Foreign Policy, 22 Jan 10: . . . . .The Defense Department has said that the Chinese government, in addition to employing thousands of its own hackers, manages massive teams of experts from academia and industry in “cyber militias” that act in Chinese national interests with unclear amounts of support and direction from China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA). According to SANS Institute research director Alan Paller, “The problem is 1,000 times worse than what we see.” But the tip of the iceberg is still large. Here are some of the most damaging attacks on the U.S. government that have been attributed to Chinese government sponsorship or endorsement over the past few years:
1) Titan Rain
In 2004, an analyst named Shawn Carpenter at Sandia National Laboratories traced the origins of a massive cyber espionage ring back to a team of government sponsored researchers in Guangdong Province in China. The hackers, code named by the FBI “Titan Rain,” stole massive amounts of information from military labs, NASA, the World Bank, and others. Rather than being rewarded, Carpenter was fired and investigated after revealing his findings to the FBI, because hacking foreign computers is illegal under U.S. law. He later sued and was awarded more than $3 million. The FBI renamed Titan Rain and classified the new name. The group is still assumed to be operating.
2) State Department’s East Asia Bureau
In July 2006, the State Department admitted it had become a victim of cyber hacking after an official in “East Asia” accidentally opened an email he shouldn’t have. The attackers worked their way around the system, breaking into computers at U.S. embassies all over the region and then eventually penetrating systems in Washington as well.
3) Offices of Rep. Frank Wolf
Wolf has been one of the most outspoken lawmakers on Chinese human rights issues, so it was of little surprise when he announced that in August 2006 that his office computers had been compromised and that he suspected the Chinese government. Wolf also reported that similar attacks had compromised the systems of several other congressmen and the office of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
4) Commerce Department
The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security had to throw away all of its computers in October 2006, paralyzing the bureau for more than a month due to targeted attacks originating from China. BIS is where export licenses for technology items to countries like China are issued.
5) Naval War College
In December 2006, the Naval War College in Rhode Island had to take all of its computer systems offline for weeks following a major cyber attack. One professor at the school told his students that the Chinese had brought down the system. The Naval War College is where much military strategy against China is developed.
6) Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez and the 2003 blackout?
A National Journal article revealed that spying software meant to clandestinely steal personal data was found on the devices of then Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez and several other officials following a trade mission to China in December 2007. That same article reported that intelligence officials traced the causes of the massive 2003 northeast blackout back to the PLA, but some analysts question the connection.
7) McCain and Obama presidential campaigns
That’s right, both the campaigns of then Senators Barack Obama and John McCain were completely invaded by cyber spies in August 2008. The Secret Service forced all campaign senior staff to replace their Blackberries and laptops. The hackers were looking for policy data as a way to predict the positions of the future winner. Senior campaign staffers have acknowledged that the Chinese government contacted one campaign and referred to information that could only have been gained from the theft.
8. Office of Sen. Bill Nelson, D-FL
At a March 2009 hearing, Nelson revealed that his office computers had been hacked three separate times and his aide confirmed that the attacks had been traced back to China. The targets of the attacks were Nelson’s foreign-policy aide, his legislative director, and a former NASA advisor.
9) Ghostnet
In March, 2009, researchers inToronto concluded a 10-month investigation that revealed a massive cyber espionage ring they called Ghostnet that had penetrated more than 1,200 systems in 103 countries. The victims were foreign embassies, NGOs, news media institutions, foreign affairs ministries, and international organizations. Almost all Tibet-related organizations had been compromised, including the offices of the Dalai Lama. The attacks used Chinese malware and came from Beijing.
10) Lockheed Martin’s F-35 program
In April, 2009, the Wall Street Journal reported that China was suspected of being behind a major theft of data from Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter program, the most advanced airplane ever designed. Multiple infiltrations of the F-35 program apparently went on for years.
AFP, 22 Jan 10: The United States Friday sentenced a former Pentagon official who had a “top secret” security clearance to three years in prison on charges of spying for China, the Justice Department said. The 36-month sentence for retired air force lieutenant colonel James Wilbur Fondren will be followed by two years of supervised release, the department said.
According to prosecutors, Fondren, 62, provided “certain classified Defence Department documents and other information” to a naturalized US citizen from Taiwan, Tai Shen Kuo, from around November 2004 to February 2008. “Fondren was aware that Kuo had maintained a close relationship with an official of the People’s Republic of China (PRC),” officials said. Upon investigation, Fondren was found to have “provided classified information through Kuo, under the guise of consulting services.” He was introduced by Kuo to the official during a trip the two took to the PRC in March 1999, the department said.
Fondren, 62, who had been a deputy director of the US Pacific Command’s Washington Liaison Office, was arrested in mid-May and charged with conspiracy to pass classified information to an agent of China. In September, Fondren was convicted of unlawful communication of classified information by a government employee and two counts of making false statements. “Fondren and the PRC official exchanged more than 40 email messages between March 1999 and November 2000,” officials said.
When Federal Bureau of Investigations agents interviewed Fondren, according to the original indictment, the retired colonel “falsely represented” that the opinion papers he provided as part of the consulting firm were based on media report and from his experience. Fondren also falsely said he had never taken any classified information home and denied that he had given Kuo a draft copy of an unclassified document on military strategy, officials said.
. . . Fondren continued meeting with Kuo even after becoming a civilian employee of the Pacific Command in August 2001, where he held a “top secret” clearance with a classified computer in his cubicle. The FBI said that no matter where Fondren thought the information was ending up after he handed it to Kao, it was clear that he broke US law by “knowingly” handing secrets to “an agent or representative of a foreign government.” The original 17-page affidavit against him said that in just over three years, Fondren included classified information in eight analytical reports that he sold to Kuo for between 350 and 800 dollars apiece. The documents included a State Department cable, details about a Chinese military official’s US visit, information about a joint Sino-US naval exercise, and information on US-China military meetings. . . . .
ABC News, 22 Jan 10: Indian airports are on high alert today after officials issued a terror warning of a possible airline hijacking. Security has been increased at all airports, passengers are being subjected to tougher screening and more air marshals will be deployed on flights in India, the Indian home ministry said this morning. Local reports suggest that Air India flights within all of South Asia are being targeted.
The alert comes days after U.S. Secretary of Defence Robert Gates met with Indian officials in New Delhi and said that a “syndicate of terror groups” affiliated with al-Qaeda are potentially trying to destabilize the entire region. “This alert is based on specific information from a usually reliable source,” U. K. Bansal, the senior home ministry official in charge of internal security, told ABC News. “We’ve taken a closer look at it and we regard it as significant.” . . .
Times of London, 22 Jan 10: Britain’s terrorist threat level was raised tonight from “substantial” to “severe” – meaning that counter-terrorism agencies believe an attack is “highly likely”. The measure was approved at a meeting of the Government’s Cobra emergency committee and announced by Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary. The Times understands that the decision to raise the threat level is connected to the conference on Afghanistan taking place at Lancaster Gate, London, next Thursday. Sources said there had been intensive discussions throughout the day relating to intelligence suggesting a possible attempted “spectacular” by an al-Qaeda affiliated group. . . .
PJMEDIA, 22 Jan 10: Apple Daily, the Taiwanese news outlet that has been garnering a great deal of attention lately with its brilliantly rendered animations re-creating current events (including the wild Conan O’Brien/Jay Leno showdown a few days ago which earned nearly half a million views) has just released its latest simulation — this time on a much more serious subject, the New Year’s Day attack on Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard by an Islamic jihadist. The animation is quite chilling, and shows how Westergaard only barely escaped a gruesome death and probable beheading at the hands of the al-Qaeda linked Somali attacker; you can see it starting at 0:22 in this English-language report on the incident which Apple Daily just posted at YouTube. Note that the animator got one detail wrong in the re-creation; he shows Westergaard carrying his young granddaughter into the panic room with him, while in reality he had become separated from her during the attack and was locked in the room alone; luckily, the attacker didn’t notice or care about the granddaughter hiding elsewhere in the house.
