June 13th, 2008
Do Congressmen's charges of Chinese hacking hold water?
InfoWorld notes that the congressmen who claimed China hacked their computers probably have scant evidence of the charges.
“It’s so very hard to conclude that something came from someplace if all you’re going from is an IP address,” said Marcus Sachs, director of the SANS Internet Storm Center, a volunteer-run effort that tracks emerging computer threats. “Those of us who have done this for a living, we know that you can’t prove that it was a Chinese person on the keyboard if you have a Chinese IP address,” he said. “Without making some of the evidence public … you leave everybody else guessing.”
Richard Smith, an Internet security consultant with Boston Software Forensics, thinks the allegations are the lamest sort of posturing.
“If someone is going to make these kind of charges, they really need to be willing to produce the hard evidence,” he said via e-mail. “Perhaps the office is embarrassed that a staffer accidentally shared their C: drive with the entire Internet.”
