China's intelligence services have hacked the biggest providers of software services to Australia's companies, including SAP and IBM, in an extraordinary penetration that has compromised the data of hundreds of businesses. The global companies, known as managed service providers (MSPs), are trusted by other firms to store, process, and protect commercial data, helping run every aspect of Australian businesses, from human resources to accounts management. Officials in Canberra say the Chinese Ministry of State Security hackers had broken into their databases, enabling them to get what looks like legitimate access to their systems. "These MSPs have thousands of clients," a national security official told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. "This is potentially the biggest hack the West has ever seen. There is still a lot we don't know about the scale off the compromise because of the sophistication of the hack. But if you are a Western MSP you are likely to be caught up." The news comes as US prosecutors overnight named and charged two hackers, Zhu Hua and Zhang Shilong, who they say are associated with the Chinese Ministry of State Security's group known as APT10. They are charged over the alleged industrial-scale theft of intellectual property and personal data from businesses and government agencies to secure competitive advantages for China. FBI director Christopher Wray said China had committed brazen, persistent theft and needed to be held accountable. "No country poses a broader, more severe, and long-term threat to our nation's economy and cyber infrastructure than China," Mr Wray said. "China's goal, simply put, is to replace the US as the world's leading superpower – and they're using illegal methods to get there." The indictments were immediately welcomed by the Australian government, which called on China to stop seeking a competitive advantage by stealing trade secrets and confidential business information from other nations. National Cyber Security Adviser Alastair MacGibbon said: "This is audacious, it is huge, and it impacts potentially thousands of businesses globally. We know there are victims in Australia." Mr MacGibbon said the theft had disadvantaged Australian businesses and their staff. "And that essentially takes food from the people of Australia," Mr MacGibbon told the ABC. "It helps them compete in a way that we can't." The decision by the federal government to effectively name and shame Beijing over the industrial espionage marks a major departure from the usual practice of not attributing hacking behaviour and reflects the intense frustration of Canberra at China's persistent efforts to steal commercial secrets. "China is the real concern in the cyber area, and the West is now calling them out," the Australian official told The Age and the Herald. "They will want to continue stealing. We need to make it harder for them." Hundreds of Australian companies will most likely contact their managed service providers on Friday to check if their data and that of Australians have been breached. The providers have been notified by intelligence services of the hack. According to the official, who cannot be named because of their position, some have resisted telling their own clients about the problem. Among the dozens of hacking victims named at an overnight press conference in Washington D.C. were major banking, healthcare, telecommunications, mining and manufacturing companies. The US space agency NASA was also targeted as were the US Navy and Department of Energy. The theft of intellectual property has formed a key part of US President Donald Trump's trade war with China. US Deputy Attorney-General Rod Rosenstein said the Chinese government had violated a 2015 commitment to stop stealing trade secrets and other confidential information. "It is unacceptable that we continue to uncover cybercrime committed by China against other nations," Mr Rosenstein said. "We want China to cease illegal cyber activities and honour its commitment to the international community, but the evidence suggests that China may not intend to live up to its promises." He added: "America and many allies know what China is doing. We know why they are doing it. And in some cases, we even know which individual people are doing it in association with the Chinese government." The alleged hackers named in the US, Zhu Hua and Zhang Shilong, will not face charges unless they travel, or are extradited to, the US. The outing of the cyber hacking campaign raises questions about the failure of certain IT service providers to safeguard their systems against cyber intrusion. Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne and Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton joined the international outcry. "Today, the Australian government joins other international partners in expressing serious concern about a global campaign of cyber-enabled commercial intellectual property theft by a group known as APT10, acting on behalf of the Chinese Ministry of State Security," they said in a statement. "Australia calls on all countries – including China – to uphold commitments to refrain from cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property, trade secrets and confidential business information with the intent of obtaining a competitive advantage." The comments come after recent revelations in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald about how China's peak security agency has directed a surge in cyber attacks on Australian companies over the past year, breaching an agreement struck between Premier Li Keqiang and former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull not to steal each other's commercial secrets. The investigation, with The Australian Financial Review and Nine, recently revealed that China's Ministry of State Security was responsible for what is known in cyber circles as "Operation Cloud Hopper", a wave of attacks detected by Australia and its partners in the Five Eyes intelligence sharing alliance – the US, Canada, Britain and New Zealand. Geoffrey Berman, a US attorney from the Southern District of New York, said the hackers had obtained the personal information of 100,000 US Navy personnel. He said the scale of the hacking was "shocking and outrageous". https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-...r-industrial-scale-theft-20181221-p50nl0.html
I have said it before, and will keep saying it...The Chinese have done nothing but steal and copy since they discovered gunpowder, because they have lost their creativity. They simply leech off of the success of others' creativity now. And they will do so until...Well...Who knows when they will change.
Sorry, maybe you didn't study history or just focusing on the European history too much. China history is very ancient. It is much much longer than the European history. Many historians called ancient China the cradle of civilization. There is a reason for it. Agriculture, animal husbandry and pottery started in China 22,000 years ago. Ancient Chinese learned how to domesticate and raise dogs, chickens, pigs and cows for meat, making kitchenware like glasses/pans/water and grain pots for storage and raising grain crops like rice, millet and wheat. Ancient Chinese were very adventuresome. They migrated as far as South Americas during the Ice Age. Farming and pottery didn't spread to other civilizations until 10,000 years ago from China. I think Sumerian people were Chinese migrated from China because they had water buffalo, rice farming and pictographs text. Just to mention a few. Musical instruments, baked pastry and alcohol wine beverage first appeared in China 9,000 years ago. Iron-making, machinery, rocketry, explosives, chemistry, flight, math and many others like silk making/wall/castle building started in China 3,000 to 5,000 thousand years ago. Chinese also learned how to harness the power of steam, wind and water couple thousand years ago. They had windmill, watermill and steam engines. The sport game of golf and soccer invented in China couple thousand years ago. These founded the foundation of Western Civilization. You might think the West started all these. But China history of this is much much longer and technologies have a way to spread to other cultures slowly through diffusion . Why don't you Check out what Leonardo da Vinci studying in the Age of the Renaissance? Or where Albert Einstein got all the inspiration from before he got interested in physics?
Huh?????????????? Should a country/society not use advances in technology? Using your logic, the US should give up its technology industry to the British since it was Alan Turing that invented computers. You seem to have a thing with calling out China recently. I think this is the 5th post in 2 week I've seen you do this. Market got you down?
What has this got anything to do with Chinese hacking to steal corporate and technology secrets right now? We can't all live in the past, can we?
Perhaps there will be a groundswell of people who into the future will begin to quietly boycott Chinese products. I'm quite an avid online buyer, buy everything from cameras, drones, electronics, tablets all previously from China. A week or so ago I wanted to buy a bluetooth transmitter. After doing some research I came up with the idea of finding something of better quality than the usual run of the mill shit I buy from China which inevitabily comes with an unreadable english manual and lasts a few months before it turns buggy. So I went looking for a Japanese product which I bought. I mentioned to my wife, "am gonna stop buying Chinese shit from now on".
To Hoffman and tsssnecki, that is the problem, which is what I am on about...The "Ancient" Chinese. They had all the brainpan in the world thousand of years ago...Surely they have it now? So why do they resort to stealing everything now to get ahead, and have toxic chemicals like lead in so much of the crap they export? Don't they give a damn for human health? I guess with over a billion people, they can afford to lose a few 10s of million to their sloppy standards of health and welfare and still claim power by numbers. I'll always have a beef with them, yes sir.
Unlike Hoffman, I couldn't care less what the "Ancient" Chinese did. Or Greek, or Romans or insert barbarian tribe. You keep mentioned they steal,and they do ok next. What's the line between stealing/espionage and observing/copying? If you see me wash my hands after taking a shit, and you think it's a good idea to be hygienic and do the same, are you stealing/copying my idea? Obviously there's a difference between stealing and just copying, which is what I'm pointing out. But you conveniently failed to address that point which I'm hammering on. Instead you keep spouting some nonsense about stealing everything. But hey, go ahead and believe what you want. Dunning Kruger is your name right?
Did you miss the memo? https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/20/18150275/chinese-hackers-stealing-data-nasa-ibm-charged They copy, and they steal. That is not using their brainpan to come up with something on their own, that they can call their own. And by the way, the more clearer-minded thinker will wash their hands both BEFORE and after using the bathroom. After all, why would you wash your hands only after touching your "junk"? Where have your hands been before you touched those areas? People, please wash your hands both BEFORE and after using the restroom. Thx. This has been an ONPSA.