
Hacking U.S. Secrets, China Pushes for Drones - sethbannon
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/21/world/asia/hacking-us-secrets-china-pushes-for-drones.html
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gaius
Question: why were these computers connected to the Internet in the first
place? So the drone design engineers could check their Facebooks? Computers
doing real work should be airgapped, this is a no-brainer.

~~~
wikiburner
Just curious, how would airgapping be practical if you need Internet
connectivity for your "real work"?

For example, let's say you run a quant trading firm and the algorithms you're
concerned about being stolen need connectivity to download live trading info,
and then after processing that info they need to communicate buy/sell orders
to the outside world.

Are there any methods that could be used that would prevent all communication
with a secure system (with an airgap level of certainty) besides the strictly
defined data you need to do your "real work"?

~~~
gaius
Sure, you would just use Radianz, and that is in fact what everyone does. This
is a very solved problem! Bloomberg also operates a private network, and there
are others too. These systems can operate perfectly well without access to the
public Internet.

A couple of jobs ago I worked at a financial services firm with 2 networks and
2 PCs on everyone's desk. Rednet for outside connectivity, and an internal
network for real work, and never the twain shall meet.

NO-ONE needs the Internet for real work, let's be honest, just for goofing
off. Time we all started to prioritize security over mere convenience.

~~~
wikiburner
Yep, maybe trading wasn't the best example, although they are still
effectively at the mercy of the security of their data providers network -
which admittedly is probably quite good.

Let's say you're a P.I., journalist, researcher, law enforcement, or intel
agency, and need to automate news or people searches for some reason. If you
were able to very strictly define the data you're expecting to receive, isn't
there _any_ way you could automatically pass this data on to a secure system
without opening yourself up to exploits?

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xkiwi
Hacking Unite nation. Media: China was doing that, too.

Hacking Encrypt Fax, Media: Quiet

we developed drone, attacks in pakistan. Media: Quiet

China developed drone, doing nothing, yet. Media: Hacking U.S. Secrets, China
Pushes for Drones

Enforce human rights to third world countries. U.S.: -airline reservations are
used to target illegal searches. -cellphone tracking by tower -20 miles
interior check points, -100-miles Border Zone as "Consitution-free". As a
result, San Francisco, Los Angles, Seattle, Chicago, New York, Washington
D.C., Philadelphia, Miami, Houston are Consitution-free.

Now what was the news again?

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Asterick6
Why not drop a mention of the NSA/CIA's spying and hacking on other countries
and American citizens? Seems that it's only news for the media when China does
it. Bunch of hypocrites.

~~~
wavefunction
The NYT and other major US media are pretty regularly reporting on the ongoing
revelations from the Snowden whistle-blowing. I believe HN has instituted a
"no NSA spying" story policy in general due to political arguments rather than
discussions of the technical aspects involved. I could be wrong though.

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r0h1n
Amazing how fast China has started looking like a Johnny-come-lately, now that
Snowden has opened our eyes to how the US/NSA/GCHQ were targeting their
citizens, allies, enemies and the Internet itself (by coercing service
providers and by weakening underlying cryptography).

~~~
anologwintermut
I don't think that shoe has dropped yet. As far as domestic surveillance goes,
NSA seems to be approaching the level in terms of capabilities of Chinese MSS.
In terms of foreign surveillance, although we can safely assume NSA has access
to more fiber and hence internet traffic, there seems little reason to think
their hacking activities are any more prevalent than any other large
intelligence agency. Those capabilities are, after all, rather cheap.

What we haven't learned of, at least yet, is rampant industrial espionage by
NSA to steal R&D and a pipeline for dealing with the stolen results. China, at
least according to US allegations, has precisely that.

~~~
tanzam75
> _What we haven 't learned of, at least yet, is rampant industrial espionage
> by NSA to steal R&D and a pipeline for dealing with the stolen results.
> China, at least according to US allegations, has precisely that._

China would still be late to that game.

France and Israel were famous for doing government-sponsored industrial
espionage in the 1980s-1990s. Again, according to US allegations.

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hosh
Hmmm. I wonder if maritime drone fleets are going to make carrier task forces
obsolete, the same way carriers had been rendering battleships obsolete.

~~~
wikiburner
I think China's R&D in "Carrier Killer Missiles" is probably more likely to do
it:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_killer_missile](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_killer_missile)

~~~
dm2
A CIWS will kick in at about 3 miles and has a 100% kill radius of over 1
mile. This will increase when the system has been upgrade to use lasers
(soon).

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close-
in_weapon_system](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close-in_weapon_system)

The CIWS is only used if the SeaSparrow missiles (which have a 40+ mile range)
and RAMs do not hit their target.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESSM](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESSM)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIM-116_Rolling_Airframe_Missil...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIM-116_Rolling_Airframe_Missile)

Those would only be used if the jamming equipment/planes failed.

Don't forget that carriers always have several ships traveling with them with
even more anti-missile firepower.

It would literally take a nuclear missile, severe incompetence, or numerous
malfunctions on multiple well-tested systems to hit an aircraft carrier with a
missile. Plus balls, the US will come after you hard if you mess with one of
it's carriers.

But yeah, shooting a missile with multiple nuclear warheads is about the only
thing that can be done to take out a carrier, and that's a pretty awesome
claim.

Oh, I guess a railgun would work too, those would be the real carrier killers.
The US DoD should definitely assign some extra IT security personnel to the
contractors working on railguns.

~~~
wikiburner
Just wondering, why do you think the U.S. military seems so paranoid about
China's research into this? Everything I know about carrier killer missiles
comes from mainstream media coverage in response to various U.S. generals
sounding the alarm about China's progress in this technology, and its
potential to end the U.S.'s dominance of the Pacific. Is it just budgetary
saber-rattling?

Also, what happens if China fires, say, a few dozen of those missiles at once
at a carrier group? After all, those missiles are a hell of a lot cheaper than
a carrier.

~~~
hosh
This is just something I picked up and reasoned out, but you will probably
want to verify this for yourself.

America fields the world's largest number of carrier task force in the world.
The other Western countries have maybe one each. Apparently, it required not
only technical skills, but also a certain culture and discipline of the crew
manning the carriers. As such, the Soviets were unable field effective carrier
task force and ended up building a submarine fleet instead.

With the Soviets gone, that left the US Navy as the undisputed power on the
high seas, at least, if you are going by numbers of carrier task force. It's
the primary offensive power of the US Navy.

... and if there is technology that renders it obsolete, it would be a major
concern.

Note, in my original post, I was not talking just about carriers. I was
talking about entire carrier task forces, where escort ships (like the
cruisers fielding Aegis) are centered around the single carrier.

