CIA Warns of Chinese Plans for Cyber-Attacks on U.S.

April 25, 2002

By ERIC LICHTBLAU, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON -- U.S. intelligence officials believe the Chinese military is working to launch wide-scale cyber-attacks on American and Taiwanese computer networks, including Internet-linked military systems considered vulnerable to sabotage, according to a classified CIA report.

Moreover, U.S. authorities are bracing for a possible wave of hacking attacks by Chinese students against the United States in coming weeks, according to the analysis. The confidential alert, which was reviewed by The Times, was sent to intelligence officials a week ago.

Although U.S. officials have voiced concerns about individual hackers in China who have defaced federal and private Web sites, the United States has resisted publicly linking the Chinese government to those attacks or to broader cyber-style warfare.

The new CIA report, however, makes clear that U.S. intelligence analysts have become increasingly concerned that authorities in Beijing are actively planning to damage and disrupt U.S. computer systems through the use of Internet hacking and computer viruses.

[url=http://www.survivalforum.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=361]full story too long to post here....you can read full story and comments here[/url]
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Like I said, you should really read the Y2k & Terrorism Report which outlines how computers in government and private sector could have been sabatoged....it is available on the main page of
[URL=http://www.survivalforum.com]SurvivalForum.com[/URL]

A year or two ago we had a little "hacking war" with the Chinese.  They were utterly overwhelmed by the western worlds hackers.  Old time hackers came out of retirement for the occasion.  The Chinese were able to mess with some minor systems while the American hackers had their way with many major systems (including military systems).

The way I hear it... Don't worry.  Make sure you have an up to date firewall and virus software and the sore losers will have a hard time doing anything except flooding the ISP's and lines with garbage to slow down the works.

I'm not saying they won't get lucky here and there.  I'm just saying the Chi-com hackers utterly suck. [:D]

edited for spelling...

I have a small network and it was attacked by someone or some group in China around March of 2001.

They were trying to exploit a flaw in BIND to access my servers.

I acquired the "1i0n worm" (lion worm), it kept trying to read files from my name server and send them back to some domain in China.

Anyway, I took care of that. I kept the source code somewhere. It created a backdoor webpage for them to [i]try[/i] to access.

Both of you seem to know what you are talking about...However, I don't know if I would blow this off that easily.

I have articles here from 3 years ago or so that discuss how the Chinese have invested hundreds of millions of dollars to train hackers to attack financial and other critical infrastructure systems to strike a major blow to the US economy without firing a shot.

Franklin
[url=http://www.survivalforum.com]SurvivalForum[/url]

Wouldn't worry about this, if I were you.
We have a few decades more experience, greater numbers, better technology and, when push comes to shove, the superior attitude.
Silly chicom script kiddies will get their hairy, yellow butts kicked.

I agree. The US will OWN Chinese cyberspace.  

Even their woks won't work correctly after we're done with 'em.

Problem is you'll go to jail if caught hacking Chicom web servers while their guys will get a medal.

Wait until it becomes an MOS in the military under the Intelligence service. Oh WAIT, THEY ALREADY DO THAT. Never mind.

Ben

I respect your opinion and if you look at just the face of the threat, I would tend to agree...

[b]However, you are forgeting one major point:[/b]

You say that we are years ahead?

that is a joke my friend and not true whatsoever.

First of all, over 60% of the world's programmers come from India and Pakistan.

Second, you seem to have not taken in consideration the high tech secrets that have been sold by traders for the past several years (and longer) - You don't remember Chinagate?

Not to mention that there is a lot of government testimony regarding the Chineses spending 100's of millions of dollars on this very goal for the last decade.

Take care

Franklin
[url=http://www.survivalforum.com]SurvivalForum[/url]

Oh yes, we are in fact years ahead, technology-wise; and more important, we have decades more experience when it comes to nasty, [i]creative[/i], malicious and rogue hacking. Trust me on this one.



Not because they are better. They are merely cheaper. Doesn't require much skill or creativity to, say, carpal-tunnel a phonebook (digitize it by typing it into a database, instead of converting some legacy database into something useful). Many of them towelheads don't even have basic programming skills. Programming and hacking require not only the use of "programming kits" but also a deep understanding of how computers work, and I'm not talking about your $750 CompUSA off-the-shelf box.



I do remember "Chinagate", which just proves my point. If they were any good, they wouldn't need to steal our stuff.
Even if they (and they do) can lay their stinky little yellow fingers on actual hardware, like the spy plane last year, that's still not a threat. Just looking at a piece of hardware doesn't tell you how it works, or what it is supposed to do. Even if you look at a couple of million lines of code written in, say, COBOL (tee hee), that doesn't tell you diddley-squat if you weren't actually involved in writing that puppy. Oh yes, there are comments there, supposedly explaining what this sub-routine or that piece of spaghetti does, all written in geek-ese.

If they are so good, why do they have to pirate copies of Photoshop instead of blasting Adobe.com out of the water with their own programs?, to name just one example. Or why do they have to steal our missile secrets, if they are so smart that they could write their own programs?



Yes, and what did they accomplish? A ChiCom version of Linux "Red Flag 2.3", running on Siemens-Nixdorf PCs from the mid-nineties.
Wow-ee.

Most of the attacks last year were kiddy stuff for Americans. They grafittied a bunch of Educational Institutions' Web Sites with "Fuck US, Fuck Whatever the name of that US Hacker who kicked their asses was".

The Chinks are years behind the US. It is Taiwan, who is the Technology Capital and they are not part of China (except according to [s]NWO[/s] EU/UN, whose opinions aren't worth a shit.)

If they take on the US and Taiwan they will get their asses kicked big time. The US has decades of experience making nasty worms, hacking systems, etc...A 15 y/o here in the US hacked NASA a while back. Yet, the creme de le creme of the Chinks can only seem to hack web sites and graffity them with Anti-American Messages. Amateurs. Even I could kick some Chink ass. They want a fight, they'll have one. Perhaps an internet worm that checks the country code a la the Pearl Harbor Virus or DOS Attacks on their ISPs. Nah, something bigger and better.

To add to what Kar98 said, the point is any fvck-nut can write an e-mail virus and crap like that. The real hackers don't screw with scripting. They write actual code, binaries, that are injected at the OS level.

The test of a good hacker is not how much damage he can do (that's the easy part), but how well he can hide his code in your system and how difficult it is to trace the source of that code. This is where the Americans and Europeans excel.

If American hackers got the okay to hit China, I'm telling you, it would be a bloodbath.

Here are some excerpts from my report, 55 pages - Y2K and Terrorism which I wrote back in 1999 (I did presentations to local governments and communities - 130 in all regarding critical infrastructure vulnerabilities - the report is free in PDF format at [url=http://www.survivalforum.com]SurvivalForum[/url]
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Cyberwar?  Terrorism?  Y2K?  Why?  Could Y2K vulnerabilities open doors to Cyberwar, Terrorism and computer sabotage?

In fact, the DoD plans to pay close attention to the possibility that software programmers who have fixed date code could have introduced malicious code into DoD computer systems as a result of the Year 2000 remediation process.  Fixing computers for the Year 2000 bug “provided the opportunity for many individuals to have access to DoD source computer code...[which] provided the opportunity for unscrupulous programmers to compromise system integrity and/or introduce programs into Navy computers that can degrade or interrupt Navy operations,” the Navy said.

Lee Freeman, a Year 2000 expert at Source Recovery Co., called this a legitimate concern, considering the large number of people who worked to fix and patch DoD systems.

Malicious code and sabotage is a concern to Department of Defense.  What level of risk exists for cyberterrorism acts or computer sabotage against large multinational corporations?  Are we planning for Cyberwar, Terrorism or Y2K?  Or, all of them?

The consequences of the Y2K problem could open the door to a sneak attack on the United States, especially if many automated systems crash, the Department of Defense stated in a message September 10, 1999.

Michael Vatis of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the top U.S. “cybercop”, warned in early October (99) that changes to computer software that might threaten security could have been planted by foreign contractors under the guise of Y2K fixes.

Some military experts fear that guerrillas or rogue states might launch assaults on communications networks under cover of Y2K incidents in what is called a possible “Digital Pearl Harbor.”

Andrew Rathmell of the International Center for Security Analysis at King’s College London stated that, “Lots of companies and government agencies have brought in outside contractors in the last few months to work on Y2K, and they haven’t been able to apply the same kind of security controls as they would normally.”

“The longer term problem is to what extent have terrorists or criminals been able to get into corporate and government networks and plant problems for the future like logic bombs,” Rathmell said.

Logic bombs are a type of computer virus which can lie dormant for years and when given a signal will wake up and begin attacking the host system.  Other variations of the term Logic Bombs include:

· Computer viruses - these can be fed into an enemy’s computers either remotely or by technicians
· Chipping - booby trapped computer chips
· Worms - computer programs which self-replicate and gradually eat up a system’s resources
· Trojan horse - a code inserted into a program which might perform a fraudulent function
· Trap doors - allows unauthorized access to a computer system at a later date

Ponder upon the enormous exposure that governments and businesses around the globe have to vendors and individuals with bad motives.  Let us put the exposure in perspective by simply looking at the money being spent on remediation....