I was reading an interesting post at www.whowhatwhy.com regarding Barrett Brown – another internet ‘hacktivist’ in the mold of Aaron Schwartz. Brown has been in custody since September 12th, 2012, on ‘charges of threatening a federal officer’. Interestingly, according to this post, what the government was really after was to shut down his site which was designed to collect user contributed information to connect the dots behind the Stratford emails leaked by Wikileaks.
Anyway, the paragraph that particularly caught my attention was this:
With much ado in recent days about Chinese cyber espionage, the government is using this new “Yellow Peril” as an opportunity to mount a full court press against the ability of any group to maneuver on the Internet in ways that might threaten corporate and state interests.
So it got me wondering about that – so I did a little googling on this whole Chinese cyber espionage stuff we have been hearing so much about. It turns out the driver of all this news is a report released by the Mandiant Corporation. First off – where do you suppose Mandiant Corporation is headquartered – yep – Alexandria, Virginia. A little suprising that a big independant security firm serving Fortune 100 clients wouldnt be located in Manhattan, or Silicon Valley – but maybe its just a coincidence.. I also wondered what the motive would be for a security firm to make a big splash about calling out the Chinese for hacking. Wouldnt it be in the best interest of security to lay low and gather as much information about them before tipping them off that you are on to them? Maybe it is just a publicity move, but it fits in nicely with the administration’s (and Congress’s) efforts to clamp down on internet freedom in the name of national security.
Finally, this article on comparing Mandiant to Blackwater had a couple interesting points:
The report, embraced by stakeholders in both government and industry, represented a notable alignment of interests in Washington: The Obama administration has pressed for new evidence of Chinese hacking that it can leverage in diplomatic talks — without revealing secrets about its own hacking investigations — and Mandiant makes headlines with its sensational revelations.
and
Mandiant’s staff is stocked with retired intelligence and law enforcement agents who specialize in computer forensics and promise their clients confidentiality and control over the investigation. In turn, they get unfettered access to the crime scene and resources to fix the problem (Mandiant won’t say exactly how much it charges, but it’s estimated to average around $400 an hour).
So, a security company located in inside the Washington DC beltway, stuffed with former intelligence agents, partnering with Fortune 100 clients. Nothing suspicious here…
All I ask is that the next time a story comes out regarding cyber crime, see if it parallels the ‘War on Terror’ storyline. And watch to see what additional restrictions on civil liberties are proposed to protect us from these new ‘terrible threats’.