A massive data leak from a Chinese cybersecurity firm has offered a rare glimpse into the inner workings of Beijing-linked hackers. Analysts say the leak is a treasure-trove of intel into the day-to-day operations of China’s hacking programme, which the FBI says is the biggest of any country.
The DoD’s initiatives are coming way too late. Private industry is much more lucrative and without a pipeline like, say, Unit 8200, there’s no hook to pull people in. Thirty years ago when the NSA controlled the entire stack, math to hardware to code, it was a different story. In undergrad I regularly attended lectures by mathematicians who were finally able to talk about combinatorics problems that had been classified for 20+ yr. The genie is out of the bottle.
I’m in cybersecurity and voraciously consume everything related to it. I’d be really curious to know what you’re reading that says the US is capable of anything beyond social engineering.
Edit: really good example is the rampant infiltration of malware into critical infrastructure in the US, something that would have been unheard of until the late 90s/early 00s. Hell, the Silk Road was only taken down via social engineering and gross misconduct was completely missed.
I work in the government and specifically do cybersecurity audits regularly. The DoD isn’t going to publicly broadcast their cyber warfare capabilities. If you’ve been paying attention, you should know that the entire developed world has been engaged in cyber warfare for pretty much the last 15+ years. Unfortunately, a lot of what’s going on behind the scenes isn’t unclassified.
Anyway, I’m not going to go out of my way to try and convince random people on the Internet that the US isn’t some backwards ass country when it comes to cybersec. I don’t care what you believe. Just realize that there are numerous contracts worth billions of dollars altogether relating to various IT services, including cybersecurity, both offensive and defensive.