China Hacked Five Energy Firms

Feb 12, 2011 by

Chinese President Hu Jintao meets with Obama to discuss, of all things, business.

The most recent hacking by the Chinese targeted five multinational energy firms according to McAfee. The Chinese targeted oil and natural gas corporations in a successful attempt to steal bidding plans and other sensitive information. The report would not identify the five companies that were hacked nor would it identify the seven other companies that were broken into. This is yet another invasion by the Chinese to steal proprietary information of Western corporations so that they can copy it and brand it as their own. These attacks come one year after more than 100 companies, including Google, were targeted by Chinese-based hackers and less than a week after NASDAQ was hacked.

“It … speaks to quite a sad state of our critical infrastructure security. These were not sophisticated attacks … yet they were very successful in achieving their goals,” said Dmitri Alperovitch, McAfee’s vice president for threat research.

This most recent attack, dubbed Night Dragon, abused a security hole in the oil companies public websites as well as infected emails sent to high ranking executives. The hackers had access to up to four years of information on gas field exploration and the industrial process which is considered extremely valuable.

According to Reuters the attack was linked back to China via a server leasing company in Shandong Province that hosted the malware, another term for malicious software, and to Beijing IP addresses that were active from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Beijing time (0100-0900 GMT). McAfee wouldn’t say if they could link it back to the Chinese government but they did turn their information over to the FBI.

“We are aware of these types of threats, but we can’t comment specifically about what’s in the Night Dragon report,” said FBI spokeswoman Jenny Shearer.

China only has one business practice and it’s to steal everything they can from the competition. China’s abusive practices are putting American and international corporations in between a rock and a hard place. Most companies move their business to China for the cheap labor and incentives offered by the Government but are always hacked, copied, or broken into. This has forced several companies to relocate out of China and into India where they respect copyright laws. While hundreds of others remain and jeopardize both themselves and our economy. In China’s desperate attempt to dominate the world they’re stealing years and years of safeguarded information that is key to that particular industry’s success. The only option for companies is to abandon China and their terroristic business practices.

“This is normal business practice in China. It’s not always state sponsored. And they do it to each other,” said Jim Lewis, a cyber expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.

The United States believes that the Chinese government was behind the attacks on Google and were orchestrated by several members of their ruling party. While the United States knows what the Chinese are up to they continue to make offers of bettering ties between the nations. Would you want to make friends with the guy who stole your car? I sure as hell wouldn’t. I’m not even sure why we, the United States, are even allowing business to take place in a Communist country. We will regret it once China copies all of our information and products so they can sell them at half the price. If Congress is to do anything they should offer huge tax breaks to companies who leave China to come back to the United States.

Source: Reuters

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