...Weak USA Cyber Policy vs China’s Security Threat to the USA? Abstract A cyber spy network based mainly in China hacked into classified documents from government and private organizations. One of the biggest questions still remains unanswered. Should the U.S. Congress conduct an in depth assessment of Chinese cyber spying and consider imposing tougher penalties on companies that benefit from industrial espionage. In this paper I will review china’s cyber threat and possible USA solutions to protect against the threat. Could Weak USA Cyber Policy be the cause of China’s Security Threat? U.S. corporations and cyber security specialists have reported an daily attack of computer network intrusions originating from China. Of the seven cases that were adjudicated under the Economic Espionage Act in 2010, six involved a link to China. U.S. corporations and cyber security specialists have reported a huge increase of computer network intrusions originating from China. Some of these reports have alleged a Chinese corporate or government sponsor of the activity, but the U.S. intelligence community has not been able to confirm these reports. In a study released in February, McAfee attributed an intrusion attempt they labeled Night Dragon to a Chinese Internet Protocol (IP) address and indicated the intruders stole data from the computer systems of petrochemical companies (Minnick, W. 11 Dec, 2011).” So could the problem be U.S. Cyber policy? I believe congressional committees...
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................................................................................... .....1 Security and attribution ....................................................................................................... 1 Faster and cheaper .............................................................................................................. 2 Extra-territoriality ................................................................................................................ 2 Large but Uncertain Costs........................................................................................................... 3 Pervasive Threat from Intelligence Adversaries and Partners ...............................................................4 China: Persistent Collector.......................................................................................................... 5 Russia: Extensive, Sophisticated Operations ..............................................................................5 US Partners: Leveraging Access ..................................................................................................6...
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...Foreign Intelligence Organizations Instructor: Robert Bier July 25, 2014 INTRODUCTION The United States is considered the most powerful country in the world, so naturally, there are many other countries that are always threatening the country’s natural security. In this paper, we are going to look at three countries that have valid resources in intelligence to be a major threat to the United States. China is a huge threat based on the country’s intelligence resources in HUMINT, SIGINT, and cyber capabilities. Iran’s HUMINT and MASINT intelligence collection methods are highly capable of being a number one contender against the United States. Lastly, Russia has a deep history in HUMINT intelligence with successful espionage and ELINT capabilities that no other European country has used before. These three countries are highly skilled and capable to be a major threat to the world. So which country’s intelligence capabilities is the number one threat? CHINA, IRAN, or RUSSIA? China, Iran and Russia are three countries that are equally capable to be a threat to U.S. national security. As stated above, each country is highly skilled in their respective intelligence collection method. The Chinese Spy Agency is an extremely effective organization that is comprised of twelve different bureaus of intelligence collection. Each bureau collects intelligence from HUMINT, SIGINT, cyber, and so on. China’s HUMINT collection is considered number one in the world, due to the fact that...
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...Trojan Dragon: China’s Cyber Threat John J. Tkacik, Jr. America’s counterintelligence czar, Dr. Joel F. Brenner, painted an alarming picture of economic espionage in 2006, albeit in the objective tones and neutral parlance of the intelligence community. He reported to Congress that “foreign collection efforts have hurt the United States in several ways”: • Foreign technology collection efforts have “eroded the US military advantage by enabling foreign militaries to acquire sophisticated capabilities that might otherwise have taken years to develop.” • “[M]assive” industrial espionage has “undercut the US economy by making it possible for foreign firms to gain a competitive economic edge over US companies.” Dr. Brenner characterizes China as “very aggressive” in acquiring U.S. advanced technology. “The technology bleed to China, among others, is a very serious problem,” he said in March 2007, noting that “you can now, from the comfort of your own home or office, exfiltrate information electronically from somebody else’s computer around the world without the expense and risk of trying to grow a spy.” On November 15, 2007, the bipartisan, congressionally chartered U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) put a finer point on it: “Chinese espionage activities in the United States are so extensive that they comprise the single greatest risk to the security of American technolo- gies.” Cyberpenetration is by far China’s most effective espionage tool, and it is one...
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...Attacks11/23/14 China’s Cyber Attack on Google A majority of the population in the United States has used Google as a search engine to find information. It is often easy to think that whatever information you want to find on the internet can be found through Google. However, in China, that wasn’t always the case. In 2006, Google extended its company to China in hopes to help digitally connect China’s population to more resources over the internet. Unfortunately, opening up Google in China led the company to experience cybersecurity breaches that affected many companies and people. The following paper will discuss one of China related cybersecurity attacks on Google and how the breach might have occurred based on investigative reports. Additionally, the paper will include information on known or suspected losses of confidentiality, integrity, and the availability of information systems. Lastly, I will discuss the improvements Google made to improve its cybersecurity measures. The history of Google in China begins in 2006, when the company decided to launch its services to China. Although the intention for Google in China was to provide the Chinese with more resources for information, China still had several regulations on censorship. Whether the censorship regulations fueled the hackers to attack Google is unknown, but it is suspected (Arrington, 2010). Recent reports on cybersecurity breaches related to China show that China has been consistently responsible for...
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...Mandiant is an USA information security company. The key people of this Mandiant are Kevin Mandia and Richard Bejtlich. Kevin Mandia is the CEO of this Company and he is the former officer of the United States Air Force and served as a Company's chief executive officer. It gives occurrence reaction and general security counseling alongside episode administration items to major worldwide associations, government and fortune 100 companies. Government officers are also its customers. The Mandiant Intelligence center released an unknown facts reveling APT1's multi-year , enterprise scale computer espionage campaign. APT1 is one of many risk bunches Mandiant tracks the world over and we consider it to be a standout amongst the most productive as far as the sheer amount of data it has stolen. There are lot of highlights in the Mandiant Report. Some of them are : 1. Interesting details of more than 40 APT1 Malware families and timeline 2. points of interest of APT1's broad assault foundation and timeline 3. A course of events of APT1 monetary surveillance directed subsequent to 2006 against 141 casualties over different commercial ventures. 4. APT1's usual way of doing things including an arrangement of features demonstrating real APT1 action The APT 1 report is completely filled with above 3000 APT 1 indicators , IP Addresses and Domain names. It stood out as truly newsworthy around the globe in such standard distributions as The Wall St Journal and The New...
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...Responsibility.................................6-7 Failure to Take Responsible Action................................................................7 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………7-8 References.....................................................................................................8-9 Introduction In 1969, the first ever network was born into existence (ARPANET) also called advanced research projects agency network. The Government Defense Department worked diligently on this break through in order to link some of the United States most prominent research universities with a couple of purposes in mind: That is, developing experience in interconnecting computers and to expand productivity via resource sharing (Bosworth, 2014). These independent large-scale computer systems only had four nodes which included the big time universities like UCLA, Utah, University of California, and Stanford. At the time there was no thought of any concerns for security issues as the mainframe computer rooms...
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...emerging powers such as China and India, trade secrets become more valuable and harder to protect. Whether it’s computer hacking a corporation’s network, a military mainframe, or spying for another country, also called espionage, it takes a wide array security measure to protect information from leaking or being stolen by our advisories. These security measures fall with the realm of IT, background investigations, and facility security. It is obvious, given past espionage events; these procedures are not always effective. Trade secrets, by definition, is considered to be a formula, practice, process, design, instrument, or compilation of information, hardware, technology, or some other means of proprietary information which is not generally known by the public or outside of the entity that protects. A trade secret gives a business the ability to obtain an economic advantage over competitors or customers. In some legal jurisdictions (states), these secrets are referred to as "confidential information", and are generally not referred to as "classified information" in the United States, as “classified information” refers to government secrets protected by a different set of laws and practices. Although, it is very important to note that the government, but more specifically the military and NASA have issues with protecting trade secrets. Both the United States military and NASA have been and continue to be targets of cyber hacks from nation states. Emerging super powers...
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...Running head: CYBER-ESPIONAGE AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY THEFT 1 Cyber-espionage and Intellectual Property (IP) theft: An overview of the rising threat and the potential responses by both the U. S. Government and U.S. Businesses Matthew Doyal Kennesaw State University Spring 2014 IS 8200 – Legal & Ethical Issues in IS CYBER-ESPIONAGE AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY THEFT Abstract 2 Society and business have become increasingly dependent upon data in the constantly connected world where everything that is said and done online leaves behind a massive ever-growing bread-crumb trail of information. With this ever larger quantity of data being transmitted on a range of devices as well as third party service providers being increasingly relied upon to store it; the threat of loss of confidential and sensitive data continues to expand exponentially (Online Trust Alliance, 2014, p. 3). “Breaches and data loss incidents have become a fact of life for organizations of every size and throughout the public and private sectors” (Online Trust Alliance, 2014, p. 4) making no organization immune. Given the growth of data and, therefore, data breaches the threat to the U.S. economy and individual U.S. businesses from trade secret theft is real and growing, therefore; a multi-pronged approach must be implemented by the public and private sectors alike. “Businesses must do their part to harden their cyber defenses, but the “take-home message here is that protecting IP from ‘them’ is an...
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...Cyber-Espionage Nightmare A groundbreaking online-spying case unearths details that companies wish you didn’t know about how vital information slips away from them. On a wall facing dozens of cubicles at the FBI office in Pittsburgh, five guys from Shanghai stare from “Wanted” posters. Wang Dong, Sun Kailiang, Wen Xinyu, Huang Zhenyu, and Gu Chunhui are, according to a federal indictment unsealed last year, agents of China’s People’s Liberation Army Unit 61398, who hacked into networks at American companies—U.S. Steel, Alcoa, Allegheny Technologies (ATI), Westinghouse—plus the biggest industrial labor union in North America, United Steelworkers, and the U.S. subsidiary of SolarWorld, a German solar-panel maker. Over several years, prosecutors say, the agents stole thousands of e-mails about business strategy, documents about unfair-trade cases some of the U.S. companies had filed against China, and even piping designs for nuclear power plants—all allegedly to benefit Chinese companies. It is the first case the United States has brought against the perpetrators of alleged state-sponsored cyber-espionage, and it has revealed computer-security holes that companies rarely acknowledge in public. Although the attackers apparently routed their activities through innocent people’s computers and made other efforts to mask themselves, prosecutors traced the intrusions to a 12-story building in Shanghai and outed individual intelligence agents. There is little chance that arrests will...
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...Living in the Age of Cyber Attacks and Cyber Warfare UMUC If you asked the average person on the street about cybersecurity and cyber warfare, they would probably say they don’t know much about it other than the fact that it involves computers. In fact, for anyone outside of the cybersecurity industry, the closest thing to cyber warfare that they may have experienced was their viewing of the movie War Games, or the fourth installment of the Die Hard series, Live Free or Die Hard. While those movies had a profound impact on the lives of the characters in the script, the audience probably thought it was merely fiction, not fully based on fact. In Live Free or Die Hard, John McClain (played by the indefatigable Bruce Willis) is attempting to stop a domestic cyber-terrorist who is acting out on a vendetta against the United States. The cyber-terrorist is successful in launching an online attack to overload and destroy a power grid that left much of America’s East Coast in darkness. When I first saw this movie, I was curious if an attack like that was really possible; however, most people around me just labeled the movie as “Hollywood’s overactive imagination”. With cyber attacks literally having the ability to affect lives in a nanosecond, it is vital that everyone understand what cyber attacks entail, the impact of these cyber attacks on a domestic and international scale, and knowing what to expect in the future while living in a world dominated by virtual experiences...
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...that human rights norms as established in conventions and treaties no longer apply,' Joanne Mariner, director of the terrorism and counter-terrorism program at Human Rights Watch said at the conference in Paris last week. The trend has worsened over the last seven years, according to Mariner, Some 2,000 human rights experts and activists have attended the annual United Nations Department of Public Information Non-Governmental Organizations Conference. The UN DPI/NGO conference on 'Reaffirming Human Rights for all: The Universal Declaration at 60' was held at the headquarters of the Unites Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The conference this year commemorated the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in Paris in December 1948. During the war on terror, however, the United States has not been fully as inclusive as it was in its war against communism. Aside from those in the "coalition of the willing," even most European countries have distanced themselves from Washington. When it came to fight the war on terror in Iraq, The United States never realize, moreover, the depth of the fault lines in Iraqi society between Kurds and Arabs, Sunnis and Shiites, and the...
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...Cyber Crime has become a top priority for law enforcement on a local, state and federal level. We are becoming increasingly concerned about cyber threats, most particularly on computer intrusions and network attacks. Computer intrusions are becoming more commonplace, more dangerous and more sophisticated. Our nation’s critical infrastructure and our military’s command and control networks are most certainly being targeted by our enemies and other potential adversaries alike. Our companies are being targeted for insider information and our colleges and universities for their valuable research and development. All of that being said, cyber crime is hitting us at home as we are being targeted for fraud and identity theft and our children are often targeted by online predators. No one is immune to these cyber risks, individuals, countries, Fortune 500 companies and the neighborhood “Mom and Pop” store. These threats are evolving and expanding every day. It is important to be wary and safeguard information and cyber access by these fraudsters and predators. I am using the law enforcement perspective, one I am most familiar with, in this paper. Computer intrusions and network attacks can affect many different facets of national security and organizational information. It is clear that terrorists and their organizations are using the internet to recruit and maintain their strength. For example, in the Arabian Peninsula, Al Qaeda has produced a full-color, English language...
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...An attack against a computer system or network is how PC Magazine defines a cyber-attack. A Cyber-attack can take many forms, for many reasons and can be executed on a small or large scale. Most cyber-attacks are criminal in nature. These cybercrimes are usually motivated by profit. Recent examples include the cyber-attacks on Visa/MasterCard and attacks on Google’s network by China. The cyber-attacks on Visa and MasterCard were part of “operation payback”, and were carried out by various loose nit groups that organized using social networking sites. “Operation payback” was retaliation against Visa and MasterCard for refusing to continue to do business with the website WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks posted leaked classified U.S. diplomatic communications on their website for the world to see. The United States felt this was a criminal act and pressured Visa and MasterCard to stop processing transactions for WikiLeaks. In response hackers launch “operation payback” which used distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks to crash Visa and MasterCard Servers. Google recently exited the Chinese market. According to the New York Times, “Google linked its decision to sophisticated cyber-attacks on its computer systems that it suspected originated in China and that were aimed, at least in part, at the Gmail user accounts of Chinese human rights activists. The attacks were directed at some 34 companies or entities, most of them in Silicon Valley, California, according to people with knowledge of...
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...Cybersecurity and U.S.-China Relations 网络安全与美中关系 Kenneth Lieberthal and Peter W. Singer 李侃如，彼得. W. 辛格 Cybersecurity and U.S.-China Relations 网络安全与美中关系 Kenneth Lieberthal and Peter W. Singer 李侃如，彼得. W. 辛格 February 2012 Authors’ Note F or the last year, the John L. Thornton China Center and the 21st Century Defense Initiative at Brookings have convened a working group on cybersecurity and U.S.-China relations, which the two authors organized and co-chaired. The research was motivated by our sense that: 1) the many policy issues involved in cybersecurity, especially in its impact on foreign relations, were already significant and would grow rapidly in importance in the coming years; 2) that such issues, if not well managed, could provide a major source of international friction, especially in U.S.-China relations; and 3) the newness of the field added a particularly complicating factor, making cybersecurity one of the most important but least understood emerging flashpoints in global security. A key aspect of the effort was to convene several dozen knowledgeable Americans from both the private and public sector, including the civilian government, military, corporate, think tank, and university communities. With such dynamic and fast-changing events playing out, the Brookings project not only sought to study the key issues in cybersecurity and how they impact U.S.-China relations, but also to break down some of the organizational and bureaucratic stovepipes that have limited...
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