davidh
October 7th, 2006, 07:49 AM
QUOTE
This is the second major attack originating in China that's been acknowledged by the federal government since July. Then, the State Department said that Chinese attackers had broken into its systems overseas and in Washington. And last year, Britain's National Infrastructure Security Co-ordination Center (NISCC) claimed that Chinese hackers had attacked more than 300 government agencies and private companies in the U.K.
"This [Commerce attack] is the third or fourth battle that we've lost to China," said Richard Stiennon, principal analyst with security consultancy IT-Harvest. "It's not a digital Pearl Harbor, not yet, but it's getting closer."
Although Stiennon said he doesn't have any inside information on the most recent attack, the evidence points to state-sponsored hacking. "The continuous nature of these attacks means there is a link to a state source," Stiennon said. "The Chinese are waging very effectual intellectual warfare."
...
One possible infection technique that could survive a reformat would be to store malicious code in the PC's BIOS flash memory. In January, a security researcher at the Black Hat conference demonstrated how the BIOS could be used by attackers.
In May, Congress criticized State Department plans to use Chinese-made PCs in high-security settings because it feared the machines' BIOS could be pre-infected with spyware.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/cmp/20061007/tc_cmp/193105174
UNQUOTE
But don't worry. We'll beat them. We have a lot of MBA's and American Idols.
DH
This is the second major attack originating in China that's been acknowledged by the federal government since July. Then, the State Department said that Chinese attackers had broken into its systems overseas and in Washington. And last year, Britain's National Infrastructure Security Co-ordination Center (NISCC) claimed that Chinese hackers had attacked more than 300 government agencies and private companies in the U.K.
"This [Commerce attack] is the third or fourth battle that we've lost to China," said Richard Stiennon, principal analyst with security consultancy IT-Harvest. "It's not a digital Pearl Harbor, not yet, but it's getting closer."
Although Stiennon said he doesn't have any inside information on the most recent attack, the evidence points to state-sponsored hacking. "The continuous nature of these attacks means there is a link to a state source," Stiennon said. "The Chinese are waging very effectual intellectual warfare."
...
One possible infection technique that could survive a reformat would be to store malicious code in the PC's BIOS flash memory. In January, a security researcher at the Black Hat conference demonstrated how the BIOS could be used by attackers.
In May, Congress criticized State Department plans to use Chinese-made PCs in high-security settings because it feared the machines' BIOS could be pre-infected with spyware.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/cmp/20061007/tc_cmp/193105174
UNQUOTE
But don't worry. We'll beat them. We have a lot of MBA's and American Idols.
DH