China suspect in lab hacks

NY Times:

A cyber attack reported last week by one of the federal government’s nuclear weapons laboratories may have originated in China, according to a confidential memorandum distributed Wednesday to public and private security officials by the Department of Homeland Security.

Security researchers said the memorandum, which was obtained by The New York Times from an executive at a private company, included a list of Web and Internet addresses that were linked to locations in China. However, they noted that such links did not prove that the Chinese government or Chinese citizens were involved in the attacks. In the past, intruders have compromised computers in China and then used them to disguise their true location.

Officials at the lab, Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, said the attacks did not compromise classified information, though they acknowledged that they were still working to understand the full extent of the intrusion.

...

An expert told me that al Qaeda and the jihadi hackers like to use others' computers for their hacks to make it harder to trace them. That could be what is happening in this case. China has already developed nuclear weapons, so their interest would probably be on the curious level, where al Qaeda or even Iran might have some serious interest.