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."
This crosses one of Obama's famous red lines. (Score:5, Funny)
You guys have nine years to knock that shit off or there is gonna be trouble.
Re:This crosses one of Obama's famous red lines. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, we might stop letting them lend us money!
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)
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Re:Real reason (Score:5, Insightful)
In this case you would get more insight from a calculator or spreadsheet than from cynicism. The US Cyber Command budget isn't that large compared to either the Air Force budget or the DoD budget. Finding some justification to bump it up wouldn't make much difference - it isn't going to be the tail that wags the dog.
Misplaced cynicism can also mislead you by pointing you in the wrong direction, as above. If you started digging into the question of Chinese espionage against the United States, you would quickly and easily lean that it is a huge effort against wide ranging targets. Why you would think this relatively minor event is in some way inconsistent wtih the total Chinese effort, and therefore not real, is baffling. Interesting who you effectively trust.
China also has more than 3,000 front companies in the U.S. “for the sole purpose of acquiring our technology,” . . . [bloomberg.com]
Inside the Chinese Boom in Corporate Espionage [businessweek.com]
Chinese Army Directing Cyber Espionage Against Western Businesses [forbes.com]
China military unit 'behind prolific hacking' [bbc.co.uk]
The China Problem [airforcemag.com]
What Information? (Score:5, Insightful)
From the article it isn't clear exactly what information was deemed sensitive. Does this information include very specific details (like, "here is the password to that plant's SCADA system?" Or does it cover broader details that the public had free access to prior to the September 11 attacks, such information now being withheld as "critical infrastructure information?"
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Hopefully the SCADA systems have a password other than the default
Re: What Information? (Score:2)
123456
conf password is "password"
Re: What Information? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually army network passwords have or at least had to be when I worked for them 15 letters long, contain no dictionary words and have a minimum of 2 small letters, to caps and two symbols. They are also changed every 30 days and can not be reused.
Also at random times all passwords are just set to be reset because that is what the admins are told to do.
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The Army Corps of Engineers manages public waterways & dams in the eastern states.
Re: What Information? (Score:5, Informative)
They operate at least 4 or 5 in the state or Arkansas alone. During the 50s and 60s they just about damed up everything bigger than a trickle from a water hose here.
That's the Core of Engineers. That are where the guys that build for the Army get practice for digging in the USA for when they go other places.
They have a totally cool model of the Mississippi river in Vicksburg that they use to simulate floods, droughts and other projects in the entire Mississippi river drainage.
That's a big area in case you didn't know.
Re: What Information? (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Take high res photos of people's desks as you walk past and read use the passwords that will be written on yellow sticky notes around the place.
2. Steal someone's phone or diary and look for the passwords they've noted in their contacts or notes.
3. When you find the password, which will be something like "skldjfsldfjsklfjsf!@*(#3-Feb13" and it's now 30 days later, try "skldjfsldfjsklfjsf!@*(#3-Mar13" or "skldjfsldfjsklfjsf!@*(#3-Mar14"
Because at the end of the day a human needs to remember these ridiculous passwords, and they will revert to either writing it down or using a pattern.
Re: What Information? (Score:5, Insightful)
The human memory thing is why we should have moved to pass phrases a LONG time ago. You can get far more entropy with a phrase than you can ever get with a password, no matter how complex.
A simple four word phrase with capitalized words and some punctuation would easily have 4x the number of characters as that impossible to remember 15 letter password. And as you noted, 30 day changes ensure there is a date, or number that allows the use of the same password with a slight variation.
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And watch every password become "Mary had a Little Lamb!" ;-)
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I do like phrases, but I am suspicious of the *real* entropy associated with them (I promise you it is not just a function of the number of characters). The problem is, as always, the end user is still free to abuse the system and make dumb password choices.
I think we need to stop letting users choose their own passwords. The only reason to do that is to make it easier for them to memorize, but then the easiest thing to memorize is something trivial and insecure, and to base it on something personal (whic
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It's not meant to be a function of the number of characters. If you have a four word phrase, each word can be any of at least a quarter of a million English words, which gives 4 sextillion possible combinations. That's not even counting all the possible nouns you could throw in there, not to mention a little random punctuation, etc.
For passwords, I think we should start having multi-factor authentication. It's the 21st century, it's high bleeding time anyone with cause to have lots of passwords had their ow
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IThinkUrWrong
123456789012
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Try "this is FU#K!NG stupid1". If that doesn't work, go to 2. If spaces aren't allowed, omit them.
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and you have a false sense of superiority based on the OS you use.
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contain no dictionary words and have a minimum of 2 small letters, to caps and two symbols
Ironically, anal retentive password rules like this one actually undermines the password entropy. In this case I'll bet 99% of the passwords contain exactly two symbols.
what about embedded systems / ones that only have (Score:2)
what about embedded systems / ones that only have a few basic longin names?
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They were outlawed. Not allowed on the network. Had to be upgraded and removed from the network.
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>Notice: If you post anonymously do not expect a reply.
Even if it's interesting and on topic?
Which this comment most definitely isn't.
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Hopefully the SCADA systems have a password other than the default
Can you finally change Siemens default password or will it still break whole system and is not supported like in the 'good old days'?
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Or does it cover broader details that the public had free access to prior to the September 11 attacks, such information now being withheld as "critical infrastructure information?"
Given the alarmism and push for "cyberwarefare" I'm willing to bet all that was in those files were things like the engineering specs of the dams and maybe the results of any surveys since that would be part of plans for maintenance and repair.
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>It has things like rough estimates of dam height, volume of water impounded, vague evaluations of condition and age, etc
>compares pretty poorly to what can be learned from examining Google Earth or any map site with aerial photograph overlays
You can get dam height, water volume measurements, and age/condition from Google Maps? You must have the new alpha version.
Just got to say (Score:5, Funny)
Dam these Chinese!
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Dam these Chinese!
...And then three hours later you just feel like you'll pass out if you don't hack somebody else...
Oh yeah, thats a great idea (Score:2, Insightful)
Destroy the economy of your biggest customer. Thats a great way to stay in business.
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I'd guess that China's long term goal is not merely economic domination.
Re:Oh yeah, thats a great idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, because the Chinese have bases in countries all over the world... Oh, wait that's us. No, it's the Chinese who are spending themselves into oblivion on weapons of war... Oh, wait, that's us again. We spend more on our military than the next 13 nations combined (but we can't afford to educate our children... bright.) I dunno, perhaps if we moved from offense to defense, these things wouldn't be issues?
Just a thought.
Re:Oh yeah, thats a great idea (Score:4, Funny)
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The issues with the US education system do not appear [usc.edu] to be the result of insufficient funding.
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Yeah, because the Chinese have bases in countries all over the world... Oh, wait that's us. No, it's the Chinese who are spending themselves into oblivion on weapons of war... Oh, wait, that's us again. We spend more on our military than the next 13 nations combined (but we can't afford to educate our children... bright.) I dunno, perhaps if we moved from offense to defense, these things wouldn't be issues?
Just a thought.
You need to check the ratios on the federal budget to see on what it is the US is spending itself into oblivion. Military spending is not the lion's share. And spending on public education exceeds what the feds spend on the military.
Re:Oh yeah, thats a great idea (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year_spending_2013USbn_14bs1n_3036508031#usgs302 [usgovernmentspending.com]
Looks like defense is ahead of education. That defense budget seems a little suspicious too. Lots of zeros. And does it include funding the wars?
Re:Oh yeah, thats a great idea (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, because the Chinese have bases in countries all over the world...
The People's Republic of China, A.K.A. communist China, has a growing number of military bases and access to facilities around the world. The Chinese fleet has been participating in anti-piracy actions around Somalia, giving them experience in extended naval deployments. The Chinese navy is planning to build something like four aircraft carriers and is currently flying aircraft off their first one that they are bringing into operation now after learning much from the Brazilian navy. Chinese special forces have been training the military in Venezuela. The Chinese are active in Africa.
The Chinese have also been bullying many of their neighbors, laying claim to distant islands and extensive land areas. Why don't you ask the Indians what they think of China's behavior, they are forming several new airborne infantry units to help deal with the threat? Or the Japanese, who are suffering a growing number of incursions by Chinese aircraft and sea vessels? Of perhaps the Philippines, which is seeing Chinese territory grabs on their doorstep?
No, it's the Chinese who are spending themselves into oblivion on weapons of war... Oh, wait, that's us again.
US military spending has recently generally been between 4% to 5% of GDP, well below historic levels. The army and navy and rumps of what they were at the end of the Cold War. Spending on social welfare programs is several times the military budget and is continuing to grow, and will grow for decades to come. It is Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, now joined by Obamacare which really starts kicking in this year, that will bankrupt the US, not the military spending.
I'm afraid you don't know what you are talking about there.
We spend more on our military than the next 13 nations combined
A large part of that is personnel costs. The US has an all volunteer military that pays its members a salary competitive with the civilian sector unlike many other major nations that use conscription to fill their armies. An American corporal in the Army or Marines makes about what a Chinese general makes per month. I'm sure you can figure the impact of that out. Same thing applies to weapons purchases. Maybe you've heard that Chinese engineering staff and factory labor is cheaper than American?
On the other hand pretty much all European countries allied with the United States spend less than they should [nytimes.com] by treaty goals. As a result they had a hard time with the intervention in Libya without American assistance.
If it makes you feel better the Chinese are upping their military budget by 10.7% this year.
(but we can't afford to educate our children... bright.)
The US throws large amounts of money at education. The problem isn't with how much money, but what it is spent on, like growing numbers of administrators. There are also social factors that come into play that the education budget itself can't fix. The teachers unions don't help much either.
You don't really have this right either.
I dunno, perhaps if we moved from offense to defense, these things wouldn't be issues?
If platitudes could solve things they wouldn't be issues either.
If they drop the one child policy... (Score:2)
... they're gonna need some lebensraum. Long term could be 4 generations. Look how far China has come in the last 4.
Lazy execs or engineers? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't understand why anyone would want to connect really important things such as power plants and dams to the Internet. We have been running such things for about a century now and they work just fine. Anything behind a barbed wire fence should never be connected to the Internet. Why do people do this? Just for the convenience of some fat executive or lazy engineer who doesn't want to get his fat @$$ out of this office and see what is really going on with the machinery?
Re:Lazy execs or engineers? (Score:5, Funny)
Anything behind a barbed wire fence should never be connected to the Internet.
Earl! Unplug the cows!
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Anything behind a barbed wire fence should never be connected to the Internet.
Earl! Unplug the cows!
Ahh, spring... When a young AC's thoughts turn to love...
If only I had mod points... Well crafted.
Re:Lazy execs or engineers? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand why anyone would want to connect really important things such as power plants and dams to the Internet. We have been running such things for about a century now and they work just fine. Anything behind a barbed wire fence should never be connected to the Internet. Why do people do this? Just for the convenience of some fat executive or lazy engineer who doesn't want to get his fat @$$ out of this office and see what is really going on with the machinery?
The issue isn't that individual devices are connected to the Internet per se, the problem is that many of these networks are not designed to isolate the sensitive systems from "vanilla" office computers. The problem is people in operations centers need access to weather, news etc and while they have news channels on video wall with various other readouts, sometimes they need to confirm stuff. If it really is going to freeze suddenly, that will require extra capacity as heaters, water heaters, and engine block-heaters get switched back on by some people.
They could run parallel LANs, with separate workstations and networks for the "sensitive" operational machines and the "regular" vanilla workstations where people do email and crap.
The risk is at the touch points, and good luck shutting them all down. How will the administrators receive alerts if the "sensitive" systems can't send SNMP pops to a monitoring system outside the virtual-wire--or to one inside of it that then emails you outside the wire. At some point, PEOPLE become the touch point and sneaker net with USB tokens becomes a problem. You can shutdown and cement over the USB ports but some applications require dongles somewhere and eventually something gets plugged into something and autorun.exe happens and the next thing you know, they're hacked by Chinese.
This problem runs many, many layers deep. If only "unplugging it" was that easy.
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Firewalls can and do block incoming traffic. The only machine allowed to make outbound connections is the SMNP trap server, and it can only connect to internal SMTP server.
Sneakernet is the problem, electronically securing systems that must send electronic alerts, not so much
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SENSITIVE data could be anything between a list of unit personnel's home telephone numbers to a comprehensive list of vulnerabilities across the entire unclassified network. anything deemed too-sensitive is classified higher and resides on a different network.
odds are bet
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So how did these power plants and dams and refineries all get run before the Internet was invented that enables hackers from China to possibly control such industries? Don't they still have people in the control rooms of these places? Do they still have telephones? Do they know how to use them to call someone higher up if there is trouble? All of these things worked reasonably well before, so why can't they now? Why should there be any Internet connection into any of these critical places? If a plant opera
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Hm. Seems like the sensitive bits of the dam should have it's own computer(s) and network. There are no USB ports. You get alerts on a screen because somebody is sitting in front of it, and picks up the phone or types out an e-mail on a different computer, if necessary. There are no dongles - those are security hazards.
When you built a dam you used to build an entire, monolithic control room to go with it, hardware and all. There really isn't much excuse for using software with dongles and connecting t
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I have an idea! Make a local-only computer. Have a display of all settings and readings. Point a webcam at it. Tada, read-only access to all the settings and readings, lol.
Not the hack compromises the safety (Score:5, Insightful)
The vulnerabilities of the dams are the real problem, but for some reason the government prefers to lie about that. Most of these vulnerabilities are probably pretty obvious to an expert (and, yes, the Chinese have experts on damns and these can go to the US for vacation), so hiding these problems is pretty stupid in the first place.
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The vulnerabilities of the dams are the real problem, but for some reason the government prefers to lie about that. Most of these vulnerabilities are probably pretty obvious to an expert (and, yes, the Chinese have experts on damns and these can go to the US for vacation), so hiding these problems is pretty stupid in the first place.
Right, but we don't want no more liberal big gubmint!" And so the dams go unrepaired. As go the bridges. And waterways. And embankments. And highway offramps...
Every great many years something fails spectacularly, and a few dozen commuters get splashed into the river. See also Minneapolis... Then lip service is paid, asses are kissed, and in the end only the absolutely worst bridges are fixed, the rest simply get "back-burnered" until the next stimulus bill comes along. And millions of commuters drive over
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Indeed. What I find truly fascinating is the double standards. Terrorism kills quite small numbers of people in comparison, yet billions are spend (or better: wasted) to "fight" it. Yet this clear and present danger to critical infrastructure is ignored. Typically, you should not attribute to maliciousness what can be adequately explained by stupidity, but I think the state of the US infrastructure problems have exceeded what stupidity can explain some time ago.
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Al-Qaeda does not and never had the capability for a large terrorist attack in the US. September 11th was only possible due to terminal incompetence and arrogance on the side of the FBI and others. There is absolutely no point in keeping this data from them.
If there should be a terrorist organization in existence than can blow up US dams, then they do not need that database. The only thing that hiding this database accomplishes is to make sure the US population does not find out how their tax money is wast
Article translation (Score:5, Informative)
According to http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/05/hacker-breached-dam-database/:
"Chinese hackers" = “the Chinese government or military cyber warriors” according to unnamed officials
"sensitive U.S. army database" is a database where users are emailed their username and password in cleartext
"Non-government users can query the database but cannot download data from it" (???)
So why don't we... (Score:2)
just fix the vulnerabilities?
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Fucking hell (Score:2)
Does everything these days have the security of a sheet of toilet paper? Either the Chinese are excellent hackers or we suck at security.
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Either the Chinese are excellent hackers or we suck at security.
The software was probably written by a Chinese outsourcing firm in the first place.
Is there a law for that (Score:2)
quick draft it up so the regular citizens can be blamed and punished.
expletive (Score:3)
Oh Dam!
Public Information (Score:5, Insightful)
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Hacking the US government from China is a heck of a lot safer than doing it from the UK.
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The corp doesn't do electricity. They do water. Dams, canals, dikes, etc. The information is likely sufficiency reports that include known weaknesses of the system, such as small foundation cracks in a dam that are a potential future issue that is being monitored but has not presented sufficient information to warrant repair.
Information such as that can be used to plan and execute attacks on system weaknesses. Another example would be ultimate capacity of a dam, which is the point at which an inflow would c
In our universe... (Score:2)
...got an immediate increase in budget, nothing was done to fix the vulnerabilites, and SOPA, CISPA, TPP, and a bunch of other crap got turned into law.
and somenation can take out the 3 gorges dam (Score:2)
and some nation can take out the 3 gorges dam and make for big time flooding.
Oblig. (Score:2)
Simple solution... (Score:2)
Take our power grid OFF THE FUCKING INTERNET! Our power grid, air traffic control system and rail control system should all be on their own SIPERNET-grade secure network. There is no way in hell you can justify any part of these systems being accessible from the friggin internet. If Joe Blow the power grid manager wants an iApp to monitor what's going on, tell him to shove his iPhone up his iDiotic ass and call someone to find out.
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That won't happen as long as the Federal government is throwing money at power companies to implement Smart Grid.
In soviet Russia (Score:3)
In soviet Russia, dams damn you.
From the article:
In addition to causing a major disruption to the national power grid, hackers could access the systems that control a dam’s turbine generators. A computer mistakenly started one in a Russian damn in 2009, killing 75 people and destroying eight of the nine other turbines in the dam.
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?".
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Re:how is this not an act of war? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
The great firewall of china won't allow any access to foreign sites that they don't like, but turns a blind eye to wholesale hacking by pimply faced kids? Who is THAT naive any more?
That it came from their IP and means nothing in and of itself. Especially when you RTFA and find this nugget
“The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is aware that access to the National Inventory of Dams (NID), to include sensitive fields of information not generally available to the public, was GIVEN to an unauthorized individual in January 2013 who was subsequently determined to not to have proper level of access for the information,” Pierce said in a statement.
“[U.S. Army Corps of Engineers] immediately revoked this user’s access to the database upon learning that the individual was not, in fact, authorized full access to the NID,” he said.
So there was no hacking involved. Simply someone handing out a password to a database to someone else who was not authorized. Since someone in the US Army or someone the Army authorized handed over the credentials you can hardly call it an act of war.
Someone screwed up, and it took months to find out about it. It may well have been something entirely innocent (if ill advised) as allowing hydrological engineers to compare notes on some aspect of dam construction or dam safety.
Re:how is this not an act of war? (Score:5, Insightful)
So there was no hacking involved. Simply someone handing out a password to a database to someone else who was not authorized.
It's called social engineering [wikipedia.org], and it is a well recognized hacking technique used in some infamous cases [pbs.org].
Since someone in the US Army or someone the Army authorized handed over the credentials you can hardly call it an act of war.
War, no. But it is still espionage apparently conducted by one of the last countries controlled by a Communist government whose officials periodically make public statements about attacking the United States with nuclear weapons [freebeacon.com].
The nature of the information they sought access to, and apparently obtained, isn't benign.
Dam - Sensitive Army database of U.S. dams compromised [washingtontimes.com]
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The Russian story is apocryphal, snd there is not a shred of evidence of social engineering in the story.
In fact it seems to be a simple screw up on the part of someone in the Army.
Re:how is this not an act of war? (Score:5, Informative)
Wow, so a computer operator 500 miles away badly repaired a 29yr 10mo old turbine which had a history of vibration, and caused it to lift out of its seat (by 15ft, not 50ft), and caused it to explode and kill 75. Well at least the Washington Times got one part correct. The accident happened in August 2009 and a report was released in October 2009, and in 2013 the Washington Post made up a fictional story on cause of the accident. I'm going to jump to conclusions here and say the they needed to pad out a shitty article with an example of "Cyber Terrorism" to reel naive reader in.
From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
The report states that the accident was primarily caused by the turbine vibrations which led to the fatigue damage of the mountings of the turbine 2, including the cover of the turbine. It was also found that at the moment of accident at least six nuts were missing from the bolts securing the turbine cover. After the accident 49 recovered bolts were investigated from which 41 had fatigue cracks. On 8 bolts, the fatigue damaged area exceeded 90% of the total cross-sectional area.[2]
I've already made this reply once, but seeing as two people have used the exploding turbine as an example of "what could go wrong", I felt I needed to correct somebody who was "wrong on the internet".
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But, I believe your motives in defense of the Rodina are pure, so I will award you a link [youtube.com].
Wow, I didn't see that coming. There I was thinking that I was citing a report from post-soviet Russia (which in no way supports the idea that it was switched on by accident, but that it was running as per usual). But it's interesting that you bring up the accusation of unerring defence of a nation, when you yourself appear (in comments on this article) to vigorously defend the actions of - from what I assume from your spelling of defence - you home country the USA. In fact, your apparent concern with Commu
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Proof? Who gives two $hits? I'm f$cking relieved that they haven't tried to pin it on Syria, Iran, Chechnya(?), The Tea Party, Occupy*, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Mexican Drug Lords, Canadian pharmacies, poor people, rich people, unions, PETA, gun owners, gun makers, Muslims, drug addicts, Social Security, or Medicaid & Medicare, or smokers.
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Re:how is this not an act of war? (Score:4, Insightful)
How about the Iranian scientist who was assassinated? People thought it was CIA/Mossad, but it turned out that he was working undercover for the US, and was assassinated by the Iranian intelligence service.
By your logic, that single event should exonerate the US for any future occurrences of assassination inside Iran.
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Re:how is this not an act of war? (Score:5, Informative)
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There are always IPs belonging to China poking and prodding your server.
It is not difficult to figure out which netblocks are currently in use by Chinese entities. It is also not difficult to configure a firewall.
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Something happens in US, initial reports point to China
IT CAN'T BE CHINA
In this case it was china, but they were GIVEN access to the data, they didn't steal it.
RTFA.
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Does it really matter? The thing which concerns me here is that this sort of critical infrastructure is wired to the net without any sort of airgap. Regardless of whether it's the Chinese government backing it or just some random anarchist group, it's deeply concerning that these systems are connect to the net at all.
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How is this not an act of war?
Same reason nothing the Soviets ever did was an act of war: because retaliation would be too costly.
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The alleged "Operation Olympic Games" was not against China but Iran in an attempt to forestall a nuclear weapons conflict, and the mistaken bombing of the Chinese embassy, for which compensation was paid, was the result of incorrect coordinates for a Yugoslavian installation and didn't involve the internet.
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the mistaken bombing of the Chinese embassy, for which compensation was paid, was the result of incorrect coordinates for a Yugoslavian installation
At least one investigation concluded that the bombing was a deliberate attack [wikipedia.org] to try and stop Stealth Fighter technology being passed back to China.
Can you back up your confident assertion that it was a mistake?
False. Insight. (Score:2)
Subject line.
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Do you seriously believe that events, suppositions, theories, possibilities, government-backed PR statements from $insert_nation_here, and similar fodder that winds up in mainstream media reports represents the sum total of events that relate to or are orchestrated by the intelligence community? If so, pat yourself on the back; you've surely got it all figured out. What will you do with all your free time now? I suppose you could start by making your way off the couch to retrieve another Mountain Dew and ba
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Nothing got disabled. Worst case scenario information that could be used to disable may have been garnered.
Though... for such a big bad country the U.S. is certainly taking all these intrusions in stride...
Re:All your dam are belong to us! We now take wate (Score:4, Insightful)
That's because if we actually made too big a stink, we'd have to deal with the dirty deeds we did in the first place to prompt such a response and the last thing we really want to do is to begin airing our dirty laundry. Grumbling under our breath about what a bunch of douches the Chinese are is about as far as we can go without having to scrape large amounts of egg off of our collective faces.
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Do you really want to start a war over an unproven act of zero harm?
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If we really push how "uncool" it is to be a script kiddie, before long we will have hipsters calling themselves script kiddies. At that point, we can have someone to point and laugh at.
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Oh, and another thing -- The next World War will really be fought inside the computer and the various networks. Yeah, drone bombs and bullets and real deaths -- but the real damage, I suspect, will be done by manipulating utilities and financial systems.
Wow, Sum of all Fears is starting to sound plausible. Didn't that one start with an attack on the stock exchanges? Bogus transactions, etc?
Re: (Score:2)
Was that the one where the rouge Japanese pilot flew his 747 into the US capitol building? No, wait, that was a different book.
Re:Been going on for at least a decade (Score:5, Insightful)
“I know not what weapons world war III will be fought with, but world war IV will be fought with sticks and stones." Albert Einstein
Re: (Score:2)
If you talk to someone who handles regulatory compliance for a major power company, the requirements are ludicrous.
For example, you must document that electronic door access panels are not running antivirus software because they don't have the capability to do so. Otherwise your company is fined. The former example is absolutely not a joke, it is an actual Federal regulatory compliance requirement. This is how US dollars are spent on critical infrastructure security.