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China Security United States Technology

Chinese Hackers Mess With Texas By Attacking Fracking Firms 104

Posted by samzenpus from the secrets-to-success dept.
chicksdaddy writes The technology revolution that is "fracking" has created billions in wealth for states like Pennsylvania, Texas, Ohio and Wyoming. But all that oil and all those dollars have attracted the attention of sophisticated spies from near and far to steal valuable trade secrets. Digital Guardian's blog notes this report from News 4 San Antonio in Texas which quotes local FBI officials saying they are "very concerned" about theft of trade secrets from companies engaged in "fracking" in the Eagle Ford Shale in Texas. "It's corporate espionage, there's no question about it," said Christopher Combs of the San Antonio FBI. "Foreign governments or foreign companies are looking for any competitive advantage. Whether it's the widget that you use to drill, or it's a process that you use to track inventory better. They're really looking at the company as a whole to find out every little thing that you do that makes you a better company on the world market." Combs declined to name specific firms, but said that Chinese firms are "aggressively" engaged in industrial espionage. However, the problem isn't limited to China. Companies with ties to governments that are U.S. allies are believed to be conducting espionage against innovative US firms as well.
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Chinese Hackers Mess With Texas By Attacking Fracking Firms More

Chinese Hackers Mess With Texas By Attacking Fracking Firms

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  • Excellent! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This is great news. Now people in China have a better idea of the chemicals we are pumping into our own groundwater systems than those of us in the US know. Maybe they can make an informed decision about what is going on in their country.

  • Don't hack the frack?
    No hacking on our fracking?
    The frack are you hacking?

    We heard you like hacking, so we put some frack in your hack.

    The possibilities are endless.

  • From the standpoint of trying to steal business secrets, that's something that everyone does on everyone else, even the US. You'd think by now most businesses would understand that connecting everything to the internet isn't necessarily a good idea.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by jon3k ( 691256 )
      The difference is it's state sponsored. The US Government doesn't use our tax money to hack into Chinese businesses and then give all the trade secrets to Microsoft or General Electric or whatever.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        The US Government doesn't use our tax money to hack into Chinese businesses and then give all the trade secrets to Microsoft or General Electric or whatever.

        Have you lived in a closet the last decade? That is pretty much exactly what both CIA and NSA does. You know that they are tax funded right?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gtall ( 79522 )

          and you have evidence to back up this assertion that you'd like to share with us?

    • You would have to make the the case that disconnecting a sprawling oil enterprise from the Internet would be worth the cost in efficiency.

      It's not as if the Internet is the only vector by which information spreads. New products themselves represent new techniques, people move from company to company, companies hire each others' services and work together, etc. Yes, I'm sure there's some value in hacking or nobody would do it. But it only speeds up the process by some factor.

    • How would not connecting the machines to the internet protect the trade secrets? all you'd need to do would be to go onto Linked-In (or oil-jobs.com, or any of a dozen other recruitment sites), and hire yourself a couple of experienced mud engineers, directional drillers, and possibly completion engineers. Recruit them, ask them questions, get them to train your staff ... problem solved.

      Total cost - fractions of a million dollars. Perfectly legal.

      You might also need to hire equipment from the appropriate

  • China looking for more ways to pollute (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    If China starts World War III, it's going to be because China's air, food, and water are so toxic that their people can't live there anymore.

  • Seems fair (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Charliemopps ( 1157495 ) on Monday November 03, 2014 @09:47AM (#48300837)

    This seems fair to me...
    http://www.pcworld.com/article... [pcworld.com]
    http://www.wired.com/2014/10/n... [wired.com]

    what's good for the goose is good for the gander

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cdrudge ( 68377 )

      That's different because the NSA has good intentions and it's for "national security". You can trust them unlike the Chinese...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by khallow ( 566160 )
      Huawei is both thought to be connected to the People's Liberation Army (the armed forces of China) (as mentioned in your first link), and an avenue for Chinese espionage. That alone would justify espionage versus the company. After all, if you're helping someone spy on other people, then that makes you fair game.

      Obviously, NSA motives are far from pure and it appears that they also were trying to compromise Huawei technology in order to spy on a variety of customers of Huawei.

      Now are US oil companies
    • The concept that it's "underhanded" to use espionage to steal secrets from your competitors (be they people, companies, or countries) is very Western. In the East, it's considered fair play and expected behavior, and your own damn fault for not protecting your secrets if they get stolen. Employees are frequently fired if they have an opportunity to steal secrets from a competitor, are ordered to do so, and refuse.

      Oddly, the concept gets reversed if the espionage is overt. If you're doing it openly lik

  • billions for who? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 03, 2014 @09:48AM (#48300845)

    I live in PA. We have not gotten "billions" from fracking firms, since we have no gas extraction tax. Most of the rig workers are from out of state. They spend a fair amount fixing roads -- but that is because their trucks tore them up. Please stop repeating that natural gas production benefits the common citizen. It benefits shareholders. Our gas bill isn't even that cheap, since the gas is shipped to nyc/boston.

    • What, you don't charge income tax for those workers' income earned in PA?

      Everywhere I've ever lived, you pay income tax where you work, then pay more where you live, if tax rates are higher where you live.

      Or do you think those people would be coming to PA to pay taxes if not for those jobs?

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by asylumx ( 881307 )

        Everywhere I've ever lived, you pay income tax where you work, then pay more where you live, if tax rates are higher where you live.

        No, this is not the case everywhere. For example when I lived in Indiana and worked in Michigan, my state income tax was paid to Indiana. Anecdotes don't work when talking about state taxes because there is too much variance.

      • Everywhere I've ever lived, you pay income tax where you work, then pay more where you live, if tax rates are higher where you live.

        Then you haven't lived everywhere. There are states without income tax. And if you are from out of state working temporarily, there's a chance you get all those taxes back at the end of the year.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Thank you. I was saying the same thing when I read that line.

      Considering some of them even said about paying their fair share BUT that snake Tom Corbett wouldn't allow them even if they wanted to...

      And the cry from the "republican" side of the fence around where I am, like my sister-in-law's fiancee, is "oh if we tax them they'll leave!" and "if we tax them, that just means we'll have to pay more in gas prices!".

      One, you can't just "leave" when it comes to a natural commodity. You have to go where it is. If

  • Who will get the cocktail first? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by damn_registrars ( 1103043 ) <damn.registrars@gmail.com> on Monday November 03, 2014 @09:49AM (#48300853) Homepage Journal
    Groups have been pressuring the oil/gas companies to give information on the composition of the magic "fracking solution" for years now. All the companies have been willing to say so far is "it's safe, trust us!". If the courts can't get the companies to tell us why we should trust them on the safety of this cocktail, perhaps the hackers will find out its composition and tell us first?

    One might wonder how an oil/gas company would look in terms of safety if they were ousted by a Chinese group...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      Well, if it is any like what Chinese industry has done to China, then I'm fairly sure we don't want them doing it here.

      I agree, we should demand full disclosure of the chemical oil/gas companies are using or shut them down until they do disclose, with inspectors to be sure they aren't lying. However, to expect the Chinese to disclose what American companies are doing is a fools errand. They will use it as trade secrets for their own industry.

  • There's gotta be a song in there somewhere. Don't forget to mention the train, prison, and pickup truck..

  • Mr. Pot, meet Mr. Kettle.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by PPH ( 736903 )

        Some Chinese employees will work for the CCP or its affiliates as a "side job" money through internal networking.

        You think Snowden was an anomaly? Only in that he went public with the data he swiped. This stuff goes on all the time between the CIA/NSA/FBI and various private corporations. Just replace the Communist Party with the names of some large DoD contractors and the behavior is remarkably similar.

  • Alternately ... (Score:3)

    by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Monday November 03, 2014 @10:39AM (#48301231) Homepage

    Maybe this isn't corporate espionage.

    Maybe it's someone trying to see what is really in fracking liquids -- which they keep telling us are safe, but won't tell us what's in them.

    They also tell us that fracking doesn't lead to groundwater pollution, but few people really actually believe them.

    Frack u later.

  • Frack! Propaganda, anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by marienf ( 140573 ) on Monday November 03, 2014 @10:43AM (#48301257)

    > The technology revolution that is "fracking" has created billions in
    > wealth for states like Pennsylvania, Texas, Ohio and Wyoming.

    This smells (PI) like corporate propaganda to me.

    > Chinese firms are "aggressively" engaged in industrial espionage
    > conducting espionage against innovative US firms

    riiight.. McCarthy, anyone? And.. innovative?? Innovation? Involving fossil fuels? The only trade secrets they are likely protecting is the toxicity and environmental impact of fracking. So the next logical step is that the chinese or whoever steal the "secrets", realise how stupid phracking is, then cancel any such plans at home and invest massively in renewables.

    So this is great news. The fracking disaster will end with the US.

    -f

    • It's important to point out that McCarthy was right - there really were Communists in the State Department. I grew up thinking McCarthyism meant chasing after ghosts. He must have been seeing commies in his Froot Loops at breakfast. Come to find out, he wasn't conducting a witch-hunt: his accusations were accurate.

      Let's move forward as a society recognizing facts where they exist and revising history as necessary to correct myths. Particularly long-treasured myths that feed an incorrect narrative. Th

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by marienf ( 140573 )

        > It's important to point out that McCarthy was right - there really were Communists in the State Department.

        I'm sure there were. But am I reading correctly that you are reducing the whole phenomenon to "communists in the state department"???

        So.. if the entire McCarthy era red scare witch hunt was really just about "communists in the state department", I'm curious to hear how you would describe the extermination camps of WW2, for example.

        > Some conservatives regard the term as inappropriate and deprec

    • And.. innovative?? Innovation? Involving fossil fuels? The only trade secrets they are likely protecting is the toxicity and environmental impact of fracking.

      You don't know what you're talking about. There are a lot of trade secrets in fracking. There are trade secrets in the instruments that monitor and improve drilling. There are a lot of trade secrets developed to improve production efficiency. There's a lot of essentially "public" knowledge too, but even that is hard to come by, so internal traini

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by marienf ( 140573 )

        > You don't know what you're talking about.
        That is an understatement: I don't know the ins and outs of petrochemical processes, at all. But that was not my point and I apologize for not making it clearer. My point was that I consider ANY investment in fossil fuels, of ANY level of sophistication to be a waste of money, that should have been spent in R&D on sources of emergy viable towards the future.

        Now, I understand from your comment that you *do* know what you're taking about. So would you kindly s

  • i can't see any value for citizens in frackers being able to keep secrets about how they drill , this secrecy makes it harder to fix any problems they cause because we emergency services will not have simple access to the list of chemicals being used.

    also , wtf is the government allowing the pumping of tones of unspecified chemicals into the ground ? how can that possibly be sensible custodianship ?

    This secrecy has created the value in this industry , if there were real scrutiny of what was being done by fr

  • Shale Oil (Score:5, Interesting)

    by the eric conspiracy ( 20178 ) on Monday November 03, 2014 @10:51AM (#48301309)

    China has massive shale oil and gas deposits - larger that the US and has a high priority to develop them.

    It really should not be too big a surprise that they would make industrial espionage in this area a favorite activity.

  • ... brings to the table is providing fucking reports that we've been hacked.

    As for actually being able to STOP that shit ... forget it.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      There are no reports nor proof, only propaganda. What is certain is that the U.S itself is spying on everyone, even the countries they call "allies". You seem as concerned as only a sheep could be.

    • Everything is hackable. If someone wants in anywhere... they'll get there.

      Shitty planning is putting industry secrets on a public network and it happens all of the time.

      • Everything is hackable.

        Absolutely not true.

        That statement is a condom that IT wears and guess what?

        It's got a rip in it.

        When IT's incompetence becomes the subject of litigation, let's revisit this with nostalgia.

  • 'The technology revolution that is "fracking"' is a curious claim (some would call it a lie), given that the technology is something like four to six decades old, and has been used to drill oil well before the recent high cost of oil (how about that global conventional crude oil peak back in 2005?) caused fracking to actually more than break even. Granted, "The high cost of oil revolution" would probably not sell copy, and the recent slide of prices will mostly put the hurt on one of the few bright spots (f

  • It's awfully hard to be sympathetic to companies that engage in or support fracking.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It's awfully hard to be sympathetic to companies that engage in or support fracking.

      It's awfully hard to be sympathetic to idiots like yourself who have no real grasp of reality and live in airy-fairy land. Go frack yourself!

  • They want new designs and techniques? These companies must have a ton of them that sound good but didn't work out after expensive testing. Make a few of those "available" to the hackers with some doctored test results.

    Biggest risk is accidentally falling for your own disinformation.

  • As shown in last night's Simpsons episode. ;P

  • "The technology revolution that is "fracking" has created billions in wealth for states like Pennsylvania, Texas, Ohio and Wyoming. But all that oil and all those dollars have attracted the attention of sophisticated spies from near and far to steal valuable trade secrets."

    Please distract from a rational discussion of the environmental impact of "fracking" by introducing bogus stories about 'Chinese Hackers' ..
  • If by 'wealth' we mean 'earthquakes' then yes, Ohio has gotten some wealth. http://time.com/60363/fracking... [time.com] http://www.reuters.com/article... [reuters.com]

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