Did China Hack The CIA In A Massive Intelligence Breach From 2010 To 2012? (ibtimes.com) 115
schwit1 quotes the International Business Times:
Both the CIA and the FBI declined to comment on reports saying the Chinese government killed or imprisoned 18 to 20 CIA sources from 2010 to 2012 and dismantled the agency's spying operations in the country. It is described as one of the worst intelligence breaches in decades, current and former American officials told the New York Times.
Investigators were uncertain whether the breach was a result of a double agent within the CIA who had betrayed the U.S. or whether the Chinese had hacked the communications system used by the agency to be in contact with foreign sources. The Times reported Saturday citing former American officials from the final weeks of 2010 till the end of 2012, the Chinese killed up to 20 CIA sources.
Investigators were uncertain whether the breach was a result of a double agent within the CIA who had betrayed the U.S. or whether the Chinese had hacked the communications system used by the agency to be in contact with foreign sources. The Times reported Saturday citing former American officials from the final weeks of 2010 till the end of 2012, the Chinese killed up to 20 CIA sources.
Betteridge's law of headlines (Score:2)
Betteridge's law of headlines says "No."
You'll never be in media with that attitude. (Score:1, Insightful)
For no particular reason we cannot have headlines written like that for at least the next 4 years...
Proper Headlines:
Massive Chinese Data Breach Cripples CIA
Administration in Chaos Over Chinese Hack
Did Russia Pass Hacked Information to China
Crippling CIA Hack Leaked, Did Trump Know?
Trump Failed to Act On Chinese Hacking Allegations
Re:You'll never be in media with that attitude. (Score:5, Insightful)
For no particular reason we cannot have headlines written like that for at least the next 4 years...
Proper Headlines:
Massive Chinese Data Breach Cripples CIA
Administration in Chaos Over Chinese Hack
Did Russia Pass Hacked Information to China
Crippling CIA Hack Leaked, Did Trump Know?
Trump Failed to Act On Chinese Hacking Allegations
None of those are "proper" headlines, because there is no actual evidence that they are true. TFA does not contain a single named or quoted source. It consists entirely of rumors, conjecture, and innuendo.
The reason that Betteridge's Law of Headlines is generally accurate is that using a question as a headline is a great crutch for weak journalism.
Re: You'll never be in media with that attitude. (Score:1)
Maybe it's a mark of the CIA's extreme deviousness that they would create a plot in which their secrets were stolen and their agents betrayed just to frame the Chinese state but I doubt it. In any case, why isn't the reference to the original NYT story [nytimes.com]?
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Probably True (Score:1)
President Trump did say in an interview 2 months ago that the CIA had been hacked.
Clearly the only viable options are... (Score:1, Funny)
A) It's all a Russian plot. Ergo, Trump must be impeached.
B) Hillary's emails, which were all part of a Russian conspiracy, so Trump must be impeached
C) Obama spilled the beans, but it wasn't his fault. The Russians hacked his golf retreats, so Trump must be impeached.
D) Tim Cook of Apple was hacked, so... ditto
E) Trump did it.
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Re:Clearly the only viable options are... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Clearly the only viable options are... (Score:4, Informative)
Secretary of State doesn't receive that kind of information. That's National Security Council or private briefings. Would have never been shared by email, not even secure email.
Fail. [wikipedia.org]
Membership
The National Security Council is chaired by the President. Its members are the Vice President (statutory), the Secretary of State (statutory), the Secretary of Defense (statutory), the Secretary of Energy (statutory), the National Security Advisor (non-statutory), and the Secretary of the Treasury (non-statutory). ...
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Re:Clearly the only viable options are... (Score:4, Insightful)
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You, sir, are a robot.
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Trump is still popular among Republican voters, even as he becomes more of a liability with everyone else. There are probably quite a few Republicans who'd be interested in getting Trump out of office but fear the voter reaction. The only way he's leaving before 2021 are if he dies or is clearly incapacitated, he resigns, or Republican voters get disgusted with him.
Re:Clearly the only viable options are... (Score:4, Insightful)
not so Trump
Stop libelling Satan!
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Man, people will try to pass anything off as haiku.
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not the right number of syllables for one thing
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That was part of the joke. (And the metrics are really not the most important feature of haiku anyway; complaining about the meter is rather missing the point.) But, hey, thanks for playing.
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Or is it?
have you any source I can examine?
Strategic competitors (Score:5, Insightful)
China and Russia are strategic competitors. We should strive to have good relations with both, enhance partnership at points of shared interest, but also realize they are competitors. And for cryin' out loud, we should not be outsourcing a vast amount of our manufacturing base and knowledge to a strategic competitor. Enhancing economic partnership, certainly. Giving up our manufacturing base to one or the other is madness.
The pundits tell us we're a smart advanced country, manufacturing is beneath us. However, countries like China, Japan, and Germany, with national IQs equal to or greater than ours, cultivate manufacturing. So there's that.
Re:Strategic competitors (Score:4, Insightful)
The economy - of any country - is a competition for resources. Take the most homogeneous, socialist northernmost Scandinavian country - Norway or Sweden - and it's still a competition for resources. Take a heterogeneous country that's only relatively recently been hewn from the frontier, like the US and it is most assuredly a competition for resources. Even with disinterested [dictionary.com] technocrats (which is a fantasy construct, like unicorns - all humans have preferences and desires) allocating resources, people are still going to compete to accrue more resources.
And if within any country it is a competition, you may rest assured externally it is more so of a competition.
It doesn't need to be violent. There can be accepted rules of the game, like baseball or football. But, like, don't like it, doesn't matter. It is what it is.
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Probably (Score:5, Insightful)
It takes a special combination of arrogance and stupidity to believe that the U.S. can infiltrate and spy on every other intelligence organization on the planet, but somehow nobody is able to do the same to us using the same security vulnerabilities we leave in software specifically so people can be spied upon.
So yes, I do believe the CIA was breached.
Re:Probably (Score:5, Insightful)
If this was a result of a "software vulnerability" then a lot of people at the CIA need to be fired and/or jailed. There is absolutely no reason that a list of double agents should be stored online or even on a computer at all. The "need to know" actual identifying information should be limited to the each asset's direct handler. Even the handler's boss doesn't need to know. Instead, the asset himself can be given secondary contact information and a code word to use if the main handler goes silent. Knowledge segmentation is standard spook tradecraft. How could they possibly screw up something so simple so badly?
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Bitcoin Address, bank account in pseudonymous name, cash via handler, etc.
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They kind of fucked that up on day one. They learned the nasty lesson from UK spooks of using criminals to do various work, but they didn't learn to keep them at arms length and in the dark (good segmentation) but invited them into the fold to become full members of the org. The Church Commission stuff and many other things go on about such fuckups at a fundamental level and it's very likely
Re:Probably (Score:5, Funny)
"It's called American excpetionalism."
Are you sure it's not just dyslexia?
Re:Probably (Score:4, Interesting)
The NSA's role? (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps if the NSA concentrated on cyber security instead of cyber attacks, this might not have happened?
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To be fair, you have no idea what the NSA concentrates on, except for the info that has been selectively leaked.
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Perhaps if the NSA concentrated on cyber security instead of cyber attacks, this might not have happened?
And not leaving identified cyber-vulnerabilities in commonly used cyber-software... Do I use cyber too much ?
CIA = (Score:5, Funny)
Ummm, what did you expect? (Score:1)
Do you really think Chinese nationals working in government IT are loyal to America first? What the hell did you expect when you started packing government IT with Chinese nationals on H1-B visas?
How other nations work their spies (Score:5, Interesting)
Classic spy offers.
The UK and later the US tried to counter that with better working conditions, better wages and more testing of trusted staff to see if they had been turned.
From the 1920-1970's the UK leaked everything interesting to the Soviet Union.
The US tried to counter such efforts by fully understanding the past and politics of every applicant. That worked until the USA did not walk the past of every applicant and hired on contractor trust or because a vital skill was needed. The FBI and other agencies would also test trusted US staff with undercover cash offers and see if they reported any security contacts outside work.
The US needed translators, experts for Korea, Vietnam, France, China, the Soviet Union, its Middle East occupations. Generations of very interesting people got clearances based on skill not security. They did their job well and reported back US methods and got to understand how the US looked for staff and then how to move up the ranks of the US clandestine services.
The US could have stopped all that by not using contractors but that was not an option politically. Any new security that blocked a contractor was removed by US party political efforts to allow contractors back into the most secret parts of the US gov and mil.
It took China a long time to understand how the CIA, NSA and GCHQ spy in China.
Dont have radio, data networks or any chatter from base to base to a command structure, everything is been collected on by the NSA and GCHQ.
MI6 and the CIA used a different approach. Invite a lot of students from China to top US and UK universities and try and get the students to enjoy freedom and democracy. When they returned to the Communist gov in China they would recall the fun freedoms and might just consider working for the CIA, MI6 later in China.
What the CIA and MI6 did not consider is that China would flood the West with trusted Communists that would enter the US and UK educations systems, learn and take everything back to China.
China started to notice the efforts to turn its graduates in the UK and US. China allowed some of its graduates to be turned and waited, watched and slowly understood what the West needed and wanted from spies in China over the years.
It took a few decades but China finally saw the pattern of the US and UK spy efforts in China, different to NSA and GCHQ collect it all.
China now understands when and how the approach will take place and has flooded the West with people who seem to want to spy for the CIA and MI6.
What the West saw as very smart people finally wanting freedom, wanting to change politics in China was just China flooding the West with its own spies.
The other issue for the GCHQ and NSA is the quality and amount of data collected in China and translation needed. Local staff at US and UK collection sites, later working on material all needed China experts. The secure hiring of expert staff over generations was always an issue given the skills needed and the time needed for results, Korea, Vietnam, handover of Hong Kong and later decades.
The US and UK so needed staff and spies in China that they never had the time to fully consider the idea that hiring a lot of people without the best security practices was not a good idea.
Decades later the results are the same that the UK faced with spies from the Soviet Union in the 1920-1980's.
Is the CIA leaking from computer databases? If any nation had that easy access deep within the CIA they would not act. They would watch and alter the flow of information and use it as a disinformation strategy to flush out more spies. Why act now and get the CIA to consider its issues and then be totally locked out?
The data flow back from spies in China could be a weak point. Using the "internet" or contact with a foreigner in China.
China understands every network in and out and the server
Re: How other nations work their spies (Score:2)
>Why act now and get the CIA to consider its issues and then be totally locked out?
Get bonuses, promotions, retirement premias, more stuff to bump up the resume
And moreover, Chicoms never had any issue flooding the West with disinformation, just like USSR did
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What the CIA and MI6 did not consider is that China would flood the West with trusted Communists that would enter the US and UK educations systems, learn and take everything back to China.
Hmm, that reads like a 60es spy thriller. Are you saying that "the immensely powerful inner circle of the Chinese Communist Party, known only to a few, highly classified individuals" etc, somehow have brainwashed the enormous numbers of Chinese students going abroad, to be fanatically devoted to extreme Maoism and interested only in subverting the legitimate government of rich people over American consumers? Without anybody ever noticing? Wow. But with that amount of power, why haven't they simply wiped the
Obviously a betrayal (Score:1)
Normal to execute spies. (Score:5, Interesting)
The story talks about the execution of more than a dozen spies, but doesn't mention that this is perfectly acceptable under the Geneva Conventions. Leaving people to perhaps be a little outraged that "how dare they execute someone." The US has a history of doing the same thing (and so does pretty much everyone else on the q.t.) - I just find it interesting that neither the story, nor the comments, reflect on the consequences of this. Someone blackmails you into spying for them, you could end up dead. Why not just say "screw it" instead? You might even get your would-be blackmailer swinging at the end or a noose instead, or with, you.
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I know the Rosenbergs (I think that was their name) were executed. Are there examples of the US executing spys in the US since then?
I'm not thinking of any, and remember a number of them being caught and in the news. One place I worked at had posters of spys caught by the government as reminders not to mishandle classified info, but those all just got jail time.
I'm just curious if I hadn't heard of any or just forgot.
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There's a lot of room for an army officer to screw up and cost his men dearly before there's a court-martial. If the soldiers could file suit against an incompetent commander that's getting them killed, they wouldn't frag the guy.
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Don't stick words in my mouth to make your counter-argument. Read the post you replied to - I didn't say it was acceptable. In fact, I offered no moral or ethical judgment whatsoever - I stated that it was legal, not whether it was moral or ethical.
And you don't know shit. Execution of spies is most certainly allowed under the Geneva Conventions. There is absolutely no need to take a spy as a prisoner of war. Go look it up, same as I did.
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Where did I claim China was breaking laws by executing spies? My original point was that even the Geneva Conventions allow it.
The US has been in many wars that were never declared - in fact, since only Congress has the authority to declare war, every conflict since WW2 is an "undeclared war."
The US has also stated that it is in a cyber war with China, and that Chinese spies have stolen plenty of secrets. Same with being in a cyber war with North Korea, and let's not forget Trump and Russia. All parties ar
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I just find it interesting that neither the story, nor the comments, reflect on the consequences of this
Finding something interesting is NOT a complaint, at least in my world. Good sex, good food, and good company are all interesting to most people, and would hardly be regarded as complaint-worthy.
Snowden did NOT do his job (Score:2, Interesting)
Chinese spies are doing their job, that's right. But Snowden's treason, likely, made that job easier. The asshole has blood on his hands — blood of Americans and those foreigners, who chose to help us, be it for money or to destroy the Communist regime, or both.
That said, I can't wait for Snowden and Manning to come out condemning Trump for sharing intelligence [reuters.com] with Russia.
Re: Snowden did NOT do his job (Score:2)
>blood of Americans and those foreigners, who
>chose to help us, be it for money or to destroy the
>Communist regime, or both.
It was seriously naive for these foreigners to believe that US will commit to destroying chicoms.
American political establishment has no balls.
Most likelly, the biggest extend to which they will use that intelligence is for low key blackmail in trade negotiations, no more.
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (Score:1)
Just in case you are too young to remember.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_and_Ethel_Rosenberg
What was the communications system? (Score:3)
Investigators were uncertain whether the breach was a result of a double agent within the CIA who had betrayed the U.S. or whether the Chinese had hacked the communications system used by the agency to be in contact with foreign sources.
Yahoo Messenger with a ROT-13 plugin?
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The "internet".
A person who is spying for the US in China gets to go on holiday and meet their CIA handlers.
Someone in China the CIA trusts collects messages. Embassy, long term educational, faith, private company or brand.
The problems are the internet is well understood by China in and out of China. Every VPN or other connection is tracked to its origin and destination by China.
Use encryption and that is noted. Try and hide encryption and China gets re
Short answer: Putin did this, China finished it (Score:1)
Unlike all you on the civvy side, we've been in Cold War II for quite a while.
And now we are on to Cold War III.
Hope you feel happy about outing all the NATO operatives for your masters in China and Russia.
Must make you feel proud.
Not a word from Ed Snowflake? (Score:1)
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Actually we just have our reporters emerging from their 8 year hibernation.
They are very cranky a little out of it.
For example, this one did not get the memo not to go back so far in time.
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It's annoying the pig and wasting your time
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They likely had an easy back door through then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's private email server.
We'll never know, due to all the deletion they did to hide evidence. (That is, after all, why she took Colin Powell's advice and got her own email server to begin with.)
Re: Lowest hanging fruit? (Score:2)
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Inferring what you have sounds more like a 4chanesque conspiracy theory than something supported by a reasoned consideration of the situation.
All I'm sure about is that her personal email server was specifically for the purpose of whitewashing history, and that they went ahead and took the opportunity to destroy a bunch of what they knew would be evidence if there was a trial. I don't know that they specifically intended to destroy evidence when it was created.
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Thanks