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Nation-state attackers affiliated with the Chinese government have made off with a trove of undersea military secrets, according to a report.
Hackers were able to mount a lateral attack after compromising the networks of a Navy contractor working for the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Rhode Island, according to a Washington Post report, citing American officials.
The result? “Massive amounts of highly sensitive data” flowed into the hands of China, unnamed officials told the paper, including “secret plans to develop a supersonic anti-ship missile for use on U.S. submarines by 2020.”
The incident happened January and February, the sources said, and resulted in 614 gigabytes of data, most of it highly sensitive info related to American offensive and defensive systems, including cryptography systems for secure communication, signals and sensor data, and the Navy’s electronic submarine warfare library, which contains information about adversary radar platforms.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 13 2018, @04:58PM (3 children)
What you ascribe to conspiracies and warmongering is more easily explained by the nature of how intelligence and spy-work works. As an example, imagine the vice-chairman of of China is really a double-agent working for the US, and has told the US that it was China who stole this information. Are you really expecting a press release from the US saying, "Our high-placed spy in the Chinese government told us this?" Likewise, imagine they managed to sneak a bug into the meeting room in the Kremlin. Do you really expect the US to say, "our listening device in the Kremlin recorded Putin saying he did this."
Moreover, would you believe them if they said it?
When it comes to covert intelligence, for the general public you just need to believe or not believe them. If you don't believe them, fine... but don't take their lack of supporting evidence as being indicative of anything.
(Score: 5, Touché) by ledow on Wednesday June 13 2018, @08:22PM
Yeah, we just need to take people at their word that Iraq has WMD.
And then kill millions of people on that basis.
Present evidence to the appropriate courts or organisations, or don't make the claim in public.
You'll notice that plenty of countries, faced with actual attacks involving the deaths of people (e.g. attacks on UK soil by suspected Russian agents), present an allegation, evidence for it, take it to court, and get it proven. Not just assert something like that.
I expect people to be able to back up any claim made in public to the satisfaction of those who make such decisions and not have media quote "officials" that are entirely unnamed and unwilling to confirm that claim in public (and, yes, in this case, it's a news article, but I could link to where named US military officials gave press conferences equating attacks with acts of war, and then alleging that a particular state was behind a particular attack, with literally nothing else said or done about it).
If it's serious and provable enough to NAME A COUNTRY, it's serious enough you could end up in a war, so it's serious enough to have to present your evidence. Otherwise, you keep your mouth shut, as an "official".
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday June 14 2018, @01:00AM
I ascribe these sorts of stories to the fact that the US has such a huge part of it's economy invested it the military that it has no choice but to keep inventing enemies, or people will start to ask for the spending to be cut back, so that maybe some money could be spent on schools, or maybe healthcare or something that might help ordinary Americans.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @09:53AM
There have been cases of spies making shit up to send to their paymasters.