The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

Congressmen say Chinese hacked their PCs

Dissident locations, other sensitive data intercepted

Regcast training : Hyper-V 3.0, VM high availability and disaster recovery

Lawmakes are urging everyone on Capitol Hill to have their computers checked for malware after discovering that people working from inside China hacked into multiple congressional machines and accessed locations of Chinese dissidents and other sensitive data.

Virginia Representative Frank Wolf said four of his PCs were compromised, beginning in August 2006. New Jersey Representative Chris Smith, said two of his machines were hacked in December 2006 and March 2007. Both congressmen, who are long-time critics of China's record on human rights, said the PCs of other lawmakers had also been breached but declined to give names.

Following the attacks on Wolf's computers, a car with license plates belonging to Chinese officials went to the home of a dissident near Washington and photographed it. The congressman said FBI investigators who looked into the breach traced the attacks to machines located in China. He said he's known about the attacks for a long time but that he had been discouraged from discussing them by people in the US government he declined to identify.

"The problem has been that no one wants to talk about this issue," he said. "Every time I've started to do something I've been told 'You can't do this.' A lot of people have made it very, very difficult."

Wolf suggested members of the Senate have also been victims of computer intrusion. He called for better education for members of Congress about the dangers of cyber attacks and urged members to have their machines checked. He said he was introducing a resolution that would tighten security of House computers and information systems. In the Senate, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois asked the sergeant at arms to investigate whether Senate computers have been breached.

Smith said the attacks on his machines were "were very much an orchestrated effort." His office no longer stores the names of Chinese dissidents on computers, he said. ®

Cloud based data management

Life's a riot with Spy vs Spy

US Congressmen keeping info on "Chinese dissidents"?

Now *that* sounds like "pre-war behavior"! What's Chinese for "Playa Girón"?

1
0

@ Will Godfrey

Aren't you glad that you live outside of China and can make critical remarks without being blackbagged (yet)? Personally, I'm glad someone is being critical of China, especially since things like the Patriot Act in the US sure sound Chinese to me.

Mines the one with the sickle and anvil going up in flames on the back...

1
0

perception and double deception

Another excuse under the new "act" to wage a cyber war against these

persistent little -communist boogers.

They have been hard at us for a while ,and still are , but the odd "friendly fire "

appearing to come from the enemy adds cred again to mass the troops

and DOS them ..

Lets watch our backs anyways ...70% of the traffic from CH is true anyways

so what does a little help from the inside do for a cause .?

I feel for the persons responsible for the admins of those laptops etc.

0
0

More from The Register

 breaking news
Number of cops abusing Police National Computer access on the rise
Only a telegram from the Queen can get you off it
 breaking news
NSA whistleblower to tech firms, Obama: 'Grow a pair!'
Ed Snowden: Email tracking grabs 'IPs, raw data, content, headers, attachments, everything'
NSA: We COULD track you by your phone ... if we WANTED to
Honestly, too much work, can't be bothered
Google flings another £1m at online child sex abuse vid CRACKDOWN
See, see, we're trying, ad giant tells Daily Mail UK.gov
 breaking news
NSA PRISM-gate: Relax, GCHQ spooks 'keep us safe', says Cameron
Whatever they are up to, it's all above board, we're told
PRISM snitch claims NSA hacked Chinese targets since 2009
Snowden suddenly looks safer in Hong Kong after revelations
SCO vs. IBM battle resumes over ownership of Unix
Zombie lawsuit back and wants to suck the brains out of Linux
 breaking news
US chief spook: Look, we only want to spy on 6.66 BEELLLION of you
Americans assured they are not in the NSA's sights