Hasta La Gadget!

China has been the source of many cyberattacks against US organizations, businesses and media companies, many of which revealed earlier this year the extent of the attacks they suffered. Some such companies include The New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal, just to name a few. In response, the White House has called for China’s government to put an end to its cyberattacks, and to instead act in accordance to “acceptable norms of behavior in cyberspace.”

The demand came from Tom Donilon, national security adviser to the president. He outlined three courses of actions the United States government would like the Chinese government to follow, which are as follows: public recognition of the issue, assurance that Chinese hackers will be targeted and dealt with proactively, and consent to being part of talks on forming worldwide cyberspace standards.

Said Donilon: “Increasingly, U.S. businesses are speaking out about their serious concerns about sophisticated, targeted theft of confidential business information and proprietary technologies through cyberintrusions emanating from China on an unprecedented scale. The international community cannot tolerate such activity from any country.”

Not surprisingly, China denied the claims, stating that they were fabricated to make the nation look bad. Yesterday, the nation called for global “rules and cooperation” in regards to hacking, claiming that it likewise has suffered cyberattacks, with its attackers being traced back to the United States. Said the nation’s foreign minister Yang Jiechi, “[The] international community is closely interconnected on the Internet, therefore cyberspace needs rules and cooperation, not war.”

[via New York Times]

US tells China it must put an end to cyberattacks is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

China has once again denied its involvement in a series of hacks that plagued various entities in the United States, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and several U.S. companies. The Chinese government believes that the allegations were based on groundless facts and that this is just some scheme to worsen China’s reputation.

The Chinese government has issued a call for international “rules and cooperation” on the recent hacking issues. China has stated that they have been the target of several internet hacks as well, and that it’s not just the United States who are the victims. They stated that by tracing the cyber attacks, they discovered that the hackers were located in the United States. This could just be a case of finger pointing, or the attacks may be a case of retaliation.

A United States security firm, Madiant, issued a 60+ page report that provides evidence that there is a link between the cyber attacks on U.S. businesses, the Chinese hacking groups, and also the Chinese government. The cyber attacks originated at the HQ for the People’s Liberation Army Unit 61398 in China. China has stated that those accusations were false and that the IP addresses could have been easily spoofed in order to plant the blame on them.

Yang Jiechi, China’s Foreign Minister, stated that the “international community is closely interconnected on the Internet, therefore cyberspace needs rules and cooperation, not war.” He says that he hopes the accusations against China would stop because they will “not be able to blacken the name of others nor whitewash themselves.” However, it’s hard to refute the report from Mandiant, that shows that around 141 companies had their data stolen by the People Liberation Army, and 115 of those companies were from the United States.

[via New York Times]

China calls for global “rules and cooperation” on hacking issues is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

When one of Britain’s biggest cyber criminals was jailed in 2011, officials thought they’d be safe from his internet attacks. But then he managed to sneak into a prison computer class and hack the jail’s network. More »

The Java zero-day exploit has been making the rounds lately, hitting both Facebook and Apple just recently. However, it doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon. A newly discovered zero-day vulnerability in the most recent versions of Java 6 and Java 7 has been discovered, and it allows attackers to install malicious software on vulnerable PCs, specifically a new “McRat” trojan.

Security firm FireEye has detected the vulnerability, and they have “observed successful exploitation” against browsers that are running Java 1.6 update 41 and Java 1.7 update 15. These are the two most recently released versions of Java 6 and Java 7. The vulnerability allows the install of a remote-access trojan called McRat.

However, the attack is only triggered when people with an infected version of the Java browser plugin visit a website that has been infested with the malicious code. Plus, FireEye says that the exploit “is not very reliable,” since it just simply tries to overwrite a large chunk of memory. In other words, hackers can succeed in downloading malicious code onto victims’ computers, but most of the time it fails to actually execute.

FireEye suggest disabling Java until a patch has been applied, or if you don’t use Java, you can simply uninstall the plugin altogether. Last month, Apple employees were targeted by a Java zero-day exploit, and while a handful of company computers were breached into, the company says no personal data was stolen. The same goes for Facebook, which experienced the exploit a few days before.

[via Information Week]

Java zero-day exploit strikes again is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

International diplomacy may feel like schoolyard antics, but the participants do have something a little heavier to throw at each other. After President Obama signed an executive order to improve national cyber security, the White House is now reportedly opening the box marked Trade and Diplomatic Sanctions, which it’ll lob at any country that’s found to be appropriating US trade secrets. The executive has published a report, outlining a dozen thefts from companies such as GM, Ford and DuPont, fingering China as being behind a majority of them. If the hacking persists, then James Lewis, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says the White House should deny visas or access to US banks to Chinese people and corporations — making us wistful for the courtroom dramas of yore.

Update: We’ve corrected the story to correctly attribute the comments made by James Lewis.

Filed under: Misc, Internet

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Via: WSJ

Source: White House (.PDF)