focus is on stealing technology. The Russians are technically advanced, but the Chinese just have more people dedicated to the effort by a wide margin. They are not as innovative or creative as the U.S. and Russia, but have the greatest quantity if not quality.

People’s Liberation Army Unit 61398, may be one of the most important groups working in China, but it is not necessarily the most important. There are at least two dozen groups carrying out aggressive operations against the U.S., but they also get in each other’s way and trip over one another and are all operating with the tacit approval of the Chinese government. They do not always cooperate with each other because they don’t share capabilities. One group has good programming, but is bad at access or targeting. The Chinese hacking efforts are so broad, that the highest-ranking Chinese officials almost certainly do not know what all the groups are doing. China is also the most likely to leave a calling card, making their work the easiest to track. China is very arrogant and does little to conceal its identity. This is sharp contrast to the Russians, who are not above writing code in Chinese to throw off investigators. Western policymakers may think an attack has been carried out by the Chinese, when it was actually the work of the Russians or a rising power in the cyber world like Iran.

China on the other hand believes that foreign (*cough US cough*) hackers and foreign built equipment is a serious threat to national security. In one single day of January 2012,at least 63 computers and servers in Tsinghua University have been hacked by the NSA. The university is home to one of the mainland’s six major backbone networks, the China Education and Research Network (CERNET) from where internet data from millions of Chinese citizens could be mined. The Chinese University of Hong Kong has also been hacked. Chinese University is home to the Hong Kong Internet Exchange, the city’s central hub for all internet traffic. According to data published by China in the first three months of 2013, 5.6 million systems in China were infected by malware tied to 13,400 command-and-control servers located overseas. Of those, more than half of infected systems- 2.9 million PCs - were controlled by about 4,000 command-and-control servers based in the United States. Meanwhile, 3,500 U.S. systems had been used to take over about 7,700 different websites located in China. China also reported that 54 U.S.-based IP addresses had hijacked Chinese official websites to steal data, which according to China Daily included sites related to "government departments, key information systems and research institutions.

[CDAT]

My gut says China, trying to keep it politically neutral I think that most western governments feel that they need China to make the cheap stuff that we the citizens buy. So they feel that they can not come down as hard and/or public on China as they can Russia who most of the western world does not need as much. So when China does something and is not called on it (publicly or privately) it makes them bolder.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Is it just me, or should we also be worried about the CEO of the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit?
With a name like Borg...



Maybe it's just me, too much sci-fi in the '90s.
Seems futile to resist the idea that it's probably just me
Yeah, it's just me...




assimilate...

[RN7]

Originally Posted by CDAT

My gut says China, trying to keep it politically neutral I think that most western governments feel that they need China to make the cheap stuff that we the citizens buy. So they feel that they can not come down as hard and/or public on China as they can Russia who most of the western world does not need as much. So when China does something and is not called on it (publicly or privately) it makes them bolder.

I think the US was going to come down hard on China a few years ago but then Edward Snowden came along and revealed all to the world about what the US was getting up too. The irony of it all is that the US is the biggest player in cyber warfare.

The US and its major Western allies do not discriminate who they target and I don't think there is any country or organisation in the world that they cannot keep tabs on.

The US and major allies such as Britain operate a global electronic surveillance system that can monitor radio, satellite, telephone, fibre-optic cables, microwave, cellular, internet and banking and financial transactions. The NSA and Britain's GCHQ also run a mass tapping operation of submarine fibre-optic cables which carry 90% of international telephone and internet traffic including all social media networks through intercept probes that have been attached to hundreds of fibre-optic cables.

ECHELON:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON

Five Eyes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes

And then there is the Equation Group, the big Dady of cyberwarfare that is believed to be run by the NSA (likely with British and Israeli assistance) that has been the inventor of more and the most sophisticated and untraceable spyware and malware ever created, and that is only what is known about its activities.

http://observer.com/2015/02/equation-group/

[ArmySGT.]

The circuit boards on the PC say "Made in China".......... Clear indicator to me.