Whose war is this?

"If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience" -George Bernard Shaw

I salute The New York Times for coming out and reporting on it's system being hacked, reported on Jan 30th, 2013. Following the suit, we hear the same from other major media companies WSJ and Washington Post. It makes you to wonder how many more companies are affected, but not disclosing! And how many more are affected but not aware of this APT running on their network!

NYT is not new to being hacked, it has seen it's share in the past, but unlike many companies, NYT management seems to be committed in securing their infrastructure,data and is well aware of Internet security pitfalls. It even conducts “Hackathon” events every year with a bug bounty program, it is working with major companies in security industry. Regarding this particular incident, NYT management took the time and risk to analyze the hackers activity, instead of shutting down the system in panic. Kudos to the management for all that. But I believe the issue is much bigger than what it appears to be. Let's take a look at some of the facts about this cyber terrorist activity.

• NYT isn’t new to being hacked, as it was hacked few times in the past along with other media companies (May 2009, Sept 2009, April 2010).
• In April, 2010, NYT journalist Andrew Jacobs claimed that his Yahoo email account was hacked while he was in Beijing, forwarding all of his correspondence to a third party. (http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/01/31/history-hack-attacks-against-media/)
• NYT expected retaliation from China after publishing the report on Wen Jiabao
• AT&T notified NYT on unusual traffic on day one after the report was published
• NYT uses Symantec AntiVirus, possibly using other desktop protection software
• 53 of their user computers were compromised
• 45 different malware were installed and only one was detected by an up-to-date AV software
• The hackers used University infrastructure to hide their tracks
• NYT didn’t notice it for three months!
• Symantec says AV alone is not enough to protect your PCs
• WSJ & Washington Post confirmed similar attacks on their systems too
• Based on the attack signature, NYT claims that govt of China was behind the attack
• Red China calling it a baseless allegation

Though NYT was expecting the retaliation, it wasn't able to detect or stop it for a while. Assuming it's allegation is true that it was govt of China, orchestrating these attacks, would it be possible for any one company to stop these attacks! I don't think so, when many of our corporations are being attacked by foreign states and individuals, what's the role of our government in all this? Is it not government's interest to protect it's business? What would have been the govt reaction if it were a real intrusion on it's borders? Is it really hesitating to get involved? Many are the unanswered questions.

It doesn't give any assurance when I look at the outdated federal guidelines on Internet Security, one has to wonder how much Washington wants to be involved in this war? Could it be hesitating because of it's past history, regarding Stuxnet and Iran? Or is it simply a matter of time before Washington catches up? Only time can tell.