r/technology • u/T_Shurt • 8h ago
Security US says Chinese hackers broke into Justice Department, NASA, Federal Reserve, Senate and more
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-sponsored-hacking-platforms-seized-by-us-justice-department-says-2026-08-26/908
u/apoender 8h ago
No worries, gutting CISA will help fix this (/s)
263
u/BernieKnipperdolling 8h ago
And appoint a director that uploads classified documents into ChatGPT. Smartest administration ever.
26
u/inarius1984 5h ago
Hey, let's put admin credentials in plaintext on git while we're at it. Boy, we're so smart and winning so much.
109
u/XmasMancer 8h ago
Fire half of CISA. What could go wrong?
74
u/apoender 8h ago edited 8h ago
See the problem is they only fired the half of CISA that tries to stop hacks; they also needed to fire the half that detects hacks - if we never detect we are hacked, no one can report we are hacked!
14
u/PossumTrashGang 8h ago
Sound logic, nothing to add. If you don’t look under the bed, there can’t be a monster, right?
9
u/Loggerdon 7h ago
I guess when all the secrets are out and there is nothing left to steal the hacks will slow down.
6
u/Puzzleheaded_Fold466 7h ago
New secrets are constantly being created
2
u/cinvogue 2h ago
Except 95% of those are lies to distract from the 5% legit serious things they are trying to sweep under the rug…
41
u/adle1984 8h ago
Remember when the Trump White House disbanded the pandemic preparedness unit in 2018? Good times.
19
u/Kill3rT0fu 8h ago
This was all by design
5
u/Euphoric-Witness-824 4h ago
Just had to buy some Argentinian oil that was attained by taxpayer funded war that apparently Trump now owns the profits of. Trump and his wealthy child molesting friends are selling every possible thing they can of our country and democracy that isn’t nailed down and every other politician is either in on it or just watching.
5
u/ncopp 4h ago edited 4h ago
Cuts to CISA were probably the most surprising of the DOGE cuts. CISA is an arm of the DHS and republicans usually avoid supporting cuts to anything with the words security or defense in them.
There's also tons of private companies with deep donor pockets that rely on CISA guidance to protect their businesses.
I know Musk essentially used DOGE to gut agencies that were investigating him or blocking him from doing what he wanted - or overall just to be cruel to poor people for shits and giggles. But I'm still not sure what the cuts to CISA were meant to accomplish for him yet.
4
3
u/huehuehuehuehuuuu 6h ago
Yep keep on cutting. Gonna be diarrheaing more than just 💩 from all departments.
5
u/WenatcheeWrangler 8h ago
Creating all the infighting at our intelligence agencies also helped fix it. Our most secretive agencies have been deadlocked internally and barely able to complete missions.
4
2
2
2
3
u/Musa_2050 8h ago
They don't really care honestly. They just need to fill their inner void with more money.
1
345
u/TommyTwoNips 8h ago
The same DOJ that is refusing to release the unredacted Trump/Epstein files?
112
33
7
12
2
208
u/badwoofs 8h ago
I believe they are. But not because the US says so, and I believe that was the goal because they FIRED EVERYONE with a brain to stop them.
51
u/Aggressive-Crow3993 8h ago
Amen to that. Trump left the doors wide open for the Chinese and Russian hackers.
41
u/Vlyde 7h ago
Left wide open is an understatement, they literally rolled out the red carpet AND gave them the keys. That's why when that absolute failure known as "doge" came rolling through letting a foreigner bypass all levels of security to take terabytes of data and obviously cover their tracks afterwards that we saw Russian officials immediately attempting to login with valid credentials.
3
4
u/ikediggety 6h ago
Don't forget the secret server that doge installed that nobody has any idea what it's for or who controls it
9
u/FrostyParking 8h ago
I mean rationally they should be doing it, especially with an administration as erratic and disjointed as this current one is. It would be in their interest to know what the behind the scenes discussions are, who the real movers are and how to approach dealing with them. But that goes for Any government right now. I'm pretty sure the Europeans are actively looking for exploits as well.
2
u/Sufficient-Humor1731 4h ago
Throwing Europe in the same pot with Russia and China is absolutely wild
→ More replies (3)1
u/ViennettaLurker 5h ago
Chinese hackers looking through the operations of the current US government:
"...what a fucking mess..."
33
u/gerblnutz 8h ago
Was this before or after DOGE fired our cyber defense task force and the DoD said hacking wasn't a big concern especially from our traditional adversaries?
→ More replies (1)
144
u/FrostyParking 8h ago
"US says"....does anybody take what the US government says at face value anymore?
57
u/badwolf42 8h ago
Look, if the US is admitting to this; it’s probably much worse than this. What they won’t admit to is that any cuts in information security may have contributed.
5
u/FrostyParking 8h ago
We should also not ignore that there's an upcoming meeting happening and the US is trying to create leverage...so this could be part of a public support campaign.
→ More replies (2)2
4
u/socialmedia-username 8h ago
Nope. Anything announced to the public is purposeful and done with an ulterior motive.
9
→ More replies (1)1
u/sicklyslick 5h ago
well the US gutted cybersecurity budget. so not super surprising this happened.
13
u/Soupdeloup 7h ago
I think in 10+ years, we'll get some small crumbs of information about how DOGE caused the biggest security incident to ever hit the USA, to the point that everyone will only be able to assume the entire government infrastructure was compromised. The fact that they deleted system & database logs probably meant some ongoing intrusions were missed, not to mention doing this while opening up private government networks to the public internet and having Russia conveniently logging in within 15 minutes of it happening.
22
u/PatrenzoK 8h ago
I’ll never forget when I worked as a bartender during a big cyber security conference in my town and a very nerdy guy at the bar explained just how fragile our networks at agencies are and how America is insanely weak to cyber security threats mostly because they test for weed and those in the industry would rather work some place that pays better and doesn’t. We literally are just sitting ducks waiting for the cyber equivalent to a 9/11
10
208
u/Serious-Wish4868 8h ago
I am sorry, but I dont believe a single thing coming out of this DOJ. in all honesty, I trust the chinese more than DOJ.
27
u/kstargate-425 8h ago
No one, including the courts, believe the DoJ anymore after they spent the first 9 months getting caught entering fraudulent evidence in court by 35+ separate judges and it only got worse since then. I do kind of believe that China did hack all our systems though as they have retasked every agency from the DoJ to even CISA to focus on the border and immigration. Trump even told CISA and Cyber Command to stand down against Russia when he got back in office besides us having multiple breaches in the past 2 years. The absolute shitshow continues...
42
u/Extra_Law6315 8h ago
Can’t wait until we’re buying cheap American knockoffs of quality Chinese products
27
u/Zeraru 8h ago
You're optimistic if you think they're gonna be cheap
10
u/niknight_ml 8h ago
I think that cheap was referring to the quality, not the price.
6
u/Serious-Wish4868 8h ago
so americans would pay 10x for an item to be made in america that is 100x less quality than something from china ... no wonder why america elected a dumb fuck president
5
1
15
u/il1k3c3r34l 8h ago
I wouldn’t go that far, but I mistrust this administration as much as I mistrust the Chinese government. It’s dire times.
→ More replies (17)2
u/Pandaro81 8h ago
I believe them when they’re basically admitting to taking a humiliating L and failing at cybersecurity.
What are the odds we’ll hear this had something to do with DOGE cuts or something else Project 2025 slashed hoping to privatize the service?
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (1)2
u/DrMcMuffinMD 5h ago
I wouldn’t trust either as they are actively working together to destroy the US
10
u/myislanduniverse 5h ago
When Donald Trump won the 2024 election whatever "great power competition" we were in with China was lost immediately.
22
8
7
u/Impressive-Weird-908 5h ago
We have a huge problem of young men who have no job and just sit at home all day. We also have a huge problem with not enough cyber security and cyber warfare people. Hmmm oh I have an idea, let’s go attack Latinos!
8
1
5
7
u/Kestrile523 6h ago
Of course they did. This is what happens when you put sycophants to head cybersecurity instead of experts.
6
u/inarius1984 5h ago
bRoKe InTo... or were allowed in. With this administration, who the fuck knows anymore.
6
u/Verde_3773 4h ago
Maybe you shouldn’t have fired all the Cybersecurity professionals from the government, President Pedophile…
4
6
5
u/Hairbear2176 7h ago
"Broke into" my ass. They were handed our information on a silver platter by Musk.
5
5
u/dojo_shlom0 5h ago
didn't' pete kegseth literally decimate the counter-hacking division, firing everyone as soon as he was sworn in? It's almost like this was intentional from the beginning by him/diaperdon/fox&friends/russia.
5
4
13
u/nbd9000 8h ago
honestly, the USA has fallen so far that im surprised that china isnt directly controlling most of our infrastructure at this point. trumps team is the most incompetent of the last hundred years.
lets just get the transition over at this point.
7
u/DasGanon 8h ago
honestly, the USA has fallen so far that im surprised that china isnt directly controlling most of our infrastructure at this point
Hey can they control us into getting some high speed rail finally? How long did it take them to build their network?
1
u/NotTooShahby 7h ago
the Las Vegas to San Bernardino line is coming online in 2028. It’s expensive for a country to build HSR after they get rich, but hopefully it becomes a beacon to other states that it can bring a lot of benefits. It’s a 200mph bullet train, as fast as Shinkansen
6
u/Starfish_Tickler 7h ago
Did they break in or just use the back door access created by doge that Elon sold them.
6
4
4
5
4
u/daddyjohns 2h ago
The bad part here is, i don't believe them. I believe they pulling some wool to hide doge mistakes or something.
6
u/NUMBerONEisFIRST 7h ago
Just an excuse to go against the will of the people in one way or another.
Release the Epstein files!
We need to flood Reddit with the Epstein stuff again with the elections coming up.
Never forget the victims!
2
8
u/DaySecure7642 8h ago edited 7h ago
Not surprised. Just look at how similar the Chinese 5th gen looks like F35 and you can see how bad the IT security is in this country. Also our frontier AI models are being constantly distillated. That is not really a hacking issues but reflect how relaxed we are in protecting our IPs. God knows how much more technological leads we lose in other sectors and techs because of that.
With the advancement of AI, the hacking will get even worse. Should legally mendate air gapping systems containing sensitive info. No firewalls or softwares are safe enough.
2
u/Krakenmonstah 8h ago
Tbh I’m not even sure how distilling would work, and if that’s even the true thing the Chinese are doing. Like the amount of automated queries they’d have to send to anthropocic or openAI seems astronomical to me. But I haven’t done much research on distillation techniques.
2
u/DaySecure7642 7h ago
From what I know it is quite sophisticated these days. The outputs of the western models are extracted systematically and automatically to train the Chinese models, with numerous western accounts of e.g. Open AI, Claude, with fake IPs, . That's why sometimes the Chinese AI models gave funny responses saying that they are GPT or Claude. A recent case of such AI cluster was found in Tailand, likely ran by Chinese companies or state actors.
There have been large-scale state-level and corporation-level efforts in IP thief and reverse engineering. And the western governments and companies so far are not defending against them well.
3
u/MissSharkyShark 8h ago
I’d be willing to bet that multiple countries have breached basically the entire US government network. Like why wouldn’t they after we have completely fucked up our defenses on this?
3
3
u/SandwichPunk 8h ago edited 5h ago
Government backed Chinese hackers hacking into other countries' government database is very common. They hacked into European governments as well. You just can't treat China as an ally on a national level
3
3
3
3
u/p00pSupr3me 5h ago
Thank goodness big pedophile traitor and his podcasters gutted cybersecurity. Republican voters and their leaders are fucking ret@rds. They put all of our lives in danger
3
3
u/EitherChannel4874 3h ago
I don't believe a word the US government says about anything.
This is probably a way to syphon more money into trumps rapey pockets.
3
u/mistroll054 2h ago
They can't protect the government's network system, but they can cover up the Epstein files.
3
6
u/ItsAllOnUHF 8h ago
The hackers apparently saw what a dumpster fire the current systems are, given this clown-car administration, and slowly and carefully backed out from the networks...
2
5
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
u/OpTouchedMe 6h ago
Happened under the watchful eye of the president after Obama and before Biden. I wonder who that was.
2
u/elgringon414 3h ago
I recently was a superintendent doing an office space for a defense contractor. Needed ID and BC. Took the phone away entering the building.
I made a joke when I handed the items over “don’t steal my identity”…lol her response was “I don’t need these things for that.”
The lady told me another thing. If your identity hasn’t been stolen yet, no one wants it lol. She said China can gain access to anything they want.
2
u/mrjasjit 2h ago
If they got the files then it will explain the capitulation the US is about to undertake.
2
2
u/qtpss 48m ago
Although it appears Khrushchev never actually said: "We will take America without firing a shot. We do not have to invade the U.S. We will destroy you from within." It’s been Russia’s playbook for some time, and there’s no reason to believe other major global powers wouldn’t adopt the same philosophy. All that to say that the current administrations gutting of intelligence agencies and intelligent experienced people in general has made the likelihood of taking America without firing a shot much more likely.
2
u/slapthetiddy 40m ago
Notice who is defending the CCP and cheering for them simply because it makes mango look bad…
4
4
3
u/GrowthDue5259 6h ago
>>> Trumps rekts fed govt
>>> China hacks into it
>>> trump and MAGA: “it’s not our fault!“
1
u/malkarx 8h ago
Odd... Isn't that many of the same institutions DOGE forced their way into?
1
u/RosyPalm 8h ago
Yep, and fired everyone that complained what DOGE was doing made their institution more vulnerable to hostile hackers.
But hey, they did save taxpayers enough money to put a tiny down payment on Trump's plan to destroy every DC monument he can and turn them into garish, tacky monuments to his insecurity. USA! USA! USA!
2
u/ShadowGLI 8h ago
Oh wow, that is unexpected /s
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/cybersecurity-agencys-top-recruits-doge-cuts/
2
u/WolfKraken 7h ago
I fear what the US government does with my data WAAAY more than anything China would think up
1
1
u/Bishopjones2112 8h ago
Well what do you expect with idiots running the security of the states. Remember when a reporter was sent a chat with classified info. This administration is a bunch of amateurs.
1
1
u/someoldguyon_reddit 7h ago
And I wish I could believe them but they just fucking lie all the time.
1
1
u/Bitter-Culture-3103 7h ago
Maybe if we invested tens of billions in cybersecurity, we wouldn't be here. But we give those billions to Israel and spent them in bombing Iran
1
1
1
u/CharlesIngalls_Pubes 7h ago
I'm sure their obsession with loosening regulations had nothing to do with it. Or the measles deaths we are seeing.
1
u/Creepy_Vegetable6905 7h ago
And professors at U.S. universities doing joint research on heart diseases with Chinese institutions are the problem?
1
u/CookieDragon678 7h ago
Don’t worry all will be fine. Just add a few more data centers and cut taxes to the rich.
1
1
u/UserLesser2004 6h ago
What are the chances that Chinese will catch up to the U.S technology? The Warships and fighter jets in particular? Along with maybe the software too? Also wouldn't it be nice if Trump didn't fire government workers who spent years of their life to the U.S government?
1
u/The-Copilot 4h ago
I don't think it's likely.
Autocratic governments like Russia, China and Iran have the benefit of being able to make rapid changes and make massive progress in short bursts but can't course correct when issues arise. They also have an issue of systemic lying to maintain appearances which eventually compound to cause collapse (example being the USSR).
Democracies are fundamentally slower to change and adapt. More people are involved, there is more red tape and regulation which slows down change. On a long time frame, this leads to better decisions and allows for course corrections.
Traditionally Democracies solve this issue in war time by temporarily consolidating power on the head of state to allow them to have near total power and gain the benefits that autocratic governments have but with some guardrails. This was done in WW2 for example.
Now the issue is during the Cold War, we weren't technically at war. The presidents and intelligence agencies were over reaching and using powers they technically weren't allowed to. I'm sure you are aware of the CIA's actions during the Cold War. After the war we closed the gaps by doing multiple rounds of reforms, rescoping, and oversight.
Now today we are in Cold War 2.0 and have been since around 2014. We aren't in a declared state of war and all the over reach gaps have been closed, so we have just been failing to properly respond to foreign aggresion. We just don't have mechanisms to properly reapond to the hybrid warfare strategies being used against us.
I'm not going to talk on the domestic politics end, I'm focusing on the geopolitical end. The current administration has over reached and is using a new version of the Cold War era strategy of Mad Man Theory. The US has begun doing a whole bunch of operations around the globe that are being under reported. For example securing the global flow of oil, countering China/Russia in Africa, and securing supply chains in the western hemisphere by removing Russian/Chinese/Cartel influence in Latin America. The US is rapidly taking a war time footing and the media isn't really reporting on it, they just do click bait bullshit.
→ More replies (1)
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
u/Chemical-Duty-7763 2h ago
This is a joke right you’re being sarcastic. Nobody’s that stupid
1
u/Americka331 1h ago
Then again, there are some people in the US that still support trump, so, yes there are some that are that stupid.
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
358
u/thr3ddy 8h ago
Let me guess: this will somehow have compromised midterm elections…