On the 22nd, the 360 Government and Enterprise Security Group fully disclosed the technical characteristics of the Quantum (Quantum) attack platform, a representative cyber weapon used by the US National Security Agency (NSA) against targets in China, for the first time, and proved that the US cyber attack is an indiscriminate attack, which can hijack the normal web browsing traffic of any Internet user in any part of the world.
This is the second time in nearly a month that 360 has disclosed evidence that the NSA continues to launch large-scale cyber operations around the world, especially against China. In early March, 360 presented a series of evidence that the US National Security Agency targeted key areas such as the communications industry, and that hundreds of millions of citizens around the world had nowhere to hide their privacy and sensitive information as if they were "naked". China is one of the NSA's key targets, and the number of infected units may reach the order of one million.
The latest report shows that quantum attack is an advanced network traffic hijacking attack technology specially designed by the US National Security Agency for the national Internet, and the US National Security Agency uses quantum attack technology to launch cyber attacks against all Internet users around the world who visit Us websites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Amazon, etc., and Chinese social software such as QQ is also their target.
360 researchers told the Global Times that the data stolen by the US National Security Agency around the world includes network configuration files, accounts and passwords, office and private documents, databases, online friend information, network communication information, email, real-time data from cameras, real-time data from microphones, etc. Such attacks are indiscriminate, and in addition to China, many countries that cooperate with the United States are also targets of NSA cyber attacks.
The top weapons platforms in the United States have been exposed, and they have fully realized engineering, automation, and artificial intelligence
The Quantum Attack System, the NSA's most powerful Internet attack tool and one of its most important capability systems for conducting cyber intelligence warfare, was created in 2004 and contains several sub-projects, all named after QUANTUM. 360 Cloud Security Brain has now discovered that it contains nine advanced cyber attack capability modules, namely QUANTUMINSERT (Quantum Injection), QUANTUMBOT (Quantum Puppet), QUANTUMBISCUIT (Quantum Cookie), QUANTUMDNS (Quantum DNS), QUANTUMHAND (Quantum Mastery), QUANTUMPHANTOM (Quantum Phantom), QUANTUMSKY (Quantum Sky), QUANTUMCOPPER (Quantum Police), QUANTUMMACKDOWN (Quantum Download).
The quantum attack system mainly targets the intermediate hijacking of national network communications to carry out a series of complex network attacks such as vulnerability exploitation, communication manipulation, and intelligence theft. The researchers pointed out that "quantum attacks can hijack the normal web browsing traffic of any Internet user in any part of the world, carry out 0-day (zero-day) exploit attacks and remotely implant backdoors." ”
According to the introduction, in order to monitor global Internet targets, the US National Security Agency has developed a number of operational plans, the specific tasks involved in the relevant plans will be implemented through the quantum attack platform, the complete implementation process of quantum attacks is divided into the following three stages, and has now fully realized engineering, automation and artificial intelligence. In the first stage, the perpetrators of the quantum attack will first locate the targeted network, and the entire positioning process is done through a set of "quantum capabilities" held by the US National Security Agency, a network hacking tool, which has the ability to remotely hijack and manipulate the network traffic of the global Internet giants. According to confidential documents of the US National Security Agency, in addition to targeting specific IP, the positioning operation of "Quantum Capability" is more important to remotely locate the Internet services and different website accounts most used by the world's netizens such as emails, social networks, search engines, video websites, etc., and quickly find out the network and Internet location where the target is located.
In the second stage, the relevant weapons will comprehensively monitor the internet account and other related network communication content and other network activities of the target, including static files stored in the Internet terminal, Internet traffic and communication content. According to classified NSA documents, the quantum attack system backstage shows some details of how to monitor registered users of U.S. Internet product networks such as Yahoo, Facebook, and Hotmail, suggesting that the NSA is actually implementing indiscriminate surveillance of users of U.S. Internet products around the world.
In the third stage, the US National Security Agency began to carry out exploit attacks, implanting its own backdoor programs into the victims, and stealing a large amount of content such as the victim's personal privacy and Online data. The vast amount of data collected throughout the attack was obtained without the user's knowledge.
The world's netizens have been indiscriminately attacked, how can the United States stand alone under the "sickle" of the Internet?
The NSA's globalized indiscriminate intrusion is inseparable from the support of a huge and complex cyber weapons platform. The latest report conducts a technical analysis of the application scenarios and attack implementation process of the quantum attack system, combined with real cases, comprehensively confirms the details of the large-scale indiscriminate network attacks carried out by the US National Security Agency against Internet users around the world, and summarizes some of the characteristics of the US National Security Agency to carry out cyber attacks.
According to the technical introduction above, first of all, the U.S. cyberattack is an indiscriminate attack, targeting a global scope, even including U.S. allies. The United States against all kinds of email, social networks, search engines, video sites and almost all other Internet users to launch indiscriminate network attacks, the United States network strategic strike is global, unrestrained, under the "sickle" of the United States network attack, no country can be alone.
Germany's Der Spiegel magazine has reported that the US National Security Agency has eavesdropped on EU offices in the United States and Brussels, infiltrated its computer networks and launched cyberattacks. Danish media have also revealed that the US National Security Agency has used its partnership with Danish intelligence services to spy on European allied leaders and senior officials, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel. According to the report, the US National Security Agency uses allies to spy on allies, and the scope of monitoring is very wide, not only intercepting mobile phone text messages and phone content, but also obtaining search content and chat messages on the Internet.
Second, the U.S. cyberwarfare strategy may not be limited to cyber espionage. Through public information, it is known that the United States has completed the first step of its cyber warfare strategic goal - network theft, like snowden's exposure of the "Prism" plan belongs to this category, but does not rule out that the next goal of the United States will be more ambitious. Once the hardware or software backdoors are installed in the opponent's computer network to achieve remote control of key targets, including military systems, servers in the field of national public security, hosts of civil aviation, highway and railway transportation systems, servers of banking and financial systems, etc., there will be no room for negotiation for their opponents.
Third, the current NSA cyber weapons attacks have been fully engineered, automated, and artificially intelligent. With the advent of the era of network warfare, the automation advantage of network weapons has become an "advanced advantage" beyond information superiority, and the quantum system organized by the US National Security Agency may only be the tip of the iceberg, and the United States may have more and more highly engineered network attack platforms, and its automated "thinking" speed and quality have greatly improved the advantages of the US autonomous combat system to achieve the goal of victory, and also brought endless hidden worries to global network security.
Fourth, in response to cyber warfare, the U.S. government has made full use of all advanced technologies and network resources. The United States has the world's most advanced Internet technology, which is well known, but in order to grasp the dominance of network warfare, the United States has incorporated a large number of top technical means, high-end talents, and intelligence forces such as quantum attack systems into the combat sequence, which shows the importance that the United States attaches to the development of network combat forces, and invests resources and increases chips at any cost.