FBI Fears Chinese Hackers Have Back Door Into US Government & Military, page 2
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reply posted on 22-4-2008 @ 02:30 AM by elendal
Well, somebody (reasonably) high in the hierarchy is finally noticing.

FBI's problems are shared by all the other U.S. government agencies, though in somewhat different forms.

China is well aware (as is U.S. and every other serious government out there, but they don't admit it because all hell would break loose) of a very high probability of resource/energy wars occuring by the middle of this century.

Oil, food, water... all of them strategic resources, and all of them very, very limited in an expanding world. "The survival of the fittest", and all that crap we were taught in schools, remember?

What China is doing is a simple strategic move - collect all the information you can about your enemy, send (electronic) spies and (electronic) sleepers over to the enemy, observe and... wait. The moment will eventually come to use those sleepers to bring down enemy's communication lines.

In case you are not aware, communication lines are the first casualties, and The Primary Targets of any war. Make your enemy blind and deaf, and he cannot defend himself.

People should read "The Art of War" at least once in their lives. There is absolutely nothing new in such strategy. It's been around for at least 500 years (and much longer in the forgotten history). The means change, but the strategies are forever.

Here are just a few examples of what other agencies and foreign governments are facing:

www.techzi.net...

On the bright side, it seems that at least some of my posts have caught attention of some of the alphabet agencies out there. A very specific thread on another forum got deleted (which is something that has never happened there in almost 3 years) which dealt with exactly this problem with China. Well, actually, it was a mixed bag of different matters, but the main point was the recent downing of that U.S. spy satelite which stopped working for unknown reasons (the one U.S. had to shoot down).

This is just my wild guess, but I have a feeling Chinese were experimenting with directed EMP, and simply missed one of their own satelites. Well, mistakes happen... like the one with the first low orbit test of nuclear weapons in 50's (or was it 60's...? I'm too lazy to look it up right now ) when U.S. immediatelly (and unintentionally) destroyed 2 of its own spy satelites, and badly damaged a couple of others (also U.S.).

In some matters, China is way "ahead" of U.S. They don't have to worry about intellectual rights (or even human rights for that matter), they have absolute control of their part of the Internet (through The Great Firewall of China), have almost perfectly controlled society (they can relocate a milion people in a month, how's that for efficiency?!), and they are smart (at least several thousands of years of history behind them).

What I've just described is every secret society's perfect dream... which makes me wonder if U.S. is being staged for takeover. Or, to put it in the right context - "liberation by the superior Chinese culture". I've heard something about that propaganda being used in Tibet takeover. Not that Tibet was much better in treating its own people (they had a debt slave system almost exactly the same you have in the U.S. right now; what a historical coincidence!), but two wrongs don't make it right.

The strategies being played out on this planet are so interesting... and dumb, but that's what makes them so interesting.

[edit on 22-4-2008 by elendal]


reply posted on 22-4-2008 @ 06:03 AM by johnnyrobbo
reply to post by die_another_day



just a thought from my angle
Indonesia



reply posted on 22-4-2008 @ 06:46 AM by camain
reply to post by jankopernik



while I do tend to agree with you, I didn't see the schematics of the device that well. It is possible to insert code to go out and download new firmware once its been in operation for say 4 months. Additionally that code could be hidden in the BIOS, or firmware, or theoretically etched into the processor itself.

Yes it would be hard, but realistically, most of chinese manufacturing is owned and operated by the chinese military. The have motive, support, and cause to get access to our networks.

While these are fakes, which for quality reasons is a good enough reason to replace. If infact it did have a back door on the router, this could cause issues.

Lets says you get into the router, and from there you modify the access list to allow you access to the server that was housing 50 top secret documents on it. Once the server is hacked, you can turn around and install keystroke monitor, as well as a packet sniffer that gave you the name, ip, and port that other devices connected to that server.

From there you copy the password file over to your computer in china, then turn around and run "john the ripper" or some other cracker software to get the passwords.

No you have the usernames and passwords, the ips, ports of other computers, a cracked top secret server, and the ability to gain even more access.

Its all about baby steps.

The government is wise to try and nip this in the butt at the core. Once the routers are replaced, passwords need changed, the servers need to be thoroughly checked.

Cheers,

Camain


reply posted on 22-4-2008 @ 10:12 AM by SkepticOverlord
This ATS thread has been picked up by SlashDot where there are quite a few interesting comments and concerns by IT professionals.


reply posted on 22-4-2008 @ 11:44 AM by Springer
reply to post by gottago




No. If you read the report closely you'll see it also contains information about non government purchases, those transactions were apparently facilitated on Ebay.

Springer...


reply posted on 22-4-2008 @ 02:28 PM by whipnet
Chinese hackers in our routers are nothing new. Anyone remember Titan Rain?
www.time.com...

And we can't forget the Chinese accusing us of spy equipment in some jumbo jets their gov bought for themselves.

Are we to be surprised when we have all this Chinese crap imported into this country?

Sentiment in China is that we owe them something because they make everything for us. It's screwed up man!

*


reply posted on 22-4-2008 @ 06:13 PM by fievel3782
Originally posted by jankopernik
Counterfeit products from China is not new, and is not the point in this thread. The point is the 'backdoor' which isn't there. Hardware is simply the conduit of the information, you still need to breach firewalls, app security, and o/s security to get to the data within the system. From my 19+ years in the IT field I would be much more concerned with a fire risk in my data center from one of these knock-off devices than the security breach potential. It SHOULD be common practice to remove all default settings from a network device and ensuring all settings are configured to your network needs prior to installation, not blindly pulling a device out of the box and pligging it into your network. This would remove any potential security vulnerabilities to some extent.


This guy is correct. I'm in the IT industry as well... The point of the government cracking down on the issue is due to a long time issue of the Chinese counterfeiting ALL types of products (not just routers and Tommy Hilfger underwear).

The reason why ebay is mentioned because that's one of the sources in which these counterfeit products were sold to unsuspecting customers around the world.

What is interesting is that the FBI states that counterfeit products are being sold to "official" Cisco Business Partners. Governments purchase off GSA contract, so the government then receives some shoddy counterfeit products as a result.

The only thing being compromised here would be Cisco's profit, and the ripping off of innocent and unsuspecting customers thinking they're getting a real Cisco router, instead they're data center catches on fire.. lol
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