Chinese Hackers Break Into Unclassified White House Network | Hacker News Reader

Chinese Hackers Break Into Unclassified White House Network

freebeacon.com

26 pointsgsibble8 comments

Holy Hyperbolic Link Bait! How does the article lead with:

"Hackers broke into one of the U.S. government’s most sensitive computer networks, breaching a system used by the White House Military Office for nuclear commands, according to defense and intelligence officials familiar with the incident."

And five or six sentences later quotes a White House Official:

"This was a spear phishing attack against an unclassified network."

Since when are unclassified networks the most sensitive networks?

EDIT: While reading the article I was questioning the lack of professional writing (how many times do you want to introduce and explain the WHMO) and credible reporting (Why you no linky to other "reports" and "disclosures" regarding the attack?). After slogging through the article again I decided to see who exactly "the free beacon" is. A lot of of my questions regarding the poor writing and lack of credible sources were answered on the "about us page." There is a reason why this article on cyberwar does not read like a piece by Markoff or Sanger and it is the same reason that you will not see George Will or Chris Wallace discussing this article next Sunday on the news shows. This has very little to do with journalism:

"The Washington Free Beacon, a project of the 501(c)4 Center for American Freedom, is a nonprofit online newspaper that began publication on February 7, 2012. Dedicated to uncovering the stories that the professional left hopes will never see the light of day,"

I do not wish to start a debate over the politics of big media. I am mentioning the background of this website so that you may put this "reporting" into a larger context.

> Hackers linked to China’s government broke into one of the U.S. government’s most sensitive computer networks

> U.S. officials familiar with reports of the White House hacking incident said it took place earlier this month and involved unidentified hackers, believed to have used computer servers in China

So even though their source is saying they are unidentified, the reporter is concluding Chinese government...

Do we honestly believe that Chinese wouldn't proxy their efforts? or even hack from different physical locations from different parts of the world?

Struggling to wrap my head around the nature of the issue. If the White House has nuclear football data in the same network that handles the president's communications, then we have major network segmentation problems. There's a lot more insecure traffic that's going to flow back and forth between the president's scheduler and outside parties.

Still, I bet that email traffic is going to tighten up a LOT at the White House after this.

"It is not clear how such a high-security network could be penetrated. Such classified computer systems are protected by multiple levels of security and are among the most “hardened” systems against digital attack."

half a page up...

"An Obama administration national security official said: “This was a spear phishing attack against an unclassified network.”"

Seems pretty clear to me. People are usually the weakest leak in security.

This story doesn't sound plausible on two fronts: 1. Would the "system used by the White House Military Office for nuclear commands" really be externally accessible - directly or indirectly? 2. I did a Google News search on this and didn't find any other sources. News scoops don't last that long on the internet.

>Hackers linked to China’s government

How they know that? they hacked them back?

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