Almost every major U.S company might have been hacked by hackers backed by Chinese government, a former White House cyber security advisor Richard Clarke revealed. The reason he gave to Smithsonian Magazine is hard to hear but it’s the truth as he flatly says that, “The U.S. government is involved in espionage against other governments,” . He might be right as he served under three presidents as counterterrorism czar and he won’t be forgotten soon enough after all, he is the only one who warned Bush Administration officials in July 2001, 10 weeks before 9/11 that “something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it’s going to happen soon.”
Clarke was making a point that U.S was now a target of cyber terrorists and was extremely defenseless. Now the country is facing a serious back firing from other countries as a result of a series of offensive actions done by U.S over other countries. But, he mentioned that U.S was in most critical condition as “There’s a big difference, however, between the kind of cyberespionage the United States government does and China. The U.S. government doesn’t hack its way into Airbus and give Airbus the secrets to Boeing [many believe that Chinese hackers gave Boeing secrets to Airbus]. We don’t hack our way into a Chinese computer company like Huawei and provide the secrets of Huawei technology to their American competitor Cisco. [He believes Microsoft, too, was a victim of a Chinese cyber con game.] We don’t do that.”
And this is exactly how billions of dollars worth data’s from American companies are stolen by Chinese government backed hackers and handed over to their local companies. I mean they were turning piles of cash spend by U.S companies on R&D against those very own companies by stealing those data’s and using them to manufacture the products at almost zero R&D spend. Now, you’ve been told one of the reasons why Chinese products costs very much lower than American products with even more advanced features.
Clark was so open to mention that a lot of offensive cyber attacks were made by U.S government under the guidance of president itself and those were absolutely legal “covert action”. “That’s a legal issue. In U.S. law, it’s a covert action when the president says it’s a covert action. I think if you’re on the receiving end of the covert action, it’s an act of war.” He was absolutely right and it is why the other countries after being victim are now trying to enjoy their fair share of war by attacking the U.S. We have also seen some successful attacks over FBI, U.S Department of Justice (DOJ) and other U.S government owned sites by Anonymous, a loosely organized hactivist group.
It makes complete sense to me that when a group of loosely organized hactivists can do that, why not a highly equipped, well trained government aided group of hackers can do that. Turn back a while and remember the hacking happened over the U.S chamber of commerce by Chinese hackers, almost wandered around the victims server for a year and more without even letting the U.S cyber security knowing of it.
But, what’s he doing now? I mean Clark, he was Running a a cybersecurity consultancy called Good Harbor in Arlington, Virginia. Come on, don’t ask me “why don’t he summing up such theories to gain popularity and to have a wealthy business by tuning the heat on?”. NO! from my point of view he wasn’t summing up anything and the reason is obviously he sounds logical and reasonable. Clark also thinks that U.S government is again and again making it hard on cyber space for itself in the name of “covert action”, which really is an undeclared war over cyber space on other countries. Lets consider and Clark doubts that Stuxnet might be a product of American programmers, a really digital ghost crafted by great minds and is now out all over the world. It’s available for anyone to play with it, from malicious hacker to Chinese government.
If you never heard of Stuxnet before, it is one of a complex and most dangerous virus which in 2010, penetrated into a uranium enrichment plant, seized control of its PLC (programmable logic controller), and almost destroyed its centrifuging gear (to an ordinary people, Stuxnet was half way though collapsing an atomic plant). But it was not really a threat to the home computers that we people use on daily basis but was hugely spread all over the world, so now most of us got a chance to play with or study the Stuxnet more deeply. Already news popped out of here and there mentioning hackers designing more vulnerable viruses targeting U.S infrastructure.
The other example that Clark puts forward is so movable, that consider a F-35 manufacturer for U.S government gets hacked and some government gets the whole details about F-35. Isn’t that horrible. That is what Clack is exactly emphasizing about and warning the U.S government to improve their cyber security on more defensive side than offensive side.
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