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108 Comments
- knucklebusted, on 06/19/2008, -2/+39Senators are not capable of telling who is hacking their computers. First, the fact that a government owned/purposed computer is that insecure is completely unacceptable. Any computer used by a government official should be locked down to the point the good senator can no longer surf prσn and other sites that are known to infect said senator's computer with the spyware required to allow the hackers a foothold.
- eviljolly, on 06/20/2008, -1/+345 ways to fake a location: (yes I know there are more)
1. VPN
2. Remote desktop/VNC/RDP
3. SSH
4. Proxy
5. Poisoned route (less common these days)
The point is that you can make yourself look like you came from another computer from just about anywhere, and if there are no logs to prove that you were connected to that machine, which there usually aren't, then you have no "paper trail" to prove you were even there.
Welcome to the internet, enjoy your anonymity while it lasts. I think governments are going to make changes before this carries on for too much longer. - popstation, on 06/20/2008, -2/+28The word HACKER gets tossed around to often, its losing its value.
- durden0, on 06/20/2008, -2/+26Sadly, the best hackers, i.e. titan rain and other such groups, are nearly undetectable to all but the best security professionals out there. The few who do have the ability to combat these skilled hackers, are spread too thin, or are working for the NSA figuring out how to better spy on americans to 'protect us'.
- inactive, on 06/20/2008, -13/+37Install linux/Unix/BSD and implement a proper security policy. Problem goes away.
- jemka, on 06/20/2008, -0/+20Having once worked for the defense department, we had several classes of electronic media that were forbidden to reside on any machine connected to the Internet. This was not a hard task to accomplish either. If you were working on something top secret, you weren't on a machine that was directly connected to the internet. If you had to share top secret information with another department / location / country, you did so following the proper procedures; none of which included the internet.
We don't need to spend billions trying to secure an open system. We need to spend a few million buying extra hardware that government employees can work on when separation from the internet is necessary. - inactive, on 06/20/2008, -0/+16Kind of like that time Boeing was going to sell China that new state-of-the-art 747 they wanted.
Till they found out the CIA bugged everything (including the bathroom). - UberNick, on 06/20/2008, -0/+13They sell it to the Japanese, duh.
- rizla420, on 06/20/2008, -0/+12I consider myself fairly save computer and networking wise and i can assure you that the majority of incidents i see on my web server logs and my home router/firewall logs all tend to originate from somewhere in southeast asia. You'd be amazed at the volume of crap that comes through.
Case in point. I initially had set a fairly closed firewall policy on my router. I blocked all outgoing ports unless allowed by a specific service I enabled, sadly I didnt realize that the router passed through all external communication coming in. I have a secondary firewall in my setup that I have my home networks sitting behind and I was amazed and how many port scans were coming in all originating from over seas IP's. In these cases they were specificially looking for MSSQL servers listening on port 1026-1028. Every few minutes i'd get pinged. Luckily I had my second firewall with an explicit deny all policy that dropped all inbound unsolicited packets. I later had to customize my router/firewall (the one from my ISP.. verizon.. westell 327w) to specify my rules more explicitly.
Bottom line, if people just throw a pc/server out there and think they're secure because they dont think someone would attack "them" because they're a nobody. Think again, these are all automatic attacks that look for common vulnerabilities in various OS's. Once they get your box, your just another part of the swarm. - ikcilabd, on 06/20/2008, -1/+12If I were gonna hack some heavy metal, I'd, uh, work my way back through some low security, and try the back door.
/some movie - inactive, on 06/20/2008, -0/+11Poisoned route (DNS poisoning) is quite easily implemented when you are a repressive despotic government with absolute control.
I'd strongly suspect this method. - davidpeace2002, on 06/20/2008, -0/+11And linux/BSD are FREE! Imagine the savings to the taxpayers!
- misterhektik, on 06/20/2008, -2/+12They obviously aren't using Gibson's. No one can hack the gibson.
Hack the planet! - inactive, on 06/20/2008, -0/+8You just couldn't wait until a relevant story came along to use that one-liner could you. You panicked and pulled the trigger. Tut-tut.
- wiretapped, on 06/20/2008, -1/+9The U.S.A is doing the same to China... don't be fooled by western propaganda.
- 3rdDay, on 06/20/2008, -0/+7Deeply disturbing. The accusation that hackers are going after political dissidents is really quite an unnerving prospect. Everything should be done to protect political activists who are working to establish and advance human rights and the computers terrorists who oppose them should be brought to justice.
- Lounger540, on 06/20/2008, -0/+7Yeah, because that's so hard to change...
- inactive, on 06/20/2008, -1/+8Ok I'll tell you.
Users should only be able to access what they need to access in order to do their job.
Desktops shut down at night. (This is when all the intrusions happen!)
A prescribed minimum strength password policy.
Update software often (I know some in the State Dept. that use unpatched vanilla Win 2000 professional - 8 years without patching!!!!)
Physical barriers to certain systems.
No confidential info on Laptops!!!!!!!!!!!!!! FFS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Encrypt laptops volumes anyway.
Reduce laptop use.
VPN from external desktops using smart cards with temperal keys.
Constant technical and social hacking tests run by independant external contractors that report monthy.
The list goes on and on and on - Matt2k, on 06/20/2008, -0/+7Well, I don't know if I'd call it a proxy exactly, although that's what they are. You compromise multiple machines and tunnel your connection through them, or just SSH/RDP. Do that through a few in a row and you have a hard trace to follow. Each one could be in a separate country, involving new police, getting new warrants, dealing with new sets of server owners. Its generally not worth the effort.
- CarzorStelatis, on 06/20/2008, -0/+7Find out which politician is having sex with his secretary, in order to try and get information from the secretary?
- Sponky, on 06/20/2008, -0/+6Because that's where their agents listen to their mission objective recordings.
After the tapes self destruct they flush the remains down the toilet.
Also it's a good place to put on a false face to avoid a "tail" so video surveillance is warranted. The titillation from the occasional communist pink bit is tolerated because it relieves the stress from not being able to surf for pron at work and keeps our agents happy and productive. - jemka, on 06/20/2008, -1/+7I'm guessing you chose nanja not becuase ninja was taken, but because you just spelled it wrong.
- MacSuxWindozSux, on 06/20/2008, -0/+6Walk into Starbucks and use their wifi. Nuff said.
- eviljolly, on 06/20/2008, -0/+6Even a script kiddie could spoof a Wi-Fi MAC address....
Atheros chipsets and a few others even allow packet injection. (great for WEP cracking) - wonkavsn, on 06/20/2008, -0/+6Chill guys, it's cool. I just installed Sub Seven on ... China.
Pretty soon their cd trays will open without their consent and they'll be like "Holy crap!".. only in Chinese. - ikcilabd, on 06/20/2008, -0/+5get me the switching control center, i need to trace a call thats in progress
- Ninjab3ar, on 06/20/2008, -0/+5Wow, you're a pro..
- inactive, on 06/20/2008, -2/+7I'm not disagreeing with you but how could the sound of chinese bowel movements and urination be of interest to them?
Thats just weird. - BillOReilly08, on 06/20/2008, -1/+6I'M IN UR COMPUTERS, READIN UR FILEZ.
- jvincent08, on 06/20/2008, -0/+5You've obviously never actually used Linux, or used a very minimalistic install with no GUI.
- IdanH14, on 06/20/2008, -0/+5Haven't they never heard about encryption? :O
Put all the senators files in a virtual, hidden and encrypted partition, using something like TrueCrypt or even something better (if something like that exists), and no one will be to crack that any time soon. It will take the damned Chinese hacker (or any hacker, for that matter) years to crack a decent encryption. - inactive, on 06/20/2008, -0/+5It's a bit easier to secure things when you have a whole separate internet that is classified...
- Rahodeb, on 06/20/2008, -1/+6Yeah, then they can't work at all!
j/k :P - inactive, on 06/20/2008, -3/+7Wanna be hackers? Code Crackers? Slackers? Wasting time with all the chat room yackers? - Weird Al
- jemka, on 06/20/2008, -2/+6Mark today as the day alanr19 single-handedly developed a plan to make the US government computer infrastructure impervious to hacking. Simple answer; Install linux/Unix/BSD and implement a proper security policy.
For get MIT, just ask alanr19. - SystemLord, on 06/20/2008, -1/+5Crackers you idiots, crackers. When will the media stop referencing the Mittnick movie and selling ***** to public that computer hardware and software disassembling is a bad thing. Hackers learn for better, crackers break in for worse. Get your facts straight, but oh wait, it's internet!
- inactive, on 06/20/2008, -0/+4Because Jesus wants you to go green and help them make more money...
- RonBurgundy76, on 06/20/2008, -0/+4Well, if you're messing around with government computers, you'll go to jail a lot sooner than he will. So perhaps the effort is worth it, eh?
- Kinnkster, on 06/20/2008, -1/+4Did they really just say "They're in our computers, reading our files." ?
- deathsythe, on 06/20/2008, -0/+3Torr- for the win!
- thedogfatherx, on 06/20/2008, -0/+3Because they are living in dark basements with an unlimited supply of potato chips and pop. Duh.
- jemka, on 06/20/2008, -0/+3They know. The point is that congressman and senator ***** aren't really endangering our countries most precious information. Now emails to prostitutes, on the other hand, aren't as easy to secure.
- nstlgc, on 06/20/2008, -0/+3War Games. The backdoor is Joshua.
- eviljolly, on 06/20/2008, -0/+3http://www.flickr.com/photos/shanghaidaddy/3700269 ...
I guess you're right :P - baylat, on 06/20/2008, -0/+2ahhh the conspiracies. Its like reading Tom Clancy's novels.
- gregnorc, on 06/20/2008, -0/+27 PROXIES
- rizla420, on 06/20/2008, -0/+2Better yet, build your own wifi predator and jump on an AP up to 1km away. No need to be in the store.
- mattearle, on 06/20/2008, -0/+2Moreover, what the hell is the U.S. government going to do to China if they do catch them? They couldn't even beat Iraq in a war, China has one of the biggest armies in the world.
- BrosDuCK, on 06/20/2008, -0/+2Nuke them? :O
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