House of Representatives v China

Thanks to one of my colleagues for pointing out Lawmaker says Chinese hacked Capitol computers:

By PETE YOST and LARA JAKES JORDAN – 3 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — A congressman said Wednesday the FBI has found that four of his government computers have been hacked by sources working out of China.

Rep. Frank Wolf, a Virginia Republican, said that similar incidents — also originating from China — have taken place on computers of other members of the House and at least one House committee.

A spokesman for Wolf said the four computers in his office were being used by staff members working on human rights issues and that the hacking began in August 2006. Wolf is a longtime critic of the Chinese government's human rights record.

The congressman suggested the problem probably goes further. "If it's been done in the House, don't you think that they're doing the same thing in the Senate?" he asked.

For a record of others hacked by China, see my earlier posts.

Comments

Marcin Antkiewicz said…
Just for the arguments sake, and not to challenge their claim, I would like to point out that there is no data shown in support of the claim.

I've meet sales reps who would claim that all US is under Chinese surveillance/attacks, simply because a lot of malware originates there. The "attack" might simply be a chance infection.

Similarly, just because the traffic can be tracked to an IP in China, the consumer of the data might be elsewhere.

At the same time, I would not be surprised to learn that it was a deliberate act of espionage. But, unless data is shown, it is FUD to me.
9:41 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Zeek in Action Videos

Image
This is a quick note to point blog readers to my Zeek in Action YouTube video series for the Zeek network security monitoring project .  Each video addresses a topic that I think might be of interest to people trying to understand their network using Zeek and adjacent tools and approaches, like Suricata, Wireshark, and so on.  I am especially pleased with Video 6 on monitoring wireless networks . It took me several weeks to research material for this video. I had to buy new hardware and experiment with a Linux distro that I had not used before -- Parrot .  Please like and subscribe, and let me know if there is a topic you think might make a good video.
Read more

MITRE ATT&CK Tactics Are Not Tactics

Image
Just what are "tactics"? Introduction MITRE ATT&CK  is a great resource, but something about it has bothered me since I first heard about it several years ago. It's a minor point, but I wanted to document it in case it confuses anyone else. The MITRE ATT&CK Design and Philosophy document from March 2020 says the following: At a high-level, ATT&CK is a behavioral model that consists of the following core components: • Tactics, denoting short-term, tactical adversary goals during an attack; • Techniques, describing the means by which adversaries achieve tactical goals; • Sub-techniques, describing more specific means by which adversaries achieve tactical goals at a lower level than techniques; and • Documented adversary usage of techniques, their procedures, and other metadata. My concern is with MITRE's definition of "tactics" as "short-term, tactical adversary goals during an attack," which is oddly recursive. The key word in the tacti
Read more

New Book! The Best of TaoSecurity Blog, Volume 4

Image
  I've completed the TaoSecurity Blog book series . The new book is  The Best of TaoSecurity Blog, Volume 4: Beyond the Blog with Articles, Testimony, and Scholarship .  It's available now for Kindle , and I'm working on the print edition.  I'm running a 50% off promo on Volumes 1-3 on Kindle through midnight 20 April. Take advantage before the prices go back up. I described the new title thus: Go beyond TaoSecurity Blog with this new volume from author Richard Bejtlich. In the first three volumes of the series, Mr. Bejtlich selected and republished the very best entries from 18 years of writing and over 18 million blog views, along with commentaries and additional material.  In this title, Mr. Bejtlich collects material that has not been published elsewhere, including articles that are no longer available or are stored in assorted digital or physical archives. Volume 4 offers early white papers that Mr. Bejtlich wrote as a network defender, either for technical or pol
Read more