Time to start listening

Since 2005, I have warned my friends, family, and anyone that would listen that China is going to be an enemy. While some listened, most people wrote me off as a McCarthy wannabe.

This would be much easier to overcom, if people would just google the stuff I have been talking about. From China's Industrial Espionage, to the Battle Plans, to their determination to take over Taiwan. Now, they have done what could be considered an Act of War.

The PLA regularly probes US military networks – and the Pentagon is widely assumed to scan Chinese networks – but US officials said the penetration in June raised concerns to a new level because of fears that China had shown it could disrupt systems at critical times.

Hackers from numerous locations in China spent several months probing the Pentagon system before overcoming its defences, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Pentagon took down the network for more than a week while the attacks continued, and is to conduct a comprehensive diagnosis. “These are multiple wake-up calls stirring us to levels of more aggressive vigilance,” said Richard Lawless, the Pentagon’s top Asia official at the time of the attacks.

The Pentagon is still investigating how much data was downloaded, but one person with knowledge of the attack said most of the information was probably “unclassified”. He said the event had forced officials to reconsider the kind of information they send over unsecured e-mail systems.

According to The Financial Times, the Chinese Military has once again found their way into the Pentagon's Military Mainframe. And it is not just the United States either, since Prime Minister Merkel took over Germany, the probes into their databases by Chinese Military have been on the rise.


The ability that the PLA is showing with these attacks is scary, as it gives them an unprecedented level of Intel capabilites that the United States is having trouble counteracting.

when the war comes, Communications are not going to be hit very hard, but at least we are preparing in ways the press has no knowledge of, and no ability to reveal to the public.

The US Air Force will soon create a cyber war-fighting command aimed at improving defensive and offensive capabilities to counter such asymmetric threats. “We want to ensure that we can operate freely in the domain,” says Major General Charles Ickes, another senior Air Force official involved with cyberspace issues. “On the other hand . . . it is seen by everybody in the defence department as a war-fighting domain and you must have offensive capability.”

Gen Ickes says the military must ensure that its actions do not inadvertently impact on US civilian computer systems. Michael Green, former senior Asia adviser to President George W. Bush, points to an example where the Pentagon had to consider the legal ramifications of blasting a virus back at a hacker.

In an increasingly networked world, governments must consider an even wider range of cyber threats, including terrorist attacks on critical infrastructure, commercial espionage, and old-fashioned spying.

But it gets worse. Did you notice that part in there about the Terrorists using this against us?

Sami Saydjari, chief executive of Cyber Defense Agency and a former Pentagon cyber expert, warns of the potential for terrorist groups, such as al-Qaeda, to attack the financial, telecoms, and power sectors.

To underscore the threat, he notes that no cyber red team – hackers enlisted to attack systems to help identify weaknesses – has ever failed to meet its objective.

Gregory Garcia, the assistant secretary for cyber security at the department of Homeland Security, says the number of cyber incidents reported to the department’s computer readiness team so far this year is 35,000. That compares to 4,100 for the whole of 2005.

Thank you Financial Times, I think you cured my lack of Insomnia.