The Muddy Waters of Country-Backed Hacking
We’ve grown somewhat numb to news of the hacking of sites that collect personal data; using these sites is often “at your own risk," and we can only hope our information will be secure in their databases. However, this week’s news of both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal being hacked was different. Not only are the actions believed to be directly sponsored by the Chinese military, it wasn’t our info the hackers wanted—it was that of the papers themselves.
This isn’t the first time the Times and the Wall Street Journal have been hacked, and even with the public accusations both papers made against China, the attempts haven’t stopped. Along with stern articles printed by each newspaper, Rupert Murdoch, owner of the Wall Street Journal, took to his own personal Twitter account, letting more than four-hundred thousand followers know that even after a complete “network overhaul,” the hacking continued.
How severe was the breach? The Times humbly admitted that through the installation of forty-five pieces of malware, the hackers
gained entry to any computer on The Times’s network…stole the corporate passwords for every Times employee and used those to gain access to the personal computers of 53 employees…
The Times was able to locate the source of the attack as
a specific strain associated with computer attacks originating in China. More evidence of the source, experts said, is that the attacks started from the same university computers used by the Chinese military to attack United States military contractors in the past.
China has denied any involvement in the security breach, and the country’s Ministry of National Defense has stated that the accusation is “unprofessional and baseless.”
Eric Schmidt, executive chairman at Google, has written a new book in which he refers to China as “the most sophisticated and prolific” hacker of foreign companies, according to a recent CNET article.
These recent hacking attempts by China, as well as those by Iran, are making the news today, but it wasn’t that long ago that US and Israeli hackers “under the secret orders of President Obama” made their own headlines with Stuxnet—a virus aimed at Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Individuals who are found guilty of hacking are often prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, while attempts carried out with the backing of entire nations go relatively unpunished. This is likely due to the fact that many of the “victims” are just as powerful as the culprits, and unfortunately, just as guilty.
