China hacks US Navy contractor - Fancy Panda

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https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-us-canada-44421785

The FBI is investigating after the Chinese government hacked a US Navy contractor and stole highly sensitive security data, US media say.

Data stolen in the breach include plans for a supersonic missile project, US officials told the Washington Post.

The attacks, in January and February this year, were confirmed by CBS News.

Hackers targeted a contractor linked to a US military organisation that conducts research and development for submarines and underwater weaponry.

In a separate development, a former US intelligence officer was convicted on charges of giving top-secret documents to a Chinese agent.

Kevin Mallory, 61, was found guilty under the federal Espionage Act on Friday. He is due to be charged on 21 September and faces a maximum penalty of life in prison, the US justice department said in a statement.

In the case of the US Navy contractor, US officials told the Washington Post that the firm had been working for the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, a military organisation based in Newport, Rhode Island.

They added that among the material accessed were data relating to a project known as Sea Dragon, as well as information held within the navy submarine development unit's electronic warfare library.

Plans included an anti-ship missile system to be installed on US submarines by 2020.

While the data was stored on an unclassified network belonging to the contractor, it is considered highly sensitive due to the nature of the technology under development and the links to military projects.

A commander of the US Navy, Bill Speaks, said that measures were in place requiring companies to notify the government when a "cyber incident" had occurred on networks that contained "controlled unclassified information".

"It would be inappropriate to discuss further details at this time," he added.

The investigation is being led by the Navy with the assistance of the FBI, officials said.

On Friday, US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis ordered a review into possible cybersecurity issues relating to the contractor, CBS News reports, citing the Pentagon inspector general's office.

The news comes days before a summit in Singapore at which US President Donald Trump will meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, who counts Beijing among his allies.
Edit: CBS link
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/us...na-government-plans-anti-ship-missile-stolen/
 
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Cthulhu said:
Data stolen in the breach include plans for a supersonic missile project, US officials told the Washington Post.
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Ooh, that's spicy; because it means one of two things.
  • America has a supersonic missile in development. This is not actually public, and armchair generals have been lamenting for years that America is stuck with museum-grade Harpoons and Tomahawks while Russia's been using supersonic cruise missiles with swarm networking since the 70s. America developing a supersonic AShM would be Pretty Big News.
  • Or, China managed to steal data from the hypersonic missile programs like Waverider, which are slightly more public but a lot more bleeding edge.
 
xxXDxx said:
Ooh, that's spicy; because it means one of two things.
  • America has a supersonic missile in development. This is not actually public, and armchair generals have been lamenting for years that America is stuck with museum-grade Harpoons and Tomahawks while Russia's been using supersonic cruise missiles with swarm networking since the 70s. America developing a supersonic AShM would be Pretty Big News.
  • Or, China managed to steal data from the hypersonic missile programs like Waverider, which are slightly more public but a lot more bleeding edge.
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I'd say the odds that media is a great big dummy who doesn't understand what words mean is the most likely option.
 
Why the hell are government secrets or critical infrastructure connected to the Internet anyway?

Why not just use something like flash drives if data needs to be transferred? Or use a network that's physically inaccessible to the Internet?

It worked before the Internet.
 
ToroidalBoat said:
Why the hell are government secrets or critical infrastructure connected to the Internet anyway?

Why not just use something like flash drives if data needs to be transferred? Or use a network that's physically inaccessible to the Internet?

It worked before the Internet.
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I'm pretty sure most nuclear assets (even power plants) all use 90's-tier tech for this reason exactly. If I were more confident in the feds, I'd almost be inclined to believe that they let this information be stolen on purpose.
 
You'd think the US government would have at least done something to address our cyber security after the Vault 7 leaks. But I guess they're more interested in knowing what websites I browse on a Friday night instead of actually keeping this country safe.
 
thismanlies said:
You'd think the US government would have at least done something to address our cyber security after the Vault 7 leaks. But I guess they're more interested in knowing what websites I browse on a Friday night instead of actually keeping this country safe.
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In the process of spying on people, they also actively insert vulnerabilities into software and hardware to make getting into them easier. Of course, that also means dirty foreigners can do it too.

They actively compromise US security because they're bonkers little control freaks.

I'm sure many open source software projects have NSA plants in them. Good thing Linus Torvalds is such a spergy asshole about code quality.

Edit: I just want to have a president who'll go through the NSA and send the DoJ after them. Like start issuing arrest warrants for actual NSA employees. That'd be awesome.
 
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