Current and Future White House v China

To continue my "v China" series of blog posts, I note the following:

Chinese hack into White House network:

Chinese hackers have penetrated the White House computer network on multiple occasions, and obtained e-mails between government officials, a senior US official told the Financial Times.

On each occasion, the cyber attackers accessed the White House computer system for brief periods, allowing them enough time to steal information before US computer experts patched the system.

US government cyber intelligence experts suspect the attacks were sponsored by the Chinese government because of their targeted nature. But they concede that it is extremely difficult to trace the exact source of an attack beyond a server in a particular country.

”We are getting very targeted Chinese attacks so it stretches credulity that these are not directed by government-related organisations,” said the official.

The official said the Chinese cyber attacks had the hallmarks of the “grain of sands” approach taken by Chinese intelligence, which involves obtaining and pouring through lots of - often low-level - information to find a few nuggets.

Some US defence companies have privately warned about attacks on their systems, which they believe are attempts to learn about future weapons systems.

The National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force [apparently an FBI-led group], a new unit established in 2007 to tackle cyber security, detected the attacks on the White House. But the official stressed that the hackers had only accessed the unclassified computer network, not the more secure classified network.

So that's the current administration. On to the next:

Obama, McCain campaigns' computers hacked for policy data:

Computers at the headquarters of the Barack Obama and John McCain campaigns were hacked during the campaign by a foreign entity looking for future policy information, a source with knowledge of the incidents confirms to CNN.

Sources say McCain campaign computers were hacked around the same time as those of Obama's campaign.

Workers at Barack Obama's headquarters first thought there was a computer virus.

The source said the computers were hacked mid-summer by either a foreign government or organization.

Another source, a law enforcement official familiar with the investigation, says federal investigators approached both campaigns with information the U.S. government had about the hacking, and the campaigns then hired private companies to mitigate the problem.

U.S. authorities, according to one of the sources, believe they know who the foreign entity responsible for the hacking is, but refused to identify it in any way, including what country.

The source, confirming the attacks that were first reported by Newsweek, said the sophisticated intrusions appeared aimed at gaining information about the evolution of policy positions in order to gain leverage in future dealings with whomever was elected.

The FBI is investigating, one of the sources confirmed to CNN.

This is the Golden Age for incident detection and response. Where are all the prevention advocates? How about the inside threat fans? Sorry, it's all about detecting and responding to external threats.