Friday, April 24, 2009

International hackers, many from China, are attacking NYPD computers

BY Alison Gendar and Bill Hutchinson
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2009/04/22/2009-04-22_international_hackers_lauching_attack_against_nypd_computers.html

Watts/News
Commissioner Ray Kelly says computer hackers, most based in China, have been trying to break into the computer system of the New York Police Department.

A network of mystery hackers, most based in China, have been making 70,000 attempts a day to break into the NYPD's computer system, the city's top cop revealed Wednesday.
Commissioner Raymond Kelly said the perpetrators have yet to succeed, but their relentless activities have prompted the force to raise its guard against high-tech crime.
"It's a threat that we must continue to pay close attention to every day," Kelly said in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations.

Kelly said the threat is similar to a shocking cyber espionage plot recently uncovered at the Pentagon.

China-based hackers successfully cracked the Pentagon's computers and gleaned design features of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jet program being developed by Lockheed Martin, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

"Perhaps it is because of the NYPD's reach into the international arena that we are being targeted for computer hacking in much the way the Pentagon has been with its plans for the Joint Strike Fighter," Kelly said.

In a CBS "60 Minutes" to air Sunday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates contends the U.S. is "under cyber-attack virtually all the time, every day."

"We're going to more than quadruple the number of experts that we have in this area. We're devoting a lot more money to it," Gates said.

Sources said Internet Protocol addresses of computers attempting to breach the NYPD's files have been tracked to China, the Netherlands and the Ukraine.

Kelly said the unauthorized scanning of NYPD computers is happening "at the rate of 70,000 attempts a day."

Sources said it appears the hackers have devised a automated system in which computers around the world make up to 5,000 attempts a day at pinpointing unsecured portals into the NYPD's files.

Kelly said he suspects his department is being targeted by foreign hackers because it's beefed up operations in the international arena since the 9/11 attacks.

"We are constantly studying events worldwide and assessing their implications for New York," said Kelly, adding that the NYPD now has officers stationed inAbu Dhabi, Jordan, Great Britain, France, Spain, Canada and the Dominican Republic.

He said all attempts to infiltrate the NYPD's computer files have been thwarted by "a robust protective system that we constructed over the last seven years."

The commissioner also said senior police brass have also sat for lectures by foreign affairs and terrorism experts from around the world.

"You might say that the NYPD has aspired to become a Council on Foreign Relations with guns," Kelly quipped.

Kelly's startling revelations came on the heels of a Canadian report exposing an China-based electronic spy network that have invaded at least 1,295 computers in 103 countries.

Dubbed "GhostNet," the cadre of hackers have targeted embassies, foreign ministries and the Dalai Lama's offices in India, Brussels, London and New York.

The 10-month Toronto University study suggested that the GhostNet is linked to Chinese government espionage agencies.

The researchers said the hackers are so skilled they can remotely plant audio and video surveillance bugs into computers they invade.

Chinese government officials have denied involvement in computer espionage.

"Some people outside of China are bent on fabricating lies of so-called Chinese computer spies," China's foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said last month.

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