Titan Rain
Posted: Mon Sep 05, 2005 8:17 am
The Sept. 05 issue of Time Magazine has a interesting article on how the Chi-coms are doing a serious hack job on our nations security apparatus. The Chi-com hackers are given the code name "Titan Rain". Hu hum, yawn you say? Well here's the interesting part. Remember the pre 9/11 wall erected by one Jamie Gorelik that kept various agencies from communicating with one another? You do? Good, because here's another one.
We are all under the impression that the Homeland Security Dept. was formed to remove interagency barricades where national security issues are at stake.
So lets see how well this is working.
One Shawn Carpenter who worked (notice the past tense?) for Sandia National Labs, was on his own time tracking down network break-ins of various govt. networks. Initially he was working with Army cyber intelligence. Shawn finally tracked down the hackers and found that the attacks emminated from just three routers all of which are located in the Chinese province of Guangdong. You'll have to read the article to fully appreciate the magnitude and potential damage the hackers are doing. Anyway, kudos to Mr. Carpenter...or so you would think.
So here comes a new "Wall". Seems federal law prohibits the military intelligence officers from working with civilians such as Mr. Carpenter.
The Army passes Carpenter over to the FBI where he wins warm praise from the G-men for the work he is doing. Cool huh? Then his employers at Sandia found out what Carpenter was doing....and encouraged him to keep working at it, gave him a private office to use...all in the name of keeping our country safe. That is probablty what you or I'd do, except...ding ding ding! Wrong answer. Sandia fired him and stripped him of his security clearance. Seems it is illegal for Americans to hack into a foreign countries computors. Ah ah ahh...don't be too quick to condemn, Carpenter was doing this with full knowledge and encouragement by both the Army and the FBI. Now Carpenter is falling down the rabbit hole as his "buddies" over at the FBI start claiming they were really stringing Carpenter along as the were really investigating him. Sound familiar?
As to Carpenters's employer Sandia, a Sandia memo dated March 2003 stated that he (Carpenter ) and his colleagues should think like "world class hackers" (Carpenters job was to analyze network security) and to quote, "retrieve tools that other attackers used against Sandia". So Carpenter did what he was instructed to do, showed a little ingenuity and was quite successful (to the point he left a bugging code on the primary routers software that alerted him via email to a Yahoo account every time the Chi-com gang of hackers made a move. In two weeks 23,000 message appeared in the account). Too bad the "Wall" is still standing tall and all the Humpty Dumpty's that try to clamber over it wind up taking the fall.
We are all under the impression that the Homeland Security Dept. was formed to remove interagency barricades where national security issues are at stake.
So lets see how well this is working.
One Shawn Carpenter who worked (notice the past tense?) for Sandia National Labs, was on his own time tracking down network break-ins of various govt. networks. Initially he was working with Army cyber intelligence. Shawn finally tracked down the hackers and found that the attacks emminated from just three routers all of which are located in the Chinese province of Guangdong. You'll have to read the article to fully appreciate the magnitude and potential damage the hackers are doing. Anyway, kudos to Mr. Carpenter...or so you would think.
So here comes a new "Wall". Seems federal law prohibits the military intelligence officers from working with civilians such as Mr. Carpenter.
The Army passes Carpenter over to the FBI where he wins warm praise from the G-men for the work he is doing. Cool huh? Then his employers at Sandia found out what Carpenter was doing....and encouraged him to keep working at it, gave him a private office to use...all in the name of keeping our country safe. That is probablty what you or I'd do, except...ding ding ding! Wrong answer. Sandia fired him and stripped him of his security clearance. Seems it is illegal for Americans to hack into a foreign countries computors. Ah ah ahh...don't be too quick to condemn, Carpenter was doing this with full knowledge and encouragement by both the Army and the FBI. Now Carpenter is falling down the rabbit hole as his "buddies" over at the FBI start claiming they were really stringing Carpenter along as the were really investigating him. Sound familiar?
As to Carpenters's employer Sandia, a Sandia memo dated March 2003 stated that he (Carpenter ) and his colleagues should think like "world class hackers" (Carpenters job was to analyze network security) and to quote, "retrieve tools that other attackers used against Sandia". So Carpenter did what he was instructed to do, showed a little ingenuity and was quite successful (to the point he left a bugging code on the primary routers software that alerted him via email to a Yahoo account every time the Chi-com gang of hackers made a move. In two weeks 23,000 message appeared in the account). Too bad the "Wall" is still standing tall and all the Humpty Dumpty's that try to clamber over it wind up taking the fall.
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