Hmmm…

This is an ‘interesting’ story from a lot of aspects…

China is suspected of hacking the electronics of a yacht owned by a Chinese billionaire targeted by Beijing.

Guo Wengui, who uses the English name Miles Kwok, said several incidents involving his 152-foot motor yacht, Lady May, appear to be part of a Chinese government effort to threaten and intimidate him.

Full article, HERE.

The more interesting part is, it took place in New York… That the China State Actors (CSA) feel safe enough, or bold enough to come here and do operations just shows how emboldened they’ve become…

PLA Unit 61398 is familiar to anyone who works in the intel community, they are the ‘senior’ hackers the Chinese use, and they are based out of a building off Datong Road in a public, mixed-use area of Pudong in Shanghai.

This isn’t far from a high school that teaches hacking, three classes minimum a day, with increasing capability in each class.

Much like the todo over Lenova computers, there is not a backdoor, yada, yada, just because they’re Chinese owned, racial profiling, yada, yada, until… There was proof good enough for the tech world and multiple security agencies to ban Lenovo anything from their secure networks (maybe too little, too late, based on some intrusions).

This incident is interesting for two other things, one is the remote use of a cell phone as a hacking tool, and the other is drones. I’m sure FBI Cyber is involved, and probably DHS Cyber too. The ship was built in Germany, by Feadship, which doesn’t cut any corners, and is one of the leaders in the ‘connected’ ship systems management world…

Another one, a much smaller component, is PA3 A3P250, a field programmable gate array (FPGA), basically a chip that is ‘dumb’, it does whatever it’s programmed to do. It’s manufactured by Microsemi, a southern California chip designer, but manufactured in China. For better or worse…

It’s also in a large number of secure systems, including weapons, missiles and airplanes. And IT has a significant backdoor/security issue, which could allow it to be reprogrammed remotely to do a number of ‘unauthorized’ operations. Article, HERE.

If anybody still believes the Chinese are ‘innocent’, I truly feel for you… Sigh…

Comments

Hmmm… — 10 Comments

  1. The Chinese are good hackers.

    Then again, so are we.

    The problem with the dynamic is that the Chinese have stuff to steal in the US and Europe. If we go after the Chinese, we just “steal our own stuff back” and it’s not as satisfying.

  2. Hey Old NFO;

    My *new* computer is a Lenova, I didn’t know the issues with the red chinese. But the problem is that most of the computers are made there.

  3. Ed- We’re playing checkers, they are playing chess… sigh

    LL- Agreed!

    Bob- Kinda true Bob, but most of the design and specs are done here, with ‘assembly’ and set up done there. Lenovo has total control of the entire process for their computers. BIG difference.

  4. This surprises anyone, how?

    Things were bad pre-1992, but after that election, China’s cyber intrusion went off the rails. I wonder, sometimes, while wearing my tinfoil hat, imagining being in my mom’s basement (she lives on the beaches in Florida, so no real basement,) if there is some connection between political factions, that particular election and the rapid increase in scope and power of ChiCom hacking.

    Just tinfoil hat thoughts…

    • Yeah, wonderful that all those missile secrets that Bill and Hillary sold the ChiComs is helping the Norks with their ballistic missile program that Bill and Barky supposedly saved us from.

      And… Thanks, Al Gore and Bill for destroying the CIA’s Human Intelligence sections. We still haven’t recovered from that fark-up.

    • I thought the Church Committee was the worst thing that happened to the CIA.
      Then Carter appointed his Academy classmate Stansfield Turner.
      Then Clinton appointed Deutch.
      “The behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies.” – Robert Conquest

    • By definition, traitors are criminals, so by those standards you can’t use any international CI’s.

      This was described to me by a riff’ed CIA Humint specialist.

      And yet they yell at Trump and call him ‘traitor?’

      I want my world back when only the USSR and it’s satellite evil empires wanted us dead…