Posted on 01/18/2008 4:41:50 PM PST by JACKRUSSELL
An aggressive, non-stop campaign by China to penetrate key government and industry databases in the United States already has succeeded and the United States urgently needs to monitor all internet traffic to critical government and private-sector networks “to find the enemy within,” SANS Institute Director of Research Alan Paller told SCMagazineUS.com.
“They are already in and we have to find them,” Paller said.
Paller said that empirical evidence analyzed by researchers leaves little doubt that the Chinese government has mounted a non-stop, well-financed attack to breach key national security and industry databases, adding that it is likely that this effort is making use of personnel provided by China's People's Liberation Army.
The “smoking guns” pointing to a government-directed effort are keystroke logs of the attacks, which have been devoid of errors usually found in amateur hack attacks, the use of spear phishing to gain entry into computer networks, and the massively repetitive nature of the assault, the SANS research director said.
“This is not amateur hacking. They are going back to the same places 100 times a day, every day. This kind of an effort requires a massive amount of money and resources,” Paller told SCMagazineUS.com.
Paller said that monitoring all internet traffic – including email – to government and private-sector networks is necessary in order to pinpoint breaches and, ultimately, to prevent cyberspies from extracting critical data. The traffic must be carefully analyzed to detect “micro-patterns” that reveal breaches, he said.
“We have to find the needle in the haystack,” he said.
SANS earlier this week placed espionage from China and other nations near the top of its annual list of cybersecurity menaces, reporting that targeted spear phishing is the weapon of choice used in the assault on U.S. databases and those of its allies.
“They are using spear phishing because it is so effective, and it is the least difficult technique [of gaining entry]” Paller said. “They can target anyone within an organization who has a computer. Once they get in, they can go everywhere.”
In November, President Bush requested $154 million in funding for what is expected to be a seven-year, multibillion-dollar program to track cyberthreats on government and private networks. The proposed countermeasures include the reduction of access points between government computers and the internet from a current level of 2,000 to 50, and the assignment of up to 2,000 DHS and NSA security experts to full-time monitoring of critical infrastructure networks to prevent unauthorized instrusion.
Key members of Congressional oversight committees have complained that they have not been fully briefed on the proposal and they have raised concerns about the potential infringement on privacy.
According to SANS' research director, the monitoring envisioned by the government's cybersecurity plan can be implemented without trampling on privacy rights as long as procedures are in place to ensure that it is the traffic itself, rather than the contents of email messages, that is being monitored.
“Monitoring email traffic is not the same thing as reading everyone's email,” Paller said.
The scope of the cybersecurity problem was underlined this week in a profile of U.S. Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Mike McConnell published this week in the New Yorker magazine.
The New Yorker article reported that the Defense Department currently is detecting about three million unauthorized probes on its computer networks every day, while the State Department fends off two million probes daily.
These probes often turn into full-scale attacks, the magazine reported, such as the assault last year on the Pentagon that required 1,500 computers to be taken offline. American allies also have been targeted: In May, the German government blamed the Chinese military after it discovered a spyware program had been planted inside government computers in several key ministries. Chinese officials called the accusation “preposterous.”
McConnell has made information security a top priority for the myriad intelligence agencies he oversees, including the NSA, CIA and the Pentagon's intelligence arm.
The DNI said that Chinese computer attacks have intensified in recent months, while hacking activity emanating from Russia has remained at Cold War levels. Ed Giorgio, a security consultant who worked at the NSA under McConnell, told the New Yorker that China now has 40,000 hackers collecting intelligence off U.S. information systems and those of U.S. allies.
As intense as the assault on U.S. intelligence networks appears to be, cyberespionage directed by foreign governments against U.S. companies is an even bigger problem, McConnell said. “The real question is what to do about industry. Ninety-five percent of this is a private-sector problem,” he told the New Yorker.
The SANS Institute's annual listing of top 10 cyber menaces reported that China and other nations last year had engineered “massive penetration” of U.S. federal agencies and defense contractors, stealing terabytes of data. The institue said that these attacks are expected to intensify this year.
“In 2008, despite intense scrutiny, these nation-state attacks will expand,” SANS warned. “More targets and increased sophistication will mean many successes for attackers. Economic espionage will be increasingly common as nation-states use cybertheft of data to gain economic advantage in multinational deals.”
SANS said the “attack of choice” by foreign cyberwarriors is a form of targeted spear phishing using attachments and well-researched social engineering methods to make the victim believe that an attachment comes from a trusted source. SANS also said overseas hackers are making use of newly discovered Microsoft Office vulnerabilities and hiding their techniques to circumvent virus checking.
McAfee's Avert Labs, in its McAfee Virtual Criminology Report, predicted that the rise in international cyber spying will pose the number one security threat in 2008.
btt
Yup. Try colleges and universities. We teach them how to do what they do, and we pay them to do it while they’re here.
I assume in any hot confrontation with china, the US military and government would see exactly what they can do to US networks. Trash-talk and one-liners aside, I assume this would not be pretty.
Where would I find a list of the IP ranges used by China and Russia? simply banning both makes too much sense to not do it.
You could also provide credible plans for overthrowing their government.
Ping.
Bump
Please Jack, Freepmail everyone per Satindoll:
With all this penetration, is it possible that China is planning an attack on the US by using a DDOS attack? Maybe, and I’m just guessing here, but from what I have seen before on other networks, is it perhaps that they aren’t looking just for information. I’m not 100% sure on this, but it fits a scenario that I’ve seen elsewhere on a much smaller scale.
They are waging war on us and we can’t even get them adjust their currency. Something’s not right here.
bttt
The truth of the matter is that China has been adjusting its currency. But that raises the prices of Chinese exports to here (the USA). Our import business and government leadership don’t want the dollar to go down with respect to foreign currencies, and they don’t want freight fuel to go up. After about 40 years, our bosses’ (both political parties and most of the biggest businesses) game is about to end. They’re freaking out, and they’re lying to us.
I say let ‘er rip. May oil go to $200 per barrel and the dollar to equal the yuan. We’re spoiled rotten. We need to learn some lessons and get right with G-d, family and country (in that order—not the other way around).
Consider the possibility McCain is a tool of the Chinese communists... they had him as a captive for quite a while...
Yep, McCain is a tool, just not sure whose tool he is but I too would bet on the Chinese communists... they had him as a captive for quite a while, 5+years is long enough!
ping
>>>“Employment of Secret Agents”
“Disarm your enemy in peace by diplomacy and trade if you would conquer him more readily on the field of battle”
- Klaus von Clausewitz, father of German militarism
That must be a massive database, though. I already hit the size limit for my .htaccess for my site denials..there are so many IP adresses. You must have to work on it constantly.
Any tips will be appreciated!
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