The New York Times reports that a large percentage of Chinese cyber attacks on American targets originate from inside a same small neighborhood that features a Chinese army headquarters building. The headquarters, a large white office tower in Shanghai, is surrounded by restaurants, massage parlors and a wine importer. It is the only structure in the neighborhood capable of housing a large number of sophisticated cyber attackers. This all but confirms the Chinese army is behind the American attacks.

The hackers, known in the US as the Comment Crew, were traced to Shanghai by Mandiant, a US security firm hired by the NY Times. The New York paper hired Mandiant to end infiltration of its network last year. The Virginia firm traced that attack and hundreds like it to the Shanghai neighborhood that houses the base, known as P.L.A. Unit 61398.

The firm were not able to confirm the attacks originated inside the building but the probability is very high.

“Either they are coming from inside Unit 61398,” said Kevin Mandia, the founder and chief executive of Mandiant, in an interview last week, “or the people who run the most-controlled, most-monitored Internet networks in the world are clueless about thousands of people generating attacks from this one neighborhood.”

Sure, it’s possible that an enterprise scale hacking effort led by mainland Chinese with direct access to Shanghai telecom infrastructure has setup shop inside one of the restaurants by Unit 61398. Now that they’ve been exposed we’ll just wait for the Chinese government to shut them down. That should happen any minute now. Yep … any … minute … now. Who are we kidding? The Chinese are attacking us!!

This is depressing.

Matt Honan is an author at Wired. Recently his Google account was comprimised. And since his online life was chained together, the hackers were soon able to access his Twitter, Amazon, AppleID, iPhone, iPad and MacBook accounts. For lulz, they erased his digital life.

By his own admission, Honan was sloppy. His accounts were interconnected and his data was not backed up. His biggest regret was that he didn’t take the time to implement a defense mechanism provided by Google. He didn’t set up 2-step verification. In the article, Honan refers to it as “two-factor authentication.”

What’s two-step verification? This is a system provided by Google which adds an extra level of security to your account. After it’s set up, you’ll need two things for access. You’ll need to provide something you remember (your password) with something you have (a code on your phone).

Learn how to set up 2-step verification after the jump.

Continue reading “The Security Two-Step” »