China

Wow, this is a huge problem. With North Korea fueling rockets and missiles and aiming them at the United States, the State Department was offline and maggoty with hackers installing backdoor systems. To prevent further compromise, State Department Cyber Folks had to make a tough decision and disconnect protocols and networks from the Internet, disabling and crippling their own network.

People, this lack of security at the State Department has put lives at stake. I used to work at the State Department years ago during the Clinton Administration. At that time, I was appalled at how lax their internet security was. They had outdated firewalls, no Intrusion Detection systems, and refused to filter most internet traffic. The State Department was running under an open policy comparable to most universities! They would rather allow anything in and out than risk preventing a diplomat in the field from retrieving email.

Apparently, they havent changed much. Lax security has screwed efforts to keep us safe, thus screwing American efforts in the Pacific.

From the AP:

State Dept. Suffers Computer Break-Ins

The State Department is recovering from large-scale computer break-ins worldwide over the past several weeks that appeared to target its headquarters and offices dealing with China and North Korea, The Associated Press has learned.

Investigators believe hackers stole sensitive U.S. information and passwords and implanted backdoors in unclassified government computers to allow them to return at will, said U.S. officials familiar with the hacking. These people spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the widespread intrusions and the resulting investigation.

The break-ins and the State Department’s emergency response severely limited Internet access at many locations, including some headquarters offices in Washington, these officials said. Internet connections have been restored across nearly all the department since the break-ins were recognized in mid-June.

After the State Department break-ins, many employees were instructed to change their passwords. The department also temporarily disabled a technology known as secure sockets layer, used to transmit encrypted information over the Internet. Hackers can exploit weaknesses in this technology to break into computers, and they can use the same technology to transmit stolen information covertly off a victim’s network.

The part about the Secure Sockets Layer is SSL, used whenever people do online banking. This was an idiotic response to this problem, but because the State Department has never practiced good point to point security, and has not implemented a good VPN solution, this may have been the only option to block traffic going in and out of the Department in encrypted format.

This story also exposes some very real weaknesses in the way that the State runs its cyber security. Many American companies restrict access to their systems from European and Asian countries to prevent the worst of the hackers out there. But not the State. They are apparently wide open to everyone.

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There is a gushing story about how wonderful a few “hacktivists” at the University of Toronto are going to put together a program that will defeat all of the oppressive Internet censors on the planet. Yes, these rough, raga-muffins, who feel that information should be free, are out to subvert the will of the Chinese government who is censoring its people.

I smell a rat.

Hacktivists have never contributed to the greater good of the Internet. They often destroy things, expose secrets, both governmental and corporate, and gorge themselves on stolen and priated software. But somehow, this article says that these guys are the “good guys.”

From the Star here:

Revenge of the nerds
Three computer geeks at the U of T are renowned developers of anti-censorship software, including a program out this month that could allow people to outwit the world’s most repressive regimes

ANDREW CHUNG
STAFF REPORTER

Looking at them you might not guess it. But deep in a basement room on the University of Toronto campus, three unassuming computer hackers with messy hair and wrinkled T-shirts are working to tear down China’s “Great Firewall,” the most sophisticated Internet censorship system in the world.

They are self-confessed computer “geeks.” They don’t go to the gym much, or see much sunlight. They talk about “routers” and “nodes” and “secure socket layers” like they were saying, “Hello,” or “How are you?”

But the computer smarts of Ron Deibert, Nart Villeneuve, and Michael Hull, combined with their passion for politics and free expression, have led them to develop a highly anticipated software program that allows Internet users inside China and other countries, such as Iran, Saudi Arabia and Burma, to get around repressive censorship and not get caught.

Their innovation is called Psiphon, and it’s being launched at the end of this month.

What does Villeneuve, 31, who spawned the idea of Psiphon, think about challenging the likes of China? He puts down his Che Guevara mug and thinks for a moment. He shrugs his shoulders and smirks: “It just seems like the right thing to do.”

While working at a print shop, he started reading Karl Marx and Noam Chomsky, and when his roommate got a computer, he started roaming around hacker chat rooms. He found out how to extend the hours of their dial-up Internet for free.

He became a fervent anti-globalization activist, and got his first taste of tear gas in 1999 at the Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization. He started writing about the growing world of hacktivism.

While it won’t be a silver bullet, Qiang says, Psiphon will be a key tool for the relatively small but highly influential group of outspoken journalists, bloggers and activists inside China who dare to access information from the outside in the hope of creating a more open society.

The program effectively turns anyone’s personal computer into a proxy server. Once the software is installed on a computer in, say, Canada, that person creates a contact list of trusted friends or family members in censored countries and sends his or her IP address to them. No advertising needed.

But Psiphon doesn’t stop there. Unlike most Internet traffic, Psiphon data is encrypted and shoots around the world on a network reserved for secure financial transactions, so a censor cannot see what the person is accessing. And a censor wouldn’t be able to tell a Psiphon request from a MasterCard purchase.

“We’re making the Internet run the way it’s supposed to,” says Villeneuve with his trademark little-boy smile. “Because people have broken it.”

Notice this is not freedom for all Chinese citizens? Just the elite, ararchists and activists. If this worked so well, why not bring it to everyone?

These are admitted criminals. And somehow, they have tapped into the protected financial network of a major credit card company, and they are going to use a P2P proxy network to channel traffic over that protected network?

Sorry, but I think this is a smokescreen so Internet Anarchists can tap a protected financial network and try to get away with it. I would believe that it is more likely that they will spread a trojan horse program designed to take down credit card companies by flooding that network with bogus packets. These guys don’t give a damn about the Chinese citizens, only their own delusions of grandeur in finding ways to use the Internet to bring down capitalism.

I have more comments on this over at Hot Air.

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