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British Parliament Hacked
John Stith
Staff Writer
2006-01-20
 Insider Reports RSS Feed
Reports out of the United States in recent months said the U.S. military was assaulted by hackers working out of China. SANS suggested this was done with Chinese military support. Over Christmas break, hackers attacked Parliament in London and sensitive information was believed to have been accessed, once again by China.
Security experts believe the attacks came from southern China in the Guangdong province. This is the same area hacks to the U.S. military computer systems came from a few months ago.
The Guardian quoted insiders saying, "These were not normal hackers. The degree of sophistication was extremely high. They were very clever programmers."
While the British Government had no statement yet, warnings have been floating around for years about the possibility of assaults on the cyber systems of the U.K. The same Guardian article talked to Commodore Patrick Tyrrell, the U.K.'s first director of information warfare, and he put out warnings a decade ago.
"This could certainly be seen as a provocative act. Up until now, governments have not set much store by information," Commodore Tyrrell, now managing director of the computer company Vale Atlantic told the Guardian. "The government has to take seriously the way [this kind of attack] is developing."
Let's put some facts together now. The "Titan Rain" cyber assault to the U.S. military came from China. The assault was narrowed down to three routers and 20 workstations. That's fairly precise stuff. Alan Paller, director of the SANS Institute, said the attacks came from China and that the Chinese government had a hand in it.
In December, Paller suggested the attacks had been traced to Guangdong and the techniques in play suggest precision that only comes from the military. Without getting overly acusatory, it would seem China has a vested interest in what the U.S. and the U.K. have in the hidden away computer systems dealing national secrets.
So what happens now? Paller works for a government organization and levied these charges. The British Government hasn't charged China directly, but conversations certainly allude to it. Let's say they do charge people in China with the assault. Do those folks work with the Chinese government? Is Guangdong the home of an actual military base in China?
Let's say we find out China is behind all this stuff. We've traced it back to Chinese government computers. We accuse them on the international stage. Then things really heat up. The rhetoric is flying in all directions like manure from flying cows. Do we go to war? How far will we go?
Maybe the better answer would be to simply improve our nation's and the U.K.'s cyber-networks. It may take some time and money to get it done but it beats the alternative. As technology progresses, the problem will only get worse as well. The governments need quality equipment with quality people. And besides, I hear there some hackers in Spain needing a job.
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About the Author:
John is a staff writer for SecurityProNews covering cyber security.
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