Evidence of the Government and Industry both failing to keep secrets in the face of a concerted effort by China. Just some evidence that we shouldn’t expect good secret to be the norm and should expect much of both government and industry to be quite vulnerable. Perhaps elsewhere we can find exceptions.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) has charged two Chinese nationals with being part of a decade-long, government-sponsored global hacking campaign that included the alleged theft of information from 45 US tech companies and government agencies, including NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Goddard Space Flight Center.
Over the course of the Technology Theft Campaign, which began in or about 2006, Zhu, Zhang, and their coconspirators in the APT10 Group successfully obtained unauthorized access to the computers of more than 45 technology companies and U.S. Government agencies based in at least 12 states, including Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, Maryland, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin. The APT10 Group stole hundreds of gigabytes of sensitive data and information from the victims’ computer systems, including from at least the following victims: seven companies involved in aviation, space and/or satellite technology; three companies involved in communications technology; three companies involved in manufacturing advanced electronic systems and/or laboratory analytical instruments; a company involved in maritime technology; a company involved in oil and gas drilling, production, and processing; and the NASA Goddard Space Center and Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In addition to those victims who had information stolen, Zhu, Zhang, and their co-conspirators successfully obtained unauthorized access to computers belonging to more than 25 other technology-related companies involved in, among other things, industrial factory automation, radar technology, oil exploration, information technology services, pharmaceutical manufacturing, and computer processor technology, as well as the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
The methods used don’t sound especially advanced. Spear phishing, send emails which look real but contain malware, then installing Trojans and keyloggers, some stuff with domain names to switch up IP addresses frequently. Seem “means and methods” in the unsealed indictment.
(Originally posted by Ruby)
Evidence of the Government and Industry both failing to keep secrets in the face of a concerted effort by China. Just some evidence that we shouldn’t expect good secret to be the norm and should expect much of both government and industry to be quite vulnerable. Perhaps elsewhere we can find exceptions.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/20/18150275/chinese-hackers-stealing-data-nasa-ibm-charged
Excerpts from the Department of Justice announcement:
Other links here:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-cyber-hpe-ibm-exclusive-idUSKCN1OJ2OY
^ Hewlitt Packard Enterprise and IBM among the Managed Service Providers hacked.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/at-least-nine-global-msps-hit-in-apt10-attacks-acsc/
The methods used don’t sound especially advanced. Spear phishing, send emails which look real but contain malware, then installing Trojans and keyloggers, some stuff with domain names to switch up IP addresses frequently. Seem “means and methods” in the unsealed indictment.