Posted on 05/29/2008 3:30:48 PM PDT by Aristotelian
WASHINGTON - U.S. authorities are investigating whether Chinese officials secretly copied the contents of a government laptop computer during a visit to China by Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez and used the information to try to hack into Commerce computers, officials and industry experts told The Associated Press.
Surreptitious copying is believed to have occurred when a laptop was left unattended during Gutierrez's trip to Beijing for trade talks in December, people familiar with the incident told the AP. These people spoke on condition of anonymity because the incident was under investigation.
Gutierrez told the AP on Thursday he could not discuss whether or how the laptop's contents might have been copied.
"Because there is an investigation going on, I would rather not comment on that," he said. "To the extent that there is an investigation going on, those are the things being looked at, those are the questions being asked. I don't think I should provide any speculative answers."
A Commerce Department spokesman, Rich Mills, said he could not confirm or deny such an incident in China. Asked whether the department has issued new rules for carrying computers overseas, Mills said: "The department is continuing to improve our security posture, and that includes providing updates, guidances and best practices to staff to maintain security."
It was not immediately clear what information on the laptop might have been compromised, but it would be highly unorthodox for any U.S. government official to carry classified data on a laptop overseas to China, especially one left unattended even briefly. Modern copying equipment can duplicate a laptop's storage drive in just minutes.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
/johnny
The dumbass who left the laptop unattended should be fired. I have a friend who does business in China. Rule #1 is don’t even bring your laptop if there is anything on it that you don’t want others to see.
The Chinese are known to do this sort of thing, here as well as in China. It sounds as if someone was pretty stupid if they had anything classified on a laptop in the first place, let alone leaving it unattended.
Belgium Names China in Hacking Incidents
Whether hackers breached government network not known
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Over the last few weeks, hackers have repeatedly attempted to break inside the computer network of the Belgium Federal Government as well as other organizations located in Belgium.
On Friday, May 2, Jo Vandeurzen, the Belgian minister of justice, announced that his government believes the attacks were conducted from China, most likely at the request of Beijing. He admitted that he could not provide irrefutable evidence.
"The context of this affair and all the clues lead to China," Vandeurzen said. The Belgian Minister added that it was not known whether the hackers had succeeded in their attempt to hack the Belgian government network.
Although it is also unclear why Beijing would target the Belgium network, Vandeurzen suggested that China's interest likely results from the presence in the country of most of the European Union institutions as well as the Headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Vandeurzen also suggested that the role played by Belgium in Central Africa might be relevant to this affair.
"There is an ongoing investigation, but I can tell you that we have more than mere suspicions," a spokesperson of the Foreign Affairs Ministry said.
The Surete de l' Etat, a Belgian Intelligence Agency equivalent to Britain's MI5, has confirmed a "clear and real threat" to the security of the state.
Karel De Gucht, the controversial Belgian minister of foreign affairs, had already told parliament that his ministry was the object of cyber-spying conducted by Chinese agents several weeks ago.
It is not clear at the moment why Belgian officials have decided to go public with these allegations. In the past, the Belgian government reacted with great discretion to this kind of affair.
In 2005, a Chinese defector revealed the magnitude of the Chinese spying effort against European governments and technology industry, alleging among other things that hundreds of students and scholars were involved in espionage in European countries.
"There is a large Chinese intelligence operation in northern Europe spanning communications, space, defense, chemicals and heavy industries," said Claude Monique, a Brussels-based intelligence analyst.
"The Chinese agent has given details of hundreds of experts and their activities. As a result national inquiries have been launched, certainly by the German, French, Netherlands and Belgian agencies and, I believe, in Britain too."
"The Chinese operate at many levels, from the pure intelligence agents based at embassies to researchers sent to Europe for training to individual citizens who work apparently independently for 5 or 10 years until they are in a position to prove their usefulness," an intelligence official said.
The phenomenon is by no mean limited to Europe. In the United States, the FBI has estimated that spying activity against technology companies conducted by Chinese agents is increasing at the annual rate of 20 to 30 percent. In the Los Angeles area, it is not entirely clear whether the FBI is infiltrating the Chinese Mafia, or if the opposite is taking place.
"I think you see it where something that would normally take 10 years to develop takes them two or three," said David Szady, the chief of FBI counterintelligence operations in 2005.
"What they are looking for are the systems or materials or the designs or the batteries or the air-conditioning or the things that make that thing tick," Szady said. "That's what they are very good at collecting, going after both the private sector, the industrial complexes, as well as the colleges and universities in collecting scientific developments that they need," Szady added.
Many experts believe that it is thanks to industrial espionage that Chinese scientists have managed to match the US, Japan and Europe technology in various areas such as supercomputing, communications, space and nano technologies.
Some military advances seem suspicious too, such as a new cruise missile extremely similar to the US Tomahawk or a sea-borne defense system that looks like the twin of the Aegis.
In their 2007 report to Congress, the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) stated that "Chinese espionage activities in the United States are so extensive that they comprise the single greatest risk to the security of American technologies."
http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?at_code=434212
I guess my question would be How did they know it was copied unless they have put something on the laptop as a marker in the information that echelon picked up.
WHY are not our Government pukes held to the same level of security as private businesses??
We were not permitted to have ANYTHING of a Confidential nature on our notebooks — PERIOD, when traveling out of the country.
It was ONCE a Federal Requirement that carrying Industry “Confidential” material required DOCUMENTATION signed by a Legal representative of the Company authorizing the “carry” out of the country...
I wonder what controls are placed on our “civil service” pukes??
I’m sick and tired of our “Civil Servants” failures to live under the same “rules/laws/morals” as we lowly peasants must follow.
Didnt they try to steal some Blackberries also on this same trip?
People that do not know the first think on PC security should never be allowed to have one!
Fire the retards.
Probably got detected trying to do a remote entry spoofing the copied laptop's MAC and IP address. While the IP address can change, the MAC is like a fingerprint, unique to the machine. You can burn a stolen MAC onto a blank chip but a trace back on the hack probably identified the DoC user and debriefing him identified a recent trip to China and the moment(s) of IT insecurity.
I vote for not taking the laptop with you at all. An encrypted external hard drive might help. But unguarded laptops are also prime candidates for installation of keystroke logging and other spy software. Your otherwise "clean" laptop could be set to gather ID and password information and to connect back to them surreptitiously whenever an Internet connection is detected.
Unfortunately, government officials cannot be unconnected any more, so they will probably end up with two laptops: one for domestic use and travel and one they check out from the security office exclusively for foreign travel. Complete the package with an encrypted external hard drive that is really small; small enough that you have absolutely no reason at all not to have it with you at all times.
This is just the tip of the Chinese asymmetric warfare iceberg. I don't think anyone who thinks about the massive inflow of mainland Chinese as visitors, students, and immigrants in recent years would be surprised to learn that there is a substantial intelligence gathering capability buried among them. Unfortunately, there is probably also a substantial 5th column combat capability among them as well. If things get ugly with the PRC, expect damaging sabotage and commando actions here in the United States from the beginning.
When Bush visited China in 2002, his aides set up small meeting-tents in their hotel rooms, and played country music at loud levels when anyone was in the room - to foil suspected wire-taps and cameras. Such espionage is to be expected.
Sure. "unattended". I guess any government official can use this method of espionage from now on and always be let off the hook.
The Chinese installed bootleg Cisco routers in the Pentagon (instant backdoor)....they are much more wiley than we give them credit for.
chicom bump for later..............
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