US Treasury says Chinese hackers stole documents in 'major incident'
reuters.com
reuters.com
The reality is that the follow up to this information exposure is never connected to the outcome. How many government agents have been compromised using the OPM hack data? nobody knows. How many politicians/corporations intimidated via blackmail?
How have these hacks changed the outcome of world events?
Besides, even if they weren't, I can be worried that I broke my leg and that my house is on fire.
Why fight that battle when we can't even secure devices with sensitive data?
The argument sounds like a non sequitur: because we cannot defend against all threats, we should not defend against any threat.
We can have different priorities for what is more impactful, easier to secure, and less restricting to fundamental freedoms without resorting to black and white thinking.
Cybersecurity is failing across the board causing damage worth 1000x of what it would cost to secure these systems.
Hostile powers will exploit any vulnerability they can find. In democracies, ordinary citizens are a target. In Romania an election was annulled, and TikTok specifically named in the investigation: https://apnews.com/article/romania-election-president-george...
Therefore I think we should not underestimate this threat. I admit that doing this in a way that preserves fundamental freedoms is not easy, and I don't claim to have the answer. Consider freedom of movement: few people seriously deny the need for passport checks on international borders.
That's it. It isn't regulation of speech, it's regulation of commerce, which is entirely within the rights of the US Congress to regulate.
Allowing it to happen with mere protests of concern is allowing it to happen.
I get not wanting to escalate, but lack of response only invites greater escalation. The cost of stopping this only increases with each round of attacks.
You also have to consider the asymmetric nature of this information. It's quite plausible that the US has its "cyber-fangs" embedded in key parts of PRC infrastructure, but how forthcoming do you think the PRC would be about that?
We could start with, every such attack and another major Chinese conglomerate is banned from US business. Coordinate with EU also to increase effects.
>>Which targets? I'm not an expert in that field, but I'm sure there are many who could devise an appropriate target list. The targets you suggest are not bad, I'd certainly prioritize equipment and avoiding any human casualties, so maybe going after their power feeds and backpu to their research and data centers would be a start...
The key is a rapid response that they feel, hard.
ByteDance owns TikTok, part of Reddit, and many games. Also, the CCP runs almost the entire manufacturing sector. Not just electronics, but ships.
The Xiaomi SU7 is .1 revs away from Tesla & Porsche.
The choice to sell ourselves to the CCP, for short term profit, was made decades ago by the consulting class.
The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them
My last hope was that the corruption of the CCP was worse than the corruption of the USA. Given the latest election, I am not so sure about that anymore.
Has your employer contributed to POTUS's inauguration, if not, please ask them to do so or else you might be unemployed! This is the CCP-level corruption bullshit. WTF.
Too true, sadly. And that quote is spot-on.
The thing is, there is no one better at playing catch-up than the USA; e.g., in 1939 just before WWII, the US had a total of 39 tanks in it's arsenal.
The big question is, whether the incoming administration, which looks in every way like it is already owned by the authoritarian powers and aspires to join them, will fight them, or if we'll be another 4 years down before anything happens. The incoming admin is already fighting to keep TikTok in the US. Insane.
Great confirmation that this is important. Let the downvotes begin.
— “You probe with bayonets: if you find mush, you push. If you find steel, you withdraw”
They do this relentlessly until they face consequences too costly to continue. Negotiations and agreements are simply, and accurately seen as "I won, I can continue making bigger offenses, and the opponent will do nothing (they won't violate the agreement while I do)" .
I mentioned sanctions first because they can often be more effective than kinetic and less escalatory. That does not mean they should be off the table, particularly kinetic responses with plausible deniability.
But no, this is not a political issue. A political issue would be dumping goods onto the market at sub-production-cost or undercutting us on a deal with an ally. This is a violation of territory just as if they'd broken the locks on the buildings to come in and sit down at the keyboards.
Yes, like hiring sysadmins and not doing "checklist security". But, i guess, when Cisco has a backdoor in every product, the fight is lost.
Reminiscent of the SolarWinds compromise.
BeyondTrust has a remote support product that gives support teams access to users desktops. It’s both SaaS and on-prem. BeyondTrust were hacked and a vuln was found in the remote access product.
Anyone using the products was impacted. Just happens to include Treasury.
The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, the second best time is now.