Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
China has released a report that reveals the US National Security Agency (NSA) used multiple cybersecurity tools in its recent attacks against a Chinese university. Amongst these are sniffing and Trojan programs, which Chinese researchers say led to the theft of a "large amount of sensitive data".
China's National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center (CVERC) on Tuesday said "41 types of cyber weapons" were tapped by NSA's hacking unit, Tailored Access Operations (TAO), in the cyber attacks targeting China's Northwestern Polytechnical University.
Located in the Chinese city of Xi'an, the university describes itself as a research-focused institution with disciplines in aeronautics, astronautics, and marine technology engineering. It is affiliated with China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
The university is on the US government's Entity List alongside several other Chinese educational institutions, including Sichuan University and Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. US companies are prohibited from exporting or transferring specific items to companies on the list unless they have procured a licence from their government to do so.
According to a report by state-owned news agency Xinhua, CVERC revealed that amongst the security tools TAO used was a sniffing program CVERC dubbed "Suctionchar".
One of the key components that resulted in the data theft, Suctionchar was capable of stealing accounts and passwords used in remote management and file transfer services on targeted servers, CVERC said in its report, which was released in collaboration with Chinese cybersecurity vendor, Beijing Qi'an Pangu Laboratory Technology.
"Suctionchar can run stealthily on target servers, monitor in real-time users' input on the terminal program of the operating system console, and intercept all kinds of user names and passwords," the report noted, adding that these credentials then could be used to breach other servers and network devices.
[...] The Chinese foreign ministry's spokesperson Mao Ning said NSA's cyber attacks and data theft had involved 13 personnel from the US government agency. She revealed that more than 1,000 attacks were launched against the university, during which "core technical data" was stolen.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Frosty Piss on Wednesday September 14 2022, @07:58AM
China bitching about cyber hackers? Cry me a river.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Wednesday September 14 2022, @08:16AM (8 children)
Did the US want to find out whether China could confirm the research they cribbed?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by janrinok on Wednesday September 14 2022, @09:17AM (1 child)
... or do the Chinese want the US to believe that the data they have stolen is 'good' data, whereas the Chinese really know it is full of errors and false leads? It is always hard to know from a single source - assuming that there are no others. And don't forget that the US lost a significant number of sources as a result of them being compromised a few years ago.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by RamiK on Wednesday September 14 2022, @09:36AM
Being a university, it was probably impossible to keep things quiet so they decided to just release some info to control the message instead of letting rumors spread.
The DOD takes the same stance with the UFO videos: If they leak out, they'll release some info to control the message. But otherwise, they'd just classify it since they don't want to bother having to go through each video frame to make sure there's nothing operational (activity, time and place, personal and hardware being used...) being shown.
compiling...
(Score: 3, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday September 14 2022, @10:19AM (2 children)
I was going to say: sensitive information at an institute of higher learning? Like the restricted section of the Hogwarts library, or what? Did the NSA fail to pay their tuition?
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday September 14 2022, @11:24AM (1 child)
Sometimes (often?) technical specialists for a particular thing only exist in academia so government will go to them if they need it.
E.g. some star wars programme work was contracted to experts outside of US government.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday September 14 2022, @01:17PM
Oh, for sure. I believe the new Physics and Engineering buildings at U of Miami were 100% co-incident with their receipt of Star Wars funding for rail gun and similar research, and the ramp-up of the student loan progra,m and the doubling of tuition in a 3 year timespan... hard to untangle entirely, they liked to redirect everybody to the new brick sidewalks and fountains which were "100% funded by an Alumni bequest restricted to campus beautification" - pay no attention to the 100x that level of funding happening behind the curtain....
Still, I was reasonably close to the engineering and physics programs there, and if there was secret work going on they hid it rather well in plain sight - never did I trip upon anything that people clammed up about because: confidentiality agreements or similar.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 3, Interesting) by SomeRandomGeek on Wednesday September 14 2022, @09:16PM (2 children)
I have no reason to believe that this report is false. I also have no reason to believe it is true. China announced this hack in order to shape the way that Chinese people feel about the US. The truth or falsehood of the claim is irrelevant to that goal. And China is certainly not above creating a little fake news.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 15 2022, @12:24AM
Yeah that was the 1950's calling - they want their technical secrets back.
(Score: 2) by FuzzyTheBear on Thursday September 15 2022, @11:23AM
That's very likely. The US just announced 4.2 bils for Taiwan's defence. What better way to demonise the US than something they won't have to prove to their citizens ?
Bad bad bad USA