US To Charge Chinese Military Employees With Hacking 225
jfruh (300774) writes "The U.S. federal government will announce today indictments of several employees of the Chinese military with hacking into computers to steal industrial secrets. The indictments will be the first of their kind against employees of a foreign government. Among the trade secrets allegedly stolen by the accused are information about a nuclear power plant design and a solar panel company's cost and pricing data."
Good luck with that. (Score:5, Interesting)
Not an Obama hater, but seriously, Russia and now China? Trying to start WWIII on two fronts, in case one backs down? 2016 can't come fast enough.
These indictments are pure lip service. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Good luck with that. (Score:5, Interesting)
If the democrats are the ones currently instigating WWIII than 2016 ain't going to help. If a Republican gets elected (unless it's Ron Paul, and I'm not holding my breath for that!) than their just going to look at the previous 8 years as laying the ground work. And any democrat that gets elected is going to assume that their election is voter approval of the current administration's policies, otherwise the voters would have ousted the Dems and brought in a Rep.
In other words, in a two party system, you're damned if you do, damned if you don't...
Re:Vs the NSA (Score:4, Interesting)
TFS and TFA are both ridiculously vague.
How exactly does this work, in terms of jurisdiction? Is this a case for the ICC? WTO?
Or is it now (officially) the position of USJ that its jurisdiction covers the whole planet?
Re:Vs the NSA (Score:4, Interesting)
yeah it's weird in that regard that they went for opening that pandoras box... the chinese will just indict in response.
Weird enough that it has me trying to figure out why they would do it. The other thing that seems weird is that we're charging the guys who were just following orders. Why charge the foot soldiers instead of the generals who ordered the action? It's a pretty extreme tinfoil hat scenario, but could they be trying to establish a story frame of throwing the boots to the wolves, so Clapper and Alexander don't go down?
Re:Vs the NSA (Score:5, Interesting)
A country can claim jurisdiction anywhere on the planet, but the trick is to be able to enforce that claim of jurisdiction...
Re:Very Bad Precedent (Score:5, Interesting)
There is already a precedent. German soldiers were tried and sentenced for carrying out orders in the concentration camps.
Re:Very Bad Precedent (Score:4, Interesting)
China is hacking? There's a surprise (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm just going to have a heart attack and DIE from that surprise..
This is SO STUPID. If you cannot get your hands on the hackers to arrest them, then why bother with saying anything? Just keep the honey pot in place and keep tracing where the attacks are coming from. Then, when you can get your hands on them it's special rendition time. This tell the public what happened only serves to notify everybody that you got hacked and then trying to take legal action to punish the hackers which has no hope of doing anything says you are inept and clueless too.
You knew I would drink from the glass in front of me, so you switched the glasses so the one in front of me has the poison... BUT, you knew I would think that so CLEARLY the glass in front of you has the poison.... etc.. We are right at the "Never get in a land war in Asia.. " Line being spoken by this administration, only they are not wearing the mask.
Hilarity ensues (Score:4, Interesting)
For decades now we've treated the Internet like an open house with everybody welcome and everybody allowed to come in and browse. As more and more technologies/designs/secrets have been put into computer systems they've been linked via Intranets within organizations and more importantly, and stupidly, on the Internet in the name of saving time or they've just been exposed because the people who are supposed to protect that information are incompetent idiots. That's the root cause here, not protecting the information that's held in those systems. China and other governments have employed script kiddies and any other tactics like purchased vulnerabilities to dig in, but again it's up to the holders of that data to protect it and to know what kind of enemies they're up against. Industrial espionage is nothing new, it's been around for centuries so why are we all shocked that this is allowed to happen? The secrets of the A-Bomb were leaked out of Los Alamos by sympathetic spies and some were executed for it. The B-29 bomber, a program that cost more than the A-Bomb to develop, was completely reverse engineered from one aircraft that made an emergency landing in the Soviet Union. It was copied right down to the same overheating engine problem that destroyed many of the aircraft. Chinese spies have recently been sent to prison for espionage [newyorker.com] so why is this suddenly news?
While I'm glad that the US Govt. is trying to do something about all of this it's a bit late and ultimately it's up to all the industries that have technology worth stealing to start taking steps to protect their IP and their confidential information. This also means protecting yourself from the US government because as we all know the NSA is also passively watching everything you do. My suggesting is that there should be sufficient air gaps between your R&D/Competitive information and Intranets/Internet for starters and also start employing a risk mitigation strategy in your data handling practices because chances are your sensitive information is probably already public knowledge somewhere.
Chinese official response (Score:4, Interesting)
Chinese official response (in Chinese): http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_ch... [fmprc.gov.cn]