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Congressmens' PCs Infiltrated By Chinese Hackers?

by Tim Stevens on June 12, 2008 at 11:33 AM

Chinese Hackers Infiltrating Government PCs?Back in the '50s and '60s, there were widespread fears about Russian communists infiltrating our government and subverting our way of life. These days, we'd like to think we're beyond such paranoia, but claims made by two Congressmen harken back to those Cold War days. Virginia Representative Frank Wolf and New Jersey Representative Chris Smith are both saying that their PCs have been infiltrated by state-sponsored Chinese hackers in an apparent attempt to track down the names and addresses of dissidents.

Wolf and Smith have been very critical of China's human rights history, which is why they believe they've been targeted. They indicate files on their machines were infiltrated way back in 2006 and early 2007, but say they were discouraged by unnamed government officials from talking about the incident until now. They also indicate that, after the name and address of a dissident near Washington was accessed, a car with Chinese official plates drove to the house and took photographs.

This isn't the first time we've heard claims of Chinese hacking of government computers, but the talk of Chinese officials snooping around sounds like borderline paranoia to us. Just the same, it's disturbing that government PCs with sensitive information could be this easy to crack, and that they'd sit on that information for nearly two years. Here's hoping they've upgraded their firewalls since then. [Source: The Register]

Tags: breaking news, BreakingNews, china, hacking, security

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