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Chinese Hacker Spies Take Over Penn State Engineering Department, School Says
Late last month we highlighted the US Department of Defense’s new “Cyber Strategy.” In a new directive, the Pentagon outlined the circumstances it says may warrant the deployment of cyberweapons and, taking things a step further, indicated that the use of cyberattacks as offensive weapons wasn’t out of the question. Here’s how the DoD sums up its cyber mission:
As we noted at the time, the countries named as potential cyberadversaries come as no surprise:
Unsurprisingly, the list of cyber adversaries is indistinguishable from what might fairly be called Washington’s “usual suspects.” The villains are: Russia, Iran, China, and North Korea. In fact, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter says the Pentagon was recently the target of a Russian “cyber intrusion” which he claims was quickly detected by a government “crack team.”
That “crack team” has apparently not been on the case at Penn State over the past 24 or so months, because as Bloomberg reports, Chinese hackers have apparently been perusing sensitive information stored on computers at Penn State’s College of Engineering for years. Here’s more:
Penn State University, which develops sensitive technology for the U.S. Navy, disclosed Friday that Chinese hackers have been sifting through the computers of its engineering school for more than two years.
One of the country’s largest and most productive research universities, Penn State offers a potential treasure trove of technology that’s already being developed with partners for commercial applications. The breach suggests that foreign spies could be using universities as a backdoor to U.S. commercial and defense secrets.
The hackers are so deeply embedded that the engineering college’s computer network will be taken offline for several days while investigators work to eject the intruders.
The breach, which the school’s president calls “an incredibly serious situation,” was allegedly perpetrated by what Bloomberg calls “state-sponsored hackers” acting as “foreign spies” and was reportedly uncovered by the FBI late last year. After a lengthy investigation (which cost the university millions) school officials are now concerned that information from Penn State's Applied Research Laboratory (which has worked with the US Navy for the better part of a century) may have been compromised in the operation:
Among Penn State’s specialties is aerospace engineering, which has both commercial and defense applications important to China’s government. The university is also home to Penn State’s Applied Research Laboratory, one of 14 research centers around the country that work mainly for the military.
While the lab is not part of the College of Engineering, Jones said experts there have been alerted to the breach and are investigating whether the hackers could have moved there from those networks.
Bennett said the lab’s computers are separated from the engineering college by “network-based controls,” and its personnel use different passwords. The Applied Research Lab has been doing work for the Navy since 1945 and specializes in undersea propulsion and navigation.
That the hackers were in the network undetected for more than two years raises the possibility that they used connections between computers to move into more highly guarded networks, including defense contractors, government agencies or the Navy, according to the person familiar with the investigation.
If all of that isn’t conspiratorial enough for you, then consider this:
In addition to online activities, the Chinese have sent legions of graduate students to U.S. schools and have tried to recruit students, faculty members and others at both universities and government research facilities, several recent law-enforcement investigations show…
University provost Nicholas Jones said Penn State hopes to use its experience to help other universities that are also likely targets for advanced cyberspies and other intruders, providing information on the hack as well as advanced security measures the university is putting in place.
“We don’t think we’re alone,” Jones said.
If Ashton Carter and the DoD needed an excuse to launch a cyber offensive on the way to “convincing a potential adversary that it will suffer unacceptable costs if it conducts a [cyber] attack on the United States,” we suppose this is it, because apparently, China has not only employed a vast network of sophisticated hacker spies in order to steal the blueprints for unmanned military drones and submarines from the computers of university engineering departments, but has also sent “legions” of operatives posing as graduate students to infiltrate America’s higher education system. This represents a remarkable step up the cyber attack accusation ladder compared to Washington’s attempt to blame North Korea for cyber-sabotaging James Franco and Seth Rogen.
We will let readers determine the extent to which any of the above is grounded in reality, but if indeed China does intend to use students as instruments of espionage, we have the following message for Beijing: given the inexorable rise in US college tuition rates and your $28 trillion debt pile, China may become insolvent on the way to procuring US military secrets.
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Hope UCLA gets more grant money. The way things are going they will be needing a new source of revenue soon.
I'm making over $7k a month working part time. I kept hearing other people tell me how much money they can make online so I decided to look into it. Well, it was all true and has totally changed my life. This is what I do... www.jobs-review.com
A new enemy! Chinese students!
How do you say Terrorist in Mandarin?
Mandolin.
The musical terrrist.
The story is not exactly a vote of confidence for the Penn State computer science program.
Sometimes it almost seems that all the information technology security of the US has been outsourced to barely trained people in Bombay who work for next to nothing.
Oh wait...
An eyewitness describes the hacker:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4EH0RtVlgE
I thought that all the STEM students at US universities were Asians already, so are these Chinese spies going after themselves, Indians, etc.? It's been 23 years since Ed Yourdon wrote "Decline and Fall of the American Programmer", after all.
I'm sure they yearn for the good old days, when they could get POTUS (Clinton) to shovel the secrets to them for a small fee.
the rule is: out of the 37 phd students in your lab, 3 of them should be domestic.
because nothing says "secure power grid" like https://translate.google.com/#en/zh-CN/secure%20power%20grid
University of Tennessee?
Just shoot the fucker, damn you....
It's because the PhD stipend is actually a good deal for them. They're poverty wages for a US student.
How do you say Terrorist in Mandarin?
Gweilo Obama.
This spy story is such a POS, a way for Penn State to get more grant money from the Feds to improve security. All Penn State will get is a visit from some Fed "crack" experts, experts at scratching their head and taking long lunches.
Ho Lee Fuk!
The story may be a POS, but at least it will provide a plausible excuse for censoring the internet.
Is this not the university that harbored and protected pedophiles. I think there is a close relationship to the CIA/NSA at this university.
Penn State seems to be telling us that their school of engineering computers are loaded up with top secret data, those computers are freely accessible to the graduate students and the university is teaching secret information in the graduate classes to the graduate students who enroll for that class.
The pedophiles have bigger problems than students from China. Also consider that a high percentage of all students in science graduate programs are foreign born and you have to wonder what this propaganda is about.
So the U.S. has had legions of hackers attacking Russian, Chinese, Iranian and probably a hundred other countries computers. But...
"...Here’s how the DoD sums up its cyber mission: Defend blah blah blah..; defend blah blah blah; support blah blah blah..."
The government spends BILLIONS on cyber-defense, yet it is a fucking intelligence sieve. It is only capable of effectively spying on it's own defenseless citizens and launching attacks on primative Iranian control systems.
Do me a favor, DoD: stop wasting my tax dollars on your cyber-anything efforts. You SUCK at it.
As far as anyone stealing U.S. military secrets, what are they going to do - steal the plans for a $1.5 trillion dollar failure of a F-35 program or the $400,000 helmets you need to fly the God damn things?? Hell, we should just give them the plans - it would break their defense budget just like it has ours.
You almost have it. They (US) steal US based business proprietary data/info. Certainly, everyone else acquires it too. The problem here is how commonplace it has become since Enron.
Nobody reads anymore...
http://fas.org/sgp/othergov/indust.html
You almost have it. They steal US based business proprietary data/info.
I literally LO-bloody-L-ed at your F-35 comment.
America's enemies don't need to go to war, they just have to sit back and wait for that over-investment in state bullshit to bankrupt the place.
*Chinese accent*
Gou houme! White trashhhh!
Has anyone here been to MIT lately? This story is about 10 years too late.
We are the weak and stupid animal in this game for sure. America, the possum of nations.
Hmmm, I've done a lot of possuming.
In one hand I'd have a GPS device communicating with military satellites and guiding me to my traps and in the other I'd have a hammer for bashing the cute furry animals over the head.
There's ten cents worth of irony in there somewhere.
Those aren't the military satellites.
GPS are cheap commercial decoys for the real deal.
Funny how that works,
Sorry to say but, 2015, US is still the big dog.
I don't like it.
Options?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5OcA_0VZq8
i don't know
The US is not as smart as even the biggest dumb dog though.
The US is like a Liger - half Lion, half Tiger; enormous, congenitally retarded and hopelessly sterile.
Penn State? What is there to steal except the pedophile coaches pictures and the lying global warming fake data that a*shole Michael Mann with his globull warming BS lies?
No shit... Prolly lookin' for Sandusky's porn stash...
I'd be happy if they simply got rid of spammers an dphishers.
penn state, lulz. give the clintons a million bucks and they'll let you have free run at los alamitos.
But Buzz- do you have any concrete evidence of that...
The Clinton defence- did you personally ever see Stalin kill someone ? Ergo, it never happened.
Whatever China can't steal in the open, whatever China cannot procure through buying a politician, whatever China cannot keep hidden by tagging their accusers as racists, then they use their elaborate spy network. And that network is everywhere.
The American Trojan horse- ship technology and investment in plant and equipment to China then feign bewilderment about the collapse of the U.S. economy.
The only good "...." is a dead "....." Remember we have been here before. Many times. All the weasel liberals will achieve is the disintergration of the USA. They never learn; they fuck up every thing they touch and whine about? Why? Because humans are not trustworthy as a whole or even very often. Look at the greed and selfishness all around. Do you trust your government? any branch? the financial system? any bank? any church? the blood sucking child molesting clergy? any advertisement you have seen or heard in the last 40 years? the cops - where pray tell? any type of regulator? any loan officer? I could go on and on. Can you?
A number of the top US engineering schools have been taken over by the Chinese.
Told you, and don't over-look the Japanese, no matter how much that darn pleases you when they bow at you.
WE get almost 300,000 Chinese students a year! and the a-holes in gov just gave them a 5 year visa. I want to know how many are spies and how many will leave after coming here. We are giving away the country. Time to rethink the ban on Chinese like we use to have.
Most favored nation trade status since Nixon.
Are you a Chinese troll or just an ignoramus? Ever heard of Google? MFN for China happened under Clintoon. It almost happened under Bush 1, but some Chinese guy decided to stand in the way of a Chinese tank and Bush sidelined the issue. Nixon just "opened the door" to China. Well, he was a proto-fascist leftie, so what could we expect?
Do you have alzheimers?
Global warming? Or Penn State paedophelia?
DOJ will sabotage you, if one of their cretins feels that you are not "the right fit." They will test you to see how much abuse you can take, and how you will react. If you are really stressed, some dumb bass will get the bright idea to keep you on the Patsy Rolls. God Bless America, there is a criminal network in charge. Are they paid off by the Chinese and Japanese governments?
Pitt-Culture
Penn State-Agriculture
but no word on 5 dancing israelis and a coupla hundred israeli "art" students who hacked the soul of the usa.
http://map.ipviking.com/
http://www.digitaltrends.com/web/next-generation-hacker-hunting-ip-vikin...
well, seems theres more under the surface
I can't help but wonder if ipviking is yet another front for the NSA. Not that I worry about such things, as no one has devoted time to hacking CPM on an 8088 for several decades now. I'm safe.
Steve Jobs advised you to disconnect when you aren't using it. Duh.
If ATT called me 1. I wouldn't answer. 2. If I was tricked to answer and they told me that, I'd hang up and report the call to somebody who has no ties to the FBI. Handled.
I am sure that the chinese have access to all the information assets of any value in the USA.
Why ?
Because the politicians cannot earn big votes and win elections by properly managing America's information assets, but ONLY by freebies and give-aways to the proletariat vermin, who don't know shit about or care about America's information assets.
This article sounds like it's written by a jealous israeli intellectual property thief.
"Leave our fucking Goy alone!"
Did I win? Ding, ding, ding. Did I win the prize?
We the People demand all the Chinese nationals in this country immediately report to the nearby Forced Labor Concentration Camps so that Apple stuff can be moar affordable.
I knew a chinese citizen who went through the UPENN Masters NSA computer security program.
After she graduated she still didn't know shit, no experience, couldn't find work. Last I checked she is still here illegally.
I'd do something about it but a bunch of blood sucking lawyers are in the way. Solid self defense or let them cook themselves.
I'd be extremely disappointed if the Chinese were not on an equal underhandedness with Neo-CON.
Chinese Hackers 'hacked' my Research Paper
I've heard that students in China refer to MIT as "War University" because every chinese national that attends MIT goes straight back to China to work in the Ministry of National Defense. I'm not sure who came up with the policy to educate all of our' rivals, but it is a tragically misguided mistake.
That's purely bullshit. Heard of Andy Xie?
There's always exceptions to the rule.
His point remains valid.
The fall of Rome was preceeded by similar shortsightedness.
USA FB culture [cretins] have placed all sensitive data on-line
China OWNS USSA. Get USed to it at last.
So, is the message here that we are all supposed to fear the Chinese bogey-man?
DUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH Every commoner in the USA with half a brain knows this
Yes they do sent there best and brightest over here. But why let a few pesk's B's and C's stand in your way when you can hack them away.
Well this could be one explaination as to why Chinese students always get A's in their classes. Ever wonder how a college student with English as a second language can get A's in English classes or write great engineering lab reports!
all countries working together to bring NWO..... the end... that takes care of mostly all 'so called headline none sheeple news' let alone the obvious 'sheeple news' headlines,, you are wasting your time.... escapism isn't just for mushroom sheeples kept in the dark and fed sh@t all day it also goes for you so called awakened oones.....