“The Chinese government is ratcheting up its cyber spying operations against the U.S., a congressional advisory panel found, citing an example of a carefully orchestrated campaign against one U.S. company that appears to have been sponsored by Beijing.” –WSJ
In a 2007 attack, hackers employed by the Peoples Republic of China stole valuable research and development information from an unnamed advanced technology and defense company in the United States.
The attack was well organized and consisted of multiple hackers accessing seven servers simultaneously.
The hackers stole multiple employee accounts which they accessed up to 150 times throughout the attack. Chinese operatives then remotely accessed the unnamed company’s mainframe and transferred countless files over the firm’s seven email servers. The files were then renamed to sneak under the firm’s security system and exported to eight computers existing outside of the local area network.
Two of these nodes were located at large University campuses, where the high level of Internet traffic made it easy for the spies to finally remit the stolen files back to China.
The accusations are, of course, vehemently denied by the communist regime of China. Wang Baodong states: “"a product of Cold War mentality" that was "put in place to pick China to pieces." He added: "Accusations of China conducting, or 'likely conducting' as the commission's report indicates, cyberspace attacks or espionage against the U.S. are unfounded and unwarranted."
Of course they are…because the United States wants to destroy it's second largest trading partner ($2226.13 billion ytd) –Consensus.gov
The U.S. is confident that these incursions have been state funded. This attack exemplifies the true strength of the Chinese cyber intelligence department which is known as the People’s Liberation Army. It is estimated that Chinese hackers have stolen forty to fifty billion dollars worth of information annually.
A new era of espionage is sweeping the globe; there is no longer any necessity to leave your house. With a powerful computer, an Internet connection, and some creativity it is possible for anyone to steal large amounts of valuable information anonymously. Over 100 countries now have the capabilities of conducting similar attacks worldwide.
Technology is being developed more rapidly than ever before, and as always, there are people out there with the insatiable desire to “crack the system”. Rules are made to be broken. Some cyber spies call themselves white hat hackers, while others call themselves black hat hackers. To explain, white hat hackers crack systems for their own personal enjoyment while black hat hackers use their knowledge for malicious purposes.
Even the mighty OS X (the operating system that runs on the newest apple computers, which has been virtually hacker proof) has been cracked.
In early 2006, the hacker known as Gwerdna gained root control of a Mac in less than 30 minutes using a vulnerability that is unpublished by Apple Computers. “Gwerdna concluded that OS X contains "easy pickings" when it comes to vulnerabilities that could allow hackers to break into Apple's operating system.” – Zdnet
The reality of the matter is that there are very intelligent and motivated cyber spies among us with the capabilities of doing serious damage. The hackers that do this for fun are nothing compared to the organizational capabilities of a state funded, highly trained group of professional communist spies.
I would go as far to say that we will be encountering a plethora of cyber threats in the coming future, whether we hear about them or not. It should be at the forefront of the U.S. defense department to develop ample security to protect our military secrets as well as the privacy of the general public.