China is suspected of biggest hack of U.S. gov't ever

Compile a list of Americans for what purpose? To spam us with political propaganda?

I bet you they are looking for LOF haters. tinman and ZBoy better be worried.

btw OP, how do you turn "a database of Americans" into "a database of every American." Then the word "nearly every agency" into "every." Nice how you do that a lot around here. That's why many of us don't listen to you

 

The most likely application of this information:

1) training classification algorithms to determine based on work experience/security clearances which employees are likely to be covert agents/privy to sensitive information.

not the smallest deal.

*ASSUMING CHINA HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH THIS because big hacks = ~China or North Korea, even with plain-text passwords stored in Google Drive.

 

China just sucks.
Have been there a dozen times, never pleasant.
People squatting and ****ting in the road, roaches and a lack of hygiene, no manners, ungodly pollution and a population in complete denial.

The government? Thin skinned and paranoid.

Along with India, just about the worst place I have been... Even Northern Africa, Brazil and Egypt were far better.

 

Hey now, regarding the squatting:

http://jezebel.com/youve-been-pooping-all-wrong-1636521806

If they get anything right, it's the way they drop a deuce.

 

ive only been to Beijing and shang hai but everyone seemed sadder that's for d**n sure.

 

If you dislike it so much why go then? cause you take advantage of a fast developing economy? GTFO

its no China's fault that it is over populated (leading to pollution), no one in China wants to live in a polluted environment, but compared to starving (couple of decades ago), it is actually not that bad.

Squating? seriously that is a reason for the hate? (Personally i was not accustomed to the squating either when I first arrived here) but considering I am in China, respect the CULTURE. Everytime I am in America, I try my best to respect local American culture...I don't come back to my own country and complain about American way of life and how it sucks....

In terms of lack of hygiene...seriously which developing country with such a high population concentration have a better hygiene standard than China? Thailand? Vietnam? Malaysia? come on man....China have 1/5th of the world's population, concentrated on 7% of the world's land (I am excluding the deserts in the North West China), how clean do you want it to be?

Now in terms of personal hygiene or any other aspect of life...personally i feel a person's degree of 'civilized' (can't think of a better word, definitely a much better adjective out there) way of life is dependent on many factors, education, environment, upbringing...but all of this has to do with the financial background of a country and its citizens, how the F**K can you expect China to be on the same level as USA or Canada after nearly a century of internal/external wars (no matter if you support it or not)??

Whether you like it or not, the Chinese Government has done the best job over any other government in Chinese History. Is it perfect? Not nearly. Has it made mistakes? without a doubt (in fact some major ones like the cultural revolution etc). But which government in the world have not made mistakes? Give it time...it has only been in place for 60 or so years....it have made some real progress....

Sorry for the long post...but sick and tired of ignorant people who just assume everything about China is negative....

back on topic....I actually believe this story...as with any government (america included) I assume hacking into foreign databases, especially perceived 'threats' will be standard practice. I would assume the American government hacks just as often if not more into the Chinese databases.

 

I have gone twice for business but a majority of time for charities concerning water sustainability. Concerning buisness, the wonderful Chinese government went out of there way to invite us to "exploit" their economy.

The over population of China is China's fault. The lack of hygiene and roaches are disgusting, as is the ungodly level of pollution.

I mostly feel bad for the working class people of China. That still doesn't make China any less of a ****hole. The repressive government doesn't help the matter.

Does everything suck in China? Pretty close. You don't have to like it or even agree... But it sucks.

 

glad to see all the money thrown at the NSA is going to good use. /sarc

 

If all you got out of China was pollution, people squatting, and roaches you really missed a lot about China. It would be like someone going a couple of times to Texas and saying "everything sucks in Texas. It's hot, polluted and the traffic is terrible."

You're certainly free to your opinion but honestly you sound like the type of tourists who spend most of their trip griping about how the sanitation and hygiene isn't the same from where they're from.

 

On subject. Unfortunately I'm not surprised at all about this. The US and the PRC have been engaged for years in a cyber war. This is concerning but expect much more like this. Wouldn't be surprised if next week the PRC announces suspected US hackers breaking into their infrastructure.

 

I think it's safe to say though that they have more human labor worth exploiting then internally. Maybe that will change of course once the illegals catch-up.

While I'm sure there are some great hackers over there, I'd bet most hacks are due to terrible IT practices in upper management at those companies and government departments.

Regarding entrepreneurial ideas, is anyone outside of China going to use whatever Facebook equivalent or Google (Baidu) ripoff? Just the perception of them misusing your information would steer clear of anyone using those services (I mean our companies are bad enough).

Really the biggest concern would be any military hardware secrets. It's one thing for them to make iPhone clones. It's another to make F-22 clones.

 

As usual, it helps to read the article. I followed the links to the WaPo article:

So, it's not certain if any hackers "breached" the OPM, and it is not clear if the Chinese government is involved. However, the NYTimes actually first reported this story.

Can anyone actually find the government source of this story? All I've found is the NYT article stating "according to senior American officials".

 

That is We Chat. I've been invited to join by several people but have politely declined.

 

That's a standard term of art when government officials comment on the record without having a formal press conference.

China's been carrying out an industrial-strength hacking campaign against the US for years via their military and other sources acting at their behest - this is pretty well documented, most notably by the Times articles arising from their own breach that turned up Unit 61398.