http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/chinese-hackers-who-breached-google-gained-access-to-sensitive-data-us-officials-say/2013/05/20/51330428-be34-11e2-89c9-3be8095fe767_print.html
The breach appears to have been aimed at unearthing the identities of Chinese intelligence operatives in the United States who may have been under surveillance by American law enforcement agencies.
It’s unclear how much the hackers were able to discover. But former U.S. officials familiar with the breach said the Chinese stood to gain valuable intelligence. The database included information about court orders authorizing surveillance — orders that could have signaled active espionage investigations into Chinese agents who maintained e-mail accounts through Google’s Gmail service.
“Knowing that you were subjects of an investigation allows them to take steps to destroy information, get people out of the country,” said one former official, who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a highly sensitive matter. The official said the Chinese could also have sought to deceive U.S. intelligence officials by conveying false or misleading information.
Although Google disclosed an intrusion by Chinese hackers in 2010, it made no reference to the breach of the database with information on court orders. That breach prompted deep concerns in Washington and led to a heated, months-long dispute between Google and the FBI and Justice Department over whether the FBI could access technical logs and other information about the breach, according to the officials.
Google declined to comment for this article, as did the FBI.
Last month, a senior Microsoft official suggested that Chinese hackers had targeted the company’s servers about the same time that Google’s system was compromised. The official said Microsoft concluded that whoever was behind the breach was seeking to identify accounts that had been tagged for surveillance by U.S. national security and law enforcement agencies.
“What we found was the attackers were actually looking for the accounts that we had lawful wiretap orders on,” David W. Aucsmith, senior director of Microsoft’s Institute for Advanced Technology in Governments, said at a conference near Washington, according to a recording of his remarks.
“If you think about this, this is brilliant counterintelligence,” he said in the address, which was first reported by the online magazine CIO.com. “You have two choices: If you want to find out if your agents, if you will, have been discovered, you can try to break into the FBI to find out that way. Presumably that’s difficult. Or you can break into the people that the courts have served paper on and see if you can find it that way. That’s essentially what we think they were trolling for, at least in our case.”
Microsoft now disputes that its servers had been compromised as part of the cyberespionage campaign that targeted Google and about 20 other companies. Aucsmith, who cited that campaign in his remarks, said in a statement to The Washington Post that his comments were “not meant to cite any specific Microsoft analysis or findings about motive or attacks.”
The U.S. government has been concerned about Chinese hacking since at least the early 2000s, when network intrusions were discovered at U.S. energy labs and defense contractors. The FBI has for years led a national security investigation into Chinese cyberespionage, some of which has been linked to the Chinese military.
The Chinese, according to government, academic and industry analysts, have stolen massive volumes of data from companies in sectors including defense, technology, aerospace, and oil and gas. Gen. Keith B. Alexander, the director of the National Security Agency, has referred to the theft of proprietary data as the “greatest transfer of wealth in history.”
The Chinese emphatically deny that they are engaged in hacking into U.S. computer systems and have said that many intrusions into their own networks emanate from servers in the United States.
“The Chinese government prohibits online criminal offenses of all forms, including cyber attack and cyber espionage, and has done what it can to combat such activities in accordance with Chinese laws,” a Chinese Embassy spokesman, Yuan Gao, said in an e-mail. “We’ve heard all kinds of allegations but have not seen any hard evidence or proof.”
Experts said an elaborate network of interconnected routers and servers can make the Internet tailor-made for the shadowy work of spying and counterspying. It stands to reason, they said, that adversaries would be interested in finding vulnerabilities in the networks of the companies that authorize surveillance on behalf of the government.
“It is an absolute rule of thumb that the best counterintelligence tool isn’t defensive — it’s offensive. It’s penetrating the other service,” said Michael V. Hayden, a former director of the National Security Agency and the CIA, who said he had no knowledge of the incidents. Hacking into a surveillance database, he said, “is a form of that.”
Google’s crisis began in December 2009, when, several former government officials said, the firm discovered that Chinese hackers had penetrated its corporate networks through “spear phishing” — a technique in which an employee was effectively deceived into clicking a bogus link that downloads a malicious program. The hackers had been rooting around insider Google’s servers for at least a year.
Alarmed by the scope and audacity of the breach, the company went public with the news in January 2010, becoming the first U.S. firm to voluntarily disclose an intrusion that originated in China. In a blog post, Google chief legal officer David Drummond said hackers stole the source code that powers Google’s vaunted search engine and also targeted the e-mail accounts of activists critical of China’s human rights abuses.
As Google was responding to the breach, its technicians made another startling discovery: its database with years of information on surveillance orders had been hacked. The database included information on thousands of orders issued by judges around the country to law enforcement agents seeking to monitor suspects’ e-mails.
The most sensitive orders, however, came from a federal court that approves surveillance of foreign targets such as spies, diplomats, suspected terrorists and agents of other governments. Those orders, issued under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, are classified.
Google did not disclose that breach publicly, but soon after detecting it, the company alerted the FBI, former officials said. Bureau officials told FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, who briefed President Obama.
At one point, an FBI supervisory agent working on Chinese cyberespionage cases traveled to Google’s Mountain View, Calif., headquarters to conduct a national security investigation, the former officials said. The company, without any guarantees about the scope of the investigation, denied access.
The bureau undertook an extensive assessment to include determining whether individuals under surveillance had moved to other means of communication. Although the assessment showed no damage to national security because of the breach, Google took steps to shield sensitive data.
Michael M. DuBose, former chief of the Justice Department’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, declined to comment on either the Microsoft or Google cases. But, he said, in general such intrusions serve as “a wake-up call for the government that the overall security and effectiveness of lawful interception and undercover operations is dependent in large part on security standards in the private sector.
“Those,” he said, “clearly need strengthening.”
http://www.infowars.com/googles-plan-to-take-over-the-world/
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/20/2013 21:40 -0400
Chinese hackers who breached Google gained access to sensitive data, U.S. officials say
By Ellen Nakashima,
Chinese hackers who breached Google’s servers several years ago gained access to a sensitive database with years’ worth of information about U.S. surveillance targets, according to current and former government officials.The breach appears to have been aimed at unearthing the identities of Chinese intelligence operatives in the United States who may have been under surveillance by American law enforcement agencies.
It’s unclear how much the hackers were able to discover. But former U.S. officials familiar with the breach said the Chinese stood to gain valuable intelligence. The database included information about court orders authorizing surveillance — orders that could have signaled active espionage investigations into Chinese agents who maintained e-mail accounts through Google’s Gmail service.
“Knowing that you were subjects of an investigation allows them to take steps to destroy information, get people out of the country,” said one former official, who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a highly sensitive matter. The official said the Chinese could also have sought to deceive U.S. intelligence officials by conveying false or misleading information.
Although Google disclosed an intrusion by Chinese hackers in 2010, it made no reference to the breach of the database with information on court orders. That breach prompted deep concerns in Washington and led to a heated, months-long dispute between Google and the FBI and Justice Department over whether the FBI could access technical logs and other information about the breach, according to the officials.
Google declined to comment for this article, as did the FBI.
Last month, a senior Microsoft official suggested that Chinese hackers had targeted the company’s servers about the same time that Google’s system was compromised. The official said Microsoft concluded that whoever was behind the breach was seeking to identify accounts that had been tagged for surveillance by U.S. national security and law enforcement agencies.
“What we found was the attackers were actually looking for the accounts that we had lawful wiretap orders on,” David W. Aucsmith, senior director of Microsoft’s Institute for Advanced Technology in Governments, said at a conference near Washington, according to a recording of his remarks.
“If you think about this, this is brilliant counterintelligence,” he said in the address, which was first reported by the online magazine CIO.com. “You have two choices: If you want to find out if your agents, if you will, have been discovered, you can try to break into the FBI to find out that way. Presumably that’s difficult. Or you can break into the people that the courts have served paper on and see if you can find it that way. That’s essentially what we think they were trolling for, at least in our case.”
Microsoft now disputes that its servers had been compromised as part of the cyberespionage campaign that targeted Google and about 20 other companies. Aucsmith, who cited that campaign in his remarks, said in a statement to The Washington Post that his comments were “not meant to cite any specific Microsoft analysis or findings about motive or attacks.”
The U.S. government has been concerned about Chinese hacking since at least the early 2000s, when network intrusions were discovered at U.S. energy labs and defense contractors. The FBI has for years led a national security investigation into Chinese cyberespionage, some of which has been linked to the Chinese military.
The Chinese, according to government, academic and industry analysts, have stolen massive volumes of data from companies in sectors including defense, technology, aerospace, and oil and gas. Gen. Keith B. Alexander, the director of the National Security Agency, has referred to the theft of proprietary data as the “greatest transfer of wealth in history.”
The Chinese emphatically deny that they are engaged in hacking into U.S. computer systems and have said that many intrusions into their own networks emanate from servers in the United States.
“The Chinese government prohibits online criminal offenses of all forms, including cyber attack and cyber espionage, and has done what it can to combat such activities in accordance with Chinese laws,” a Chinese Embassy spokesman, Yuan Gao, said in an e-mail. “We’ve heard all kinds of allegations but have not seen any hard evidence or proof.”
Experts said an elaborate network of interconnected routers and servers can make the Internet tailor-made for the shadowy work of spying and counterspying. It stands to reason, they said, that adversaries would be interested in finding vulnerabilities in the networks of the companies that authorize surveillance on behalf of the government.
“It is an absolute rule of thumb that the best counterintelligence tool isn’t defensive — it’s offensive. It’s penetrating the other service,” said Michael V. Hayden, a former director of the National Security Agency and the CIA, who said he had no knowledge of the incidents. Hacking into a surveillance database, he said, “is a form of that.”
Google’s crisis began in December 2009, when, several former government officials said, the firm discovered that Chinese hackers had penetrated its corporate networks through “spear phishing” — a technique in which an employee was effectively deceived into clicking a bogus link that downloads a malicious program. The hackers had been rooting around insider Google’s servers for at least a year.
Alarmed by the scope and audacity of the breach, the company went public with the news in January 2010, becoming the first U.S. firm to voluntarily disclose an intrusion that originated in China. In a blog post, Google chief legal officer David Drummond said hackers stole the source code that powers Google’s vaunted search engine and also targeted the e-mail accounts of activists critical of China’s human rights abuses.
As Google was responding to the breach, its technicians made another startling discovery: its database with years of information on surveillance orders had been hacked. The database included information on thousands of orders issued by judges around the country to law enforcement agents seeking to monitor suspects’ e-mails.
The most sensitive orders, however, came from a federal court that approves surveillance of foreign targets such as spies, diplomats, suspected terrorists and agents of other governments. Those orders, issued under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, are classified.
Google did not disclose that breach publicly, but soon after detecting it, the company alerted the FBI, former officials said. Bureau officials told FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, who briefed President Obama.
At one point, an FBI supervisory agent working on Chinese cyberespionage cases traveled to Google’s Mountain View, Calif., headquarters to conduct a national security investigation, the former officials said. The company, without any guarantees about the scope of the investigation, denied access.
The bureau undertook an extensive assessment to include determining whether individuals under surveillance had moved to other means of communication. Although the assessment showed no damage to national security because of the breach, Google took steps to shield sensitive data.
Michael M. DuBose, former chief of the Justice Department’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, declined to comment on either the Microsoft or Google cases. But, he said, in general such intrusions serve as “a wake-up call for the government that the overall security and effectiveness of lawful interception and undercover operations is dependent in large part on security standards in the private sector.
“Those,” he said, “clearly need strengthening.”
http://www.infowars.com/googles-plan-to-take-over-the-world/
Google’s Plan To Take Over The World
Google‘s big keynote at its I/O developers conference this week wore me out.
Not because it lasted a grueling three hours and fifty minutes, but because of what was announced. With every new product update, every new feature, every new virtual service, it became more and more clear that Google isn’t just a search company that makes loads of cash by showing you ads. It’s creeping into every aspect of our digital, physical, and private lives at an exponential rate.
I’m still trying to wrap my mind around it.
Google isn’t just the backbone of the Internet anymore. It’s rapidly becoming the backbone of your entire life, all thanks to data you’re voluntarily giving up to a private company based on your Web searches, photos, Gmail messages, and more.
After spending three days at I/O this week, it became more apparent than ever that unless millions (billions?) of people suddenly change their mind and start using alternative tech tools, or unless the government steps in waving the anti-trust banner, our lives, our history, and our personal wealth could be managed by one company –– Google.
It’s the most apparent in Google Now, a voice-powered personal assistant that launched on Android phones last year. At I/O, it became even more clear that Google no longer sees search as returning a list of 10 or 20 relevant links when you type in a query. Google Now is much more than that. It’s the embodiment of that geeky dream of a “Star Trek Computer,” an intelligent machine that understands natural language and real-world context to assist you before you even know you need assistance.
Google Now scans your email and knows when your Amazon package is arriving. It knows what sports scores to show you based on the teams you’ve searched for. It knows what stock prices to show you based on the companies you search for. It scans your calendar and reminds you when to leave to make your appointment on time. And all that data is delivered to you without you having to ask.
- A D V E R T I S E M E N T
Following I/O, Google Now is more prevalent than before. Google recently launched the app on iPhones and iPads, and it’s coming to the desktop soon if you use the Chrome Web browser. Next year, you’ll be wearing Google Now on your face if you buy Google Glass.
Then there are photos, arguably the most personal things you share online. Now, Google scans every single one you upload to Google+. It can learn what your family members look like and group photos of them into albums automatically. It can tell if your subjects are smiling. If they’re not smiling, it can stitch their faces in from other images where they are and create the perfect photo for you. It knows if you’re taking pictures of mountains or puppies or buildings or famous landmarks and group your photo albums together accordingly.
It’s creepy and magical at the same time.
Google Glass didn’t get any stage time during the I/O keynote, but it was still a significant part of the event. You couldn’t go anywhere –– the press room, the cafeteria, the restroom –– without someone’s computerized headgear staring back at you. It was oddly discomforting knowing that thousands of people had the ability to take a photo or video of you just by winking at their Glass.
It’s far too early to tell if Glass will take off when it’s ready for the general public, but if it does, then it’ll be just another example of how Google has reached into the physical space to take over everything we see and do.
I could go on and on, but this week I learned that Google has its hand in almost every aspect day-to-day life and its penetration is only accelerating.
Android is growing like crazy with 900 million activations to date, and it has the potential to connect billions of people to the Internet for the first time in the next few years. Google Maps has a new look, and it’s turned into a snappy way to find places to visit and get recommendations. Gmail is turning into a money transfer service. I can only imagine what Google co-founder Sergey Brin is working on at Google X, the company’s lab for futuristic products.
The question to ask now is, are we OK with this? Does the benefit of faster search, better transportation, and automated news updates outweigh giving up so much of our lives to a computer run by a private company that mines our data?
They’re issues we’d have to tackle gradually, but hopefully not before Google advances faster than we can adapt.
http://intellihub.com/2013/05/20/fbi-investigate-quabbin-reservoir-trespassing-by-chemical-engineers/
FBI Investigate Quabbin Reservoir Trespassing by Chemical Engineers
An FBI Investigation is underway into the May 14th, 2013 Quabbin Reservoir Trespassing by Foreign Chemical Engineer Graduates
WASHINGTON, DC – JANUARY 31: (L-R) FBI Director Robert Mueller, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and CIA Director David Petraeus appear before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Capitol Hill January 31, 2012 in Washington, DC. The committee met to hear testimony on the topic of ‘World Wide Threats.’
(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Early in the morning hours on Tuesday, May 14th, 2013, Massachusetts State Police discovered 7 individuals trespassing at the Quabbin Reservoir in Massachusetts. The Quabbin Reservoir supplies 40% of Massachusetts fresh drinking water and encompasses 39 square miles in size.
According to WCVBTV Channel 5 Local CBS, as described in the article 7 Caught Trespassing At Quabbin Reservoir; Patrols Stepped Up Across Stateposted on May 14, 2013 9:55 PM
BELCHERTOWN (CBS) – Shortly after midnight Tuesday, seven people were caught trespassing at the Quabbin Reservoir. State Police say the five men and two women are from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Singapore, and “cited their education and career interests” for being in the area. The men told police they were chemical engineers and recent college graduates.The Quabbin, in Belchertown, is one of the country’s largest man-made public water supplies. Boston’s drinking water comes from the Quabbin and the Wachusett Reservoirs. State Police say there were no warrants or advisories on any of the individuals and “there was no evidence that the seven were committing any crime beyond the trespassing.”All seven were allowed to leave and will be summonsed to court for trespassing. The FBI is investigating and routine checks of public water supplies have been increased following the incident. The seven individuals currently live in Amherst, Cambridge, Sunderland, Northampton and New York City. Police have not released their names because a court date has not been set.
Here are the videos, links and updates:
Published on May 15, 2013 — 126 views 05-20-2013 @ 9:35am
Police across the state of Massachusetts are increasing the number of routine checks of the state’s water supply facilities after a case of trespassing at Quabbin Reservoir.
Police across the state of Massachusetts are increasing the number of routine checks of the state’s water supply facilities after a case of trespassing at Quabbin Reservoir.
Published on May 16, 2013 — 130 views 05-20-2013 @ 10:00am
Police across the state of Massachusetts are increasing the number of routine checks of the state’s water supply facilities after a case of trespassing at Quabbin Reservoir.
Police across the state of Massachusetts are increasing the number of routine checks of the state’s water supply facilities after a case of trespassing at Quabbin Reservoir.
Related: MWRA: Quabbin Reservoir Water Safe
Update: No Connection To Criminal Groups
Source — Research
Well , we can bet a dollar / euro or pound to a donut - all the Elites will fight Bitcoin to the death... its death !
Bitcoin – The Tyranny Test
Via Paul Rosenberg of Free-Man's Perspective blog (via Jim Quinn's Burning Platform blog),
An increasing number of people have complained about governments and central banks in recent years, even using the word “tyranny” to describe them. They are, of course, called names in the establishment press:conspiracy theorists, mainly.
Calling someone a name, however, does not erase their argument (at least not among rational people) and both the governments and the big banks stand accused.
Up till now, however, these accusations were never accepted by the general public. The average guy really didn’t want to hear about the evils of government money. After all, that was the only thing he had ever used to buy food, clothes, gasoline, cars, and so on. He didn’t want to acknowledge the accusations because he feared what might happen to him without his usual money.
Now, however, we have a brand new currency (called Bitcoin) available to us: something radically different. This gives us a new way to directly address the subject of monetary tyranny, providing a clear test for the governments and money masters of the world:
If they are truly NOT tyrannical, they will leave this new currency alone.
If they ARE tyrannical, they will attack the new currency because it eats into their scam.
In other words, Bitcoin is a test for “the powers that be.” The way they deal with this new method of exchange will reveal their true nature.
If they ignore Bitcoin, they refute the charges of tyranny. If they attack it, they verify those charges.
After all, what honest reason could there be to attack an inherently peaceful tool for transferring value?
Prospective Reasons
Reasons to attack Bitcoin have recently appeared in the “public square.” Here are the three most popular ones, each followed with some analysis:
It can be used for money laundering.
Of course it can be used for money laundering — ANY currency can be used for money laundering. Currencies are neutral — that is their purpose! Currencies are valuable precisely because they can be exchanged for anything else — that’s why we use them!
Moreover, dollars and Euros and Pounds are used for money laundering every day. Consider the recent money laundering crimes of HSBC and Wachovia/Wells Fargo. These banks laundered hundreds of billions of dollars for violent drug cartels. And consider that this amount of laundered money is several hundred times the value of every Bitcoin in existence.
No one from either bank went to jail. Neither bank was shut down. Neither bank suffered more than a minor fine. So, how much of a concern can money laundering really be to governments and banks? Clearly not much.
But, since they accuse Bitcoin of being used for bad things, let’s be clear about the situation:
- Every mafioso uses government money.
- Every drug smuggler uses government money.
- Every terrorist uses government money.
- Every pornographer uses government money.
- Every criminal of every type uses government money.
They also use the telephone system and the mail and banks and a wide variety of government services. But government money is good and Bitcoin is bad?
The argument fails.
It could destabilize the current system.
A tiny, new currency is a threat to the long-established king of the hill? Comparing Bitcoin to dollars, Euros and Yen is like comparing an ant to a dinosaur. This is a threat?
Please understand also that no one is forcing anyone to use Bitcoin. If you don’t think it’s a great idea, you don’t have to use it. If its price movements (relative to dollars) bother you, you don’t have to use it. How is that destabilizing to the current system? It is entirely separate.
And what of the current system? It was falling apart on its own before the Bitcoin program was ever written. And I could go on at length on the insane levels of government debt, hundreds of trillions in derivatives, rehypothecation, and innocent people being forced to bail-out failed banks.
The current system has massive problems, but none of them can be blamed on Bitcoin.
This argument fails also.
Bitcoin provides no customer protection.
Well, no, it doesn’t. Bitcoin is a currency, not a legal system.
What is implied by this argument is that the government banking system does protect customers. That is an outright lie. People are ripped-off via the banking system every day. And more than that, consider what happened just a month ago in Cyprus: Thousands of innocent people were ripped-off BY the banking system — purposely — all at once and without recourse. This argument is, really, an insult to one’s intelligence.
And I should add something else: If Bitcoin is used properly, the crime of identity theft (a big problem with government money) vanishes – there is no identity available to be stolen.
So, again, the argument fails. Only those people who believe anything a government says will buy it.
In the End
In the end, it is said, we judge ourselves. Bitcoin has now put governments and banks in the position of judging themselves. They will write their own verdicts.
It should be interesting to watch.
No comments:
Post a Comment