Chinese Hackers Attack U.S. Targets

In the NY Post is a front page article on hackers in China. They seem to be going after companies heavily connecting to America's power grid.

I am thinking...if another country wants to disable America...go after their resources and the connections to them.

"More recently, security experts said, the group took aim at companies with access to the nation’s power grid. Last September, it broke into the Canadian arm of Telvent, now Schneider Electric, which keeps detailed blueprints on more than half the oil and gas pipelines in North America."

Link: www.nytimes.com...

reply to post by caladonea


Power companies need to get off an international grid and have their own closed intranet.

Every time I see articles about "foreign powers" trying to hack important infrastructure through the internet it always makes me think it is partially a ploy to form legislation that hinders a free and open internet. Another thought is private industries trying to get the big bad government to protect them again and if they were worth their salt they would protect their own systems by having a closed intranet type system.

Of course, I am no internet specialist... so I am just trying to tamp down the "conspiratorial" side of my thinking on this. Very hard to do.

I've been seeing reports about this for years, and I'm pretty surprised this is being presented as "news" now. China has been attacking the US in millions of different ways across the net for more than a decade.

I saw one TV show with Stephen Fry in the US, and I think he was visiting MIT or somewhere like that, and the guy pretty much told him that they are under constant bombardment from China every hour of the day, with something like 2 million individual attempts to gain access to their systems every single hour.

People seem to think these things are rare, but it's happening all the time, and all governments are involved in them.

I don't know if you've been following the story of the US spy in Russia, but the FSB has publicly said that they warned the US CIA agency in Moscow to stop trying to recruit back in 2011. They are well aware of the CIA in Russia, just as the CIA are likely well aware of the FSB in the USA - or at least they are both aware of what they want the other to be well aware of... double bluffs and all that jazz

The fact is, China might be bombarding the USA and others with constant attempts to gain access, but we are all doing exactly the same to them too, we're just not told about it.

Originally posted by Terminal1

Every time I see articles about "foreign powers" trying to hack important infrastructure through the internet it always makes me think it is partially a ploy to form legislation that hinders a free and open internet. Another thought is private industries trying to get the big bad government to protect them again and if they were worth their salt they would protect their own systems by having a closed intranet type system.

You make some really good points...I have thought this too. Has someone or someones struck a deal (under the table) with some other someones in China to hack; and the U.S. can never quite find out exactly who is doing the hacking; but really is allowing it to happen for some (hidden agenda reasons).

Originally posted by Rocker2013

The fact is, China might be bombarding the USA and others with constant attempts to gain access, but we are all doing exactly the same to them too, we're just not told about it.

Live and learn everyday! Until recently I was not aware of how far reaching the hacking going on is; nor how frequently.it happens.

Originally posted by Terminal1
reply to post by caladonea

 

Power companies need to get off an international grid and have their own closed intranet.

This is actually a hell of a lot harder than you might think.

If it has a phone line, there is the potential for hacking. You could have everything on an Intranet, but then you miss out on a lot of technical advantages of being connected. The whole point of having a national grid is that it is connected and you can decide within seconds where to move resources and attention, and without that internet connection (which needs to travel over thousands of miles around the country) it's just no possible.

They did all of this way back with the use of phones. But that all takes thousands of extra staff, and time too, and is open to more human error.

So, either way, we need an Intranet, and the moment you have an Intranet with a connection from one point to another you are open to attack.

reply to post by Terminal1


Iran had a closed 'Net in the Nuclear program, but a thumb drive was smuggled in with the Stuxnet virius. It didn't stop them, but it put a crimp in it.

If the Chinese government is attempting to access systems that are related to the power grid I very much doubt that it is for any purpose other than to steal information about building better power grids, something that is currently a big priority over there. Even if they could shut down the entire US grid remotely, which is nearly impossible to realistically imagine, it would not be in their interest to do so. Their economy relies to a large extent on exporting to our economy, so a massive disruption of business here is a disruption for them as well. There would be very little military value in doing so because our military has been planning for nuclear war for so long I can't imagine that much of it is reliant on the civilian power grid. Our ships at sea would be unaffected so the continent would still be somewhat defended against invasion, and whatever the extent of the disruption it would be reversible. If you really wanted to be doomy about it I suppose there is the possibility of remotely disrupting nuclear reactors but a nuclear explosion in the US would not be in their interest either.

And there is also the possibility that this is propaganda intended to scare people into tighter government controls of net traffic. I think this is more likely than any of the reasons described above.

Originally posted by Rocker2013

Originally posted by Terminal1
reply to post by caladonea

 

Power companies need to get off an international grid and have their own closed intranet.

This is actually a hell of a lot harder than you might think.

If it has a phone line, there is the potential for hacking. You could have everything on an Intranet, but then you miss out on a lot of technical advantages of being connected. The whole point of having a national grid is that it is connected and you can decide within seconds where to move resources and attention, and without that internet connection (which needs to travel over thousands of miles around the country) it's just no possible.

They did all of this way back with the use of phones. But that all takes thousands of extra staff, and time too, and is open to more human error.

So, either way, we need an Intranet, and the moment you have an Intranet with a connection from one point to another you are open to attack.

Ok, so how is the US connected to china?