China now a Clear and Present Danger

TLS Guy

TLS Guy

Seriously, I have no life.
I had a very disturbing phone call last Thursday evening. I was talking to the chief nursing officer of the Bemidji hospital in Norther Minnesota..
She got back late. On Wednesday she got home late about 7.30 PM and then got called back as an emergency about an hour later, and was there until the early hours of the morning. The Bemidji hospital is under the Sanford Health System out of Sioux Falls, SD. They were recently acquired by Intermountain Health out of Utah. The nursing supervisor told me that the whole health systems had IT had been seriously disrupted by and attack from China. There operations were seriously interrupted and they could not make contact with medical staff and other crucial services were interrupted. She told me that Microsoft were assisting. She told me that other health systems and other businesses had been seriously affected.

I go hold of my son David, who works extensively with Internet security. He knew nothing about it.

Subsequently he has sent me this article about the problem, from a highly reliable source, that I find very disturbing. Apparently 30,000 organizations in the US were seriously affected. The Microsoft Email system was the target of the attack, and through which entry was gained to spy on, and disrupt IT systems.

China in my view is now a rogue state. I and others, do not ascribe to the pandemic as being in anyway the sole cause of the severe disruption in semiconductor and other electronic component supply problems from China. As you will be aware from this forum supply of electronic devices, is rapidly becoming in shorter and shorter supply. Vehicle assembly lines in Europe and the US are slowing fast and in many cases halted. This is especially true in Europe.

The UK government is taking this seriously and studies and steps are under way to see how quickly these manufacturing processes can be commenced in the UK. This is now regarded as an urgent matter of national security.

The US needs to do the same. I think there must have been behind the scenes maneuvering to keep this serious and developing situation out of the public domain. I'm surprised how hard it was to find out what is really going on.

This brings me back to the Pandemic and China's involvement. The UK scientists say they were in no way given adequate access in China. So the WHO report is a whitewash, as I suspected. The fact is that there has been no credible link found to animal migration to humans, as a source. By now this should be obvious, if that had occurred. After all this time no animal reservoir has been found. So that leaves a lab accident or deliberate release of a created novel virus as the most likely source.

If you look at how things are developing, it is China's favor over time. So all potential causes of this pandemic are now on the table.

I'm certain our hobby and interests are and will be increasingly adversely affected by these events for a considerable period of time.
 
Irvrobinson

Irvrobinson

Audioholic Spartan
These attacks on critical IT systems from China and Russia have been going on for years, Mark. North Korea is also a considerable hacking threat. Nothing is new here. Microsoft Exchange Servers (on-premises email systems) have been the subject of a recent China hacking incident. There was the Solarwinds software attack on Microsoft too, which was Russia. Especially concerning are the ongoing internet-based attacks on public water and electrical power systems nationwide. Both China and Russia target nuclear plants. The most significant problem is that the various Presidents and Congress are unwilling to forcefully sanction countries that are sources of the hacking.
 
Last edited:
H

Hetfield

Audioholic Samurai
Conspiracy crap here we go again. Coronavirus is found, viruses are found in bats. They are a perfect carrier of a virus like this.
It wasn't made in a lab and deliberately released.

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk
 
lovinthehd

lovinthehd

Audioholic Jedi
Guess we'll have to increase our own hacking again to counter? No one's innocent here.
 
lovinthehd

lovinthehd

Audioholic Jedi
Do some searches for hacking by the US government, and show us what you come up with.
Why would it be public info? We do have such operations afaik, tho. We've employed them against some states and that's been in the news. Like saying we don't interfere in others' politics? LOL.
 
Irvrobinson

Irvrobinson

Audioholic Spartan
Why would it be public info? We do have such operations afaik, tho. We've employed them against some states and that's been in the news. Like saying we don't interfere in others' politics? LOL.
US cyber attacks would be public, because other countries are always looking to point out that the US does this too, to help justify their bad behavior. And the USG typically leaks what it does anyway, to get control of the narrative. For example, the 2019 cyber attack against Iran for attacking Saudi oil fields:


And then there's the famous Stuxnet attack on Iran centrifuges over a decade ago, but you can search around for a long time and you will see very few reports of cyber attacks by USG agencies.

But the evidence shows the US is mostly the country attacked, not the attacker. And we're so lame that we still have completely inadequate defenses. Why is critical infrastructure on the public internet? So dumb...
 
Last edited:
lovinthehd

lovinthehd

Audioholic Jedi
US cyber attacks would be public, because other countries are always looking to point out that the US does this too, to help justify their bad behavior. And the USG typically leaks what it does anyway, to get control of the narrative. For example, the 2019 cyber attack against Iran for attacking Saudi oil fields:


And then there's the famous Stuxnet attack on Iran centrifuges over a decade ago, but you can search around for a long time and you will see very few reports of cyber attacks by USG agencies.

But the evidence shows the US is mostly the country attacked, not the attacker. And we're so lame that we still have completely inadequate defenses. Why is critical infrastructure on the public internet? So dumb...
Why would it be public let alone easily traced back to the US?

ps We should have better security/defenses in place by now....
 
Irvrobinson

Irvrobinson

Audioholic Spartan
Why would it be public let alone easily traced back to the US?
How do you think we figure out where the attacks originate? Sophisticated IP path analysis and probing. As for why others would make it public, because many countries are interested in making the US look bad. Such pronouncements would aid their internal propaganda machines. Why do you think Russia is currently spreading around lies about US vaccines? To get US people not to take them? Doubtful. The Russian government is more likely trying to pump up the internal perception of their technological prowess with Sputnik V, to look good with Russian citizens. US cyber espionage is more about observation and tracking than attacking.
 
lovinthehd

lovinthehd

Audioholic Jedi
How do you think we figure out where the attacks originate? Sophisticated IP path analysis and probing. As for why others would make it public, because many countries are interested in making the US look bad. Such pronouncements would aid their internal propaganda machines. Why do you think Russia is currently spreading around lies about US vaccines? To get US people not to take them? Doubtful. The Russian government is more likely trying to pump up the internal perception of their technological prowess with Sputnik V, to look good with Russian citizens. US cyber espionage is more about observation and tracking than attacking.
How do you know, tho? I just can't believe we do nothing in that regard considering our history. I prefer to think we're not as active as some, but....we also have interests in making others look bad. We have propaganda machines of our own....
 
Irvrobinson

Irvrobinson

Audioholic Spartan
How do you know, tho? I just can't believe we do nothing in that regard considering our history. I prefer to think we're not as active as some, but....we also have interests in making others look bad. We have propaganda machines of our own....
I didn't say we do nothing. I'm just saying there is insufficient evidence that we are malware attackers on the level of China, Russia, and North Korea. And there is press around the world that would want the attention-grabbing story of a US-sourced attack. I'm just not believing it, because the evidence is so thin. Unless, of course, you have some you'd like to present.
 
lovinthehd

lovinthehd

Audioholic Jedi
I didn't say we do nothing. I'm just saying there is insufficient evidence that we are malware attackers on the level of China, Russia, and North Korea. And there is press around the world that would want the attention-grabbing story of a US-sourced attack. I'm just not believing it, because the evidence is so thin. Unless, of course, you have some you'd like to present.
Sort of why I said increase ours :) I just don't think such evidence is easily had by citizens (which is its own issue in a "democracy"). Hopefully we do it where we can't be directly blamed....if we do it, of course. It seems better defenses are in order in any case.
 
S

shadyJ

Speaker of the House
Staff member
China and Russia, among other states, are very much cybersecurity threats, but there isn't much we can do to address that since we have a serious internal threat in the Republican party. They gave Russia a pass for all kinds of attacks in the last four years, in fact, they encouraged Russian attacks where it pertained to elections. Read about Donald Trump's reactions when he was told about Russian-based attacks on US assets. It's going to be difficult to fight foreign cybersecurity threats when half of this country's political apparatus is rooting for those attacks to succeed.
 
D

Dude#1279435

Audioholic Spartan
Irv is right. Nothing new about this. China a few years ago surpassed terrorism in the Middle East as the biggest international threat per CIA.
 
S

shadyJ

Speaker of the House
Staff member
Irv is right. Nothing new about this. China a few years ago surpassed terrorism in the Middle East as the biggest international threat per CIA.
The CIA under the trump administration? That doesn't mean much since Trump tried to use anti-chinese xenophobia for self-promotion.
 
cpp

cpp

Audioholic Ninja
People hae got to be lost if they think the US does not hack into other countries. United States Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM)
 
Irvrobinson

Irvrobinson

Audioholic Spartan
People hae got to be lost if they think the US does not hack into other countries. United States Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM)
Yeah... but the Cyber Command is directed against military targets. Are you saying you believe the USG is targeting commercial and public infrastructure targets, which is the subject of this thread?
 
M

Mr._Clark

Audioholic Samurai
China and Russia, among other states, are very much cybersecurity threats, but there isn't much we can do to address that since we have a serious internal threat in the Republican party. . . . It's going to be difficult to fight foreign cybersecurity threats when half of this country's political apparatus is rooting for those attacks to succeed.
The Democrats control the house, the senate, and the White House, yet there still isn't much we can do?
 
Mikado463

Mikado463

Audioholic Spartan
The CIA under the trump administration? That doesn't mean much since Trump tried to use anti-chinese xenophobia for self-promotion.
so your saying you trust the Chinese ….. :rolleyes: lets just pray Biden doesn't get cozy with the bastards.
 

Latest posts

newsletter

  • RBHsound.com
  • BlueJeansCable.com
  • SVS Sound Subwoofers
  • Experience the Martin Logan Montis
Top