from Hacker News

CIA pulled officers from Beijing after breach of federal personnel records

by wooster on 9/30/15, 1:21 AM with 32 comments

• by discardorama on 9/30/15, 1:56 PM

  When Chelsea Manning leaked the documents, noone was put in danger.

  When Snowden leaked the documents, no one was endangered.

  This breach, and lots of people are endangered.

  But are you getting calls for criminal investigation? Are heads rolling (other than the head of OPM, who was hated anyways)?

• by appleflaxen on 9/30/15, 12:19 PM

    "We, too, practice cyberespionage and . . . we’re not bad at it" 
    - James Clapper
  

  Ironic, for the intelligence leader of a country that had their defensive systems completely penetrated (with the federal personnel records), and their offensive systems fully outed in the most humiliating way possible (by Snowden)

  It seems to me that yeah... you kind are bad at it.

  At the very least, a little less self-certainty might be in order.

• by chaostheory on 9/30/15, 8:25 AM

  As some previous articles have already mentioned, they probably already knew who they were anyways. Only their offices have special locks. They don't mingle with anyone else at the embassy but their own. They also don't have same 3-4 year requirement of staying at the embassy so they leave early; and when their replacements arrive, they take over the same offices.

• by cm2187 on 9/30/15, 11:50 AM

  I like the idea that CIA officers are directly identifiable by their absence from the database. It reminds me of submarines and sonars. I understand that modern submarines are pretty good at diverting sonar waves so that they have a small footprint. However when a fishing boat passes over a submarine while scanning the ocean floor looking for fish, the submarine becomes immediately visible as a dark shape of sonar waves not returning from the ocean floor.

• by rrggrr on 9/30/15, 3:59 PM

  Another vindication of Ishamel Jones' position on the stupidity of relying upon State Dept covers for CIA personnel. For a hilarious and unparalleled informative look at the Agency:

  http://www.amazon.com/The-Human-Factor-Dysfunctional-Intelli...

• by blisterpeanuts on 9/30/15, 4:38 PM

  This OPM breach is an unmitigated disaster. What were they thinking, storing sensitive biometric information like fingerprints in an easily hacked database[1]?

  One can envision a time in the very near future (if not already), when a random foreigner is stopped on the streets of Beijing and asked to press his finger to a reader attached to an Android phone. The device would then display his picture, official position, address, salary, clearance level, etc. Or else, just walk into the restaurant he just left and take the fingerprint off a used glass.

  If he's there in some intelligence gathering capacity, the Chinese could then have him followed, or send him packing, or maybe even detain him for a day as a form of harassment, knowing that the U.S. government is powerless to do anything about it. They have us over a barrel.

  [1]http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/what-could-...

• by gadders on 9/30/15, 4:09 PM

  I don't know why these hacking incidents are not considered acts of war.