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Why doesn't the US do something about that? China almost seems overt about stealing secrets like that.
It's good not to let yourself be hacked. It's better to let your enemies think you can be hacked.
The key words in the article were:
> The officials said the material, when aggregated, could be considered classified
So, the problem is that the material was probably designated as FOUO, but should have been classified as secret.
The difference is that FOUO is okay to be left on desks and the like, but confidential and above needs a safe, and document control.
> The data stolen was of a highly sensitive nature despite being housed on the contractor’s unclassified network. Former government contractor here: Dumbasses need to keep their sensitive data air gapped and inside a SCIF. If you need to network stuff, there are ways for contractors to implement NSA-approved "type 1" crypto with the appropriate personnel and infrastructure. Also, I think whoever improperly classified…
Are there penalties written into contracts to address failures like this? ISTR when China got loads of F-35 data, Lockheed was "punished" by getting to spend another year and hundreds of millions more dollars "fixing" the plane.
The other aspect is that it's not really the contractor's fault if the exploit was done with a zero-day.
Why doesn't the US do something about that? China almost seems overt about stealing secrets like that.
The US nuclear triad currently rests dangerously on the US Ohio-class submarines. If the Chinese military develops technology that can eliminate these subs in a surprise attack, they would potentially have the ability to take over the world. Step 1. Target the 1950s era US ICBM fleet in their static bunkers. This only requires making the POTUS hesitate for ~7 minutes to "use or lose" them. Step 2. Destroy the few doz…
Everything you say is true, but extremely misleading. China's nuclear posture uses what's called the "minimum means of reprisal", which means they have an extremely small nuclear force that is incapable of completing the scenario you outline. Let me just quote the abstract from Jeffery Lewis's phd dissertation on the topic: Among the 5 states authorized under the NPT to possess nuclear weapons, China has the most res…
Based on what evidence?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everything you say is true, but extremely misleading. China's nuclear posture uses what's called the "minimum means of reprisal", which means they have an extremely small nuclear force that is incapable of completing the scenario you outline. Let me just quote the abstract from Jeffery Lewis's phd dissertation on the topic: Among the 5 states authorized under the NPT to possess nuclear weapons, China has the most res…
Nothing has changed in 14 years with China's nuclear arsenal? Based on what evidence?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's stupid and then there's "stupid" putting my tinfoil hat on here: maybe they were allowed to steal the data. I mean really? Oh WOOOPS we stored 613 GB of classified data on an unsecured network in the EXACT place hackers would look... aww that sucks, welp we'll try to do better next time. I call BS, this level of incompetence smells more like treason disguised as stupidity.
A true believer would say the point was to suggest intentionally bad technology (e.g. screen doors!), to retard progress in Chinese submarine design...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are there penalties written into contracts to address failures like this? ISTR when China got loads of F-35 data, Lockheed was "punished" by getting to spend another year and hundreds of millions more dollars "fixing" the plane.
So it's not like you're going to take the F-35 and move it over to another contractor. More likely, you'll just cancel it and start gain. The other aspect is that it's not really the contractor's fault if the exploit was done with a zero-day.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> So it's pretty obvious by now that we are actively at war with China and Russia on the cyber front. We are actively fighting a cyber war with every country. The nations who we spy on the most are our allies. And the nations who spy on us the most are our allies. I know it's counterintuitive but it's international politics, geopolitics and intelligence 101. For example, israel, Britain, Canada, germany, japan, south…
Citations needed. I know some intelligence people. This isn't what they tell me. They tell me that western governments are obsessed with following the law and limiting what their cyber operations touch. It's born out by what I understand from non-classified sources. For example, I read through the source code of Stuxnet when it first came out. There was a ton of guards put in to limit the potential damage it made. Th…
You also seem to assume that, however badly the Russians have us over a barrel through infected infrastructure, that we haven’t gotten into their stuff just as badly, or worse. All the regulations that U.S. spooks complain about aren’t a problem once you’re on foreign soil working on foreign targets. Cyberwarfare favors the attacker, just because we’re very vulnerable isn’t a reason to believe we don’t have the upper hand.
(And as noted, the U.S.’s budget for this stuff is way greater than our opponents’. If we’re not decisively on top something is seriously wrong.)
The US nuclear triad currently rests dangerously on the US Ohio-class submarines. If the Chinese military develops technology that can eliminate these subs in a surprise attack, they would potentially have the ability to take over the world. Step 1. Target the 1950s era US ICBM fleet in their static bunkers. This only requires making the POTUS hesitate for ~7 minutes to "use or lose" them. Step 2. Destroy the few doz…
I consider MAD to be a greater threat. We are talking about extinguishing all human life.
Some reference material:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16884.The_Making_of_the_...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6452798-command-and-cont...
Just recently published: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25663779-the-doomsday-ma...
> But I think the best solution would be for the entire G7 to develop independent MAD systems so there's never any doubt that it remains in effect.
Comprehensive MAD would be a wonderful thing, if you had utter certainty that the chance for accidental launch was zero. If the chance is nonzero, you've put a time limit on civilization. How long? A hundred years? Three hundred?
You refer derisively to "1950s-era" technology. And you have a point. I'm agreeing with that point, and using it to make the case for a real chance of accidental nuclear war based on flawed or worn-out technology.
The third book in the list above goes into stark detail about the other danger - that of nuclear war based on flawed human decision-making.