Alan Paller, the director of the SANS Institute, says the systematic, and highly disciplined hacks of US military and industry computers are likely coming from the Chinese military and have been traced to the Chinese province of Guangdong."These attacks come from someone with intense discipline. No other organization could do this if they were not a military organization," Paller said in a conference call to announced a new cybersecurity education program.
In the attacks, Paller said, the perpetrators "were in and out with no keystroke errors and left no fingerprints, and created a backdoor in less than 30 minutes. How can this be done by anyone other than a military organization?"
"We have a problem that our computer networks have been terribly and deeply penetrated throughout the United States ... and we've been keeping it secret," he said. " Rest of story here.
IT's all part of what the US code-names TITAN RAIN. Back in September TIME Magazine spilled the beans on the brilliant and apparently mistreated Shawn Carpenter, who moonlighted for the FBI by hacking into the hackers' zone -until he was disowned by his faithless and publicity-shy handlers.
He also had noted the astonishing error-free discipline of the ongoing hacks and traced them back to Guangdong.
"TIME has obtained documents showing that since 2003, the hackers, eager to access American know-how, have compromised secure networks ranging from the Redstone Arsenal military base to NASA to the World Bank.
In one case, the hackers stole flight-planning software from the Army. "
Carpenter got curious when they breached Lockheed Martin computers.
Beyond worries about the sheer quantity of stolen data, a Department of Defense (DOD) alert obtained by TIME raises the concern that Titan Rain could be a point patrol for more serious assaults that could shut down or even take over a number of U.S. military networks.
Add to this the routine pilfering of US patents (and the difficulty of pursuing that legally in China apart from the general apathy toward it), you can just hear the gigantic sucking sound, can't you? (The gigantic sucking sound China hopes will contribute to their dream of a 'multi-polar' world.)
