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Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Cyber Spies

30 years ago a piece like this would have been marked science fiction, today it is a reality. Computer spies hacking into some of the costliest programs we have to date.

From the Wall Street Journal "Computer Spies Breach Fighter-Jet Project."

Computer spies have broken into the Pentagon's $300 billion Joint Strike Fighter project -- the Defense Department's costliest weapons program ever -- according to current and former government officials familiar with the attacks.

Similar incidents have also breached the Air Force's air-traffic-control system in recent months, these people say. In the case of the fighter-jet program, the intruders were able to copy and siphon off several terabytes of data related to design and electronics systems, officials say, potentially making it easier to defend against the craft.


The piece goes on to tell us that over the last six months, attacks like these are on the rise, or our awareness of them is. The attacks "appear" to have originated in China but officials cannot be positive because of how easy it is to mask identities of the origin of attack is.

China, of course, denies it:

The Chinese Embassy said in a statement that China "opposes and forbids all forms of cyber crimes." It called the Pentagon's report "a product of the Cold War mentality" and said the allegations of cyber espionage are "intentionally fabricated to fan up China threat sensations."


Read the rest
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