“They got everything”..... China hackers on Capitial Hill?

[ElsewheresDaughter]

this one makes ya go hmmmm?

More congressional computers hacked from China
By Jordy Yager
Posted: 06/21/08 03:37 PM

More Members of Congress have had their computers infiltrated by hackers within China than initially suspected, a lawmaker has revealed.



Reps. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), Chris Smith (R-N.J.), and Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) admitted to having data removed from their Capitol Hill computers last week, but Wolf says there are more.



“I’m not at liberty to say who they are, but there are other members,” said Wolf, ranking member on the Appropriations Committee’s State and Foreign Operations subcommittee.



Computers within the Foreign Affairs Committee, on which Smith serves as a senior Republican, were also infiltrated. Kirk suspects that other committees may have been attacked as well.



“I would suspect that the Foreign Affairs, Armed Services, Intelligence, (and) Appropriations committees would all be top targets,” Kirk said.



Wolf and Smith said they believe the hackers focused on them because of their continued objections to China’s human rights violations, and suspected that the hackers were looking for information on dissidents.



The computers of Wolf’s foreign policy and human rights staff, chief of staff, legislative director, and judiciary staff were all attacked.



“They got everything,” Wolf said, at a news conference.



The vast amount of information that the attacks, which occurred over the past two years, may have acquired from the computers has lawmakers concerned that the hackers may be selling it to other countries.



“China has a record of selling things to certain countries,” Wolf said.



Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said he did not know the details of what information had been stolen but noted that he was very concerned.



“This is a serious matter and we’re looking into it carefully,” Hoyer said.



read the rest here: http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/more-congressional-computers-hacked-from-china-2008-06-21.html

[Teaser]

1. I honestly hope

that our "crackers" are as competent as chinas apparently are.

[Blarch]

2. If Iran did this ...

we would call it a act of war.

[geckosfeet]

3. WTF! Does congress use AOL or something?

IMO, this points to extraordinarily dismal network security, or an inside job.

[havocmom]

8. GOP lives by surveillance; they're goin DOWN by surveillance

Blackmail, it's how power in maintained. GOP finding out the hard way that they aren't the top of the food chain?

But yeah, you'd think THE GOVERNMENT would have decent security. LIHOP or MIHOP? ;)

[FarCenter]

4. Is there really any evidence that the hackers were in China?

Hackers normally use a chain of compromised computers that belong to other people in order to cover their actual location. These tandem connections are fairly difficult to trace back to the true origin.

Was an investigation done to establish the actual location of the hackers, or is this all based on the fact that the last computer in the chain was in China?

Even if it were traced to actual hackers in China, most likely these are just amateurs, aince hackers working for the PLA would be more careful than that.

[two gun sid]

5. Only repugs are hacked...

Jean Schmidt put into the Congressional Record that China was drilling for oil, with their new partner Cuba, in the Florida Sraits which is not true. She lied. I have a hard time believing anything these asshats say. Hoyer doesn't know the details. C'mon. It's all bullshit to scare people. You'd think the intelligence community would be a little bit concerned about this and try to keep it quite while they investigated a breach of Capitol Hill computers, ya know?

Total bullshit and scare tactics. Be afraid. China's gonna take us over. Vote McFuckstick for endless war against our enemies.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

7. I believe that is exactly the case

[two gun sid]

11. China's been a theme with the nutjob repugs this week

Hopefully these fucks will be prosecuted for failure to protect classified infomation OR making false statements in a criminal investigation OR a criminal conspiracy charge.

[seafan]

6. Hmmm. Maybe these guys are still using the RNC servers? nt

[eShirl]

9. maybe these guys could help find Karl Rove's missing emails

[ElsewheresDaughter]

10. indeed!

[alfredo]

12. So it isn't just the GOP spying on us.

[RC]

13. There does not seem to be any distinction between servers and end user PC's

Fire walls breached? These congress critters have admin ID's or restricted ID's? Any anti virus programs loaded? Do they use VPN when outside the government network? Information going missing? What no backups?
And this has been going on for how many years? Conveniently sloppy security to cover illegal dealings?