Chinese Hackers Infiltrate US Army Database, Compromise Safety of Dams 256
coolnumbr12 writes "Chinese hackers have infiltrated a sensitive U.S. Army database that contains information about the vulnerabilities of thousands of dams located throughout the United States. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' National Inventory of Dams (NID) has raised concerns that information gathered in the hack could help China carry out a cyber-attack on the national electrical power grid."
Real reason (Score:5, Interesting)
quoted from "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5642408"
Of course they can, what makes you think they aren't?
But a more interesting question is to look at what information is presented and what is missing. How much is new, how much is old. Then on policy stories like this one I sometimes pop over to the senate web site and look at what's coming up on the senate calendar [1] and oh look, on May 7th they are having a hearing to talk about
Hearings to examine the Department of the Air Force in
review of the Defense Authorization Request for fiscal
year 2014 and the Future Years Defense Program.
Hmm, who is in charge of Cyber Command? Why it's the Air Force! Who would have guessed.
(yes I can be that cynical)
Re:how is this not an act of war? (Score:5, Interesting)
Even if the culprit turned out to be a person with Chinese citizenship, it could very well be the same thing as some pimply faced youth somewhere in a fly-over state hacking into a Chinese database. It does not have to be related to the government. However, if it is, China has some explanation to do.
I'm also wondering whether or not the DOD is purposely saying "it's the Chinese" to avoid people asking them "why don't you secure your shit better?".
Re:how is this not an act of war? (Score:3, Interesting)