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Leakage: Part One
Mike "Ender Wiggin" Hudack
Editor-in-Chief
It was relatively recently that the public began learning of Chinese espionage at Department of Energy laboratories, particularly Los Alamos National Laboratories in New Mexico. Gradually, it became apparent that Wen Ho Lee, a Taiwanese-American who worked at Los Alamos probably passed secrets to Chinese assets in America through the Los Alamos computer network.
Through Chinese acquisitions at Los Alamos, they were able to design and test several advanced neutron bomb designs -- designs that the United States hasn´t tested. This news forced a work stoppage at Los Alamos while computer networks were tested and secured. Simultaneously, scientists and laboratory staff members received lessons on computer security.
The loss of valuable nuclear technology such as neutron warhead design and MIRVs (multiple warhead designs allowing more than one city to be targeted by a single missile) was a critical fault for America and its information security programs.
Shortly after these revelations surfaced, another announcement confirmed American fears -- China has a full-time information security team. This team, operating close to Chinese military leadership, has received some publicity recently after attempts against Pentagon and White House computers. In fact, it was initially reported that they were responsible for the cracking of the White House website (it happened directly after the accidental bombing of a Chinese embassy by US forces in Yugoslavia).
In mid-May, the General Accounting Office released a report to the Senate (and soon thereafter to the public) regarding NASA information security. According to the report, 135 out of 155 critical NASA machines were easily breachable through war dialing, password guessing, brute force and publicly attainable exploits from sites such as Rootshell.
On the surface, a computer security problem at NASA is not too much of an issue...
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