Anatomy of a hack: When the GCN Lab was attacked from China

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://gcn.com/articles/2011/06/20/anatomy-of-hack-from-china.aspx

By John Breeden II
GCN.com
June 20, 2011

I was happy to see last week that the National Security Agency is 
joining the battle against Internet hackers by offering its own set of 
scanning tools to private companies.

It’s good to see the government taking this threat seriously, because if 
defense companies have their security breached, its pretty much like our 
nation is being attacked as well. Countries that could benefit from 
knowledge about the projects those contractors are working on might view 
private companies as a softer target than trying to go directly at 
Defense Department databases. Attacks like the recent one at Lockheed 
Martin could be proof of this line of thinking.

I’d like to take that logic a step further and say that, in a lot of 
ways, a new Cold War has begun, and we should take the threat just as 
seriously. The only difference is that, unlike the original Cold War, 
there is unlikely to be a scenario that ends in world annihilation, 
though damage can still be done to both sides.

China is taking the threat seriously, and claims that the United States 
is attacking its networks just as vigorously as we claim they are 
assaulting ours. And let’s not forget North Korea as a threat on this 
new battlefield as well.

The GCN Lab domain, which is a test setup for new products and not 
public, has even been attacked in the past, probably because attackers 
mistakenly thought based on the publication's name that we were part of 
the government. These attacks provided evidence that they were coming 
from China and were even tracked down to specific IP addresses in that 
country, mostly surrounding Beijing.

[...]

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