Titan Rain
Encyclopedia
Titan Rain was the designation given by the federal government of the United States
Federal government of the United States
The federal government of the United States is the national government of the constitutional republic of fifty states that is the United States of America. The federal government comprises three distinct branches of government: a legislative, an executive and a judiciary. These branches and...

 to a series of coordinated attacks on American computer
Computer
A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...

 systems since 2003. The attacks were labeled as Chinese
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...

 in origin, although their precise nature, i.e., state-sponsored espionage, corporate espionage, or random hacker
Hacker (computer security)
In computer security and everyday language, a hacker is someone who breaks into computers and computer networks. Hackers may be motivated by a multitude of reasons, including profit, protest, or because of the challenge...

 attacks, and their real identities — masked by proxy, zombie computer, spyware/virus infected — remain unknown. The activity known as "Titan Rain" is believed to be associated with an Advanced Persistent Threat
Advanced Persistent Threat
Advanced persistent threat usually refers to a group, such as a foreign government, with both the capability and the intent to persistently and effectively target a specific entity. The term is commonly used to refer to cyber threats, in particular that of Internet-enabled espionage, but applies...

.

In early December 2005 the director of the SANS Institute
SANS Institute
The SANS Institute is a private US company that specializes in internet security training. It was founded in 1989, provides computer security training, professional certification through Global Information Assurance Certification , and a research archive - the SANS Reading Room...

, a security institute in the United States, said that the attacks were "most likely the result of Chinese military hackers attempting to gather information on U.S. systems."

Titan Rain hackers gained access to many United States computer networks, including those at Lockheed Martin
Lockheed Martin
Lockheed Martin is an American global aerospace, defense, security, and advanced technology company with worldwide interests. It was formed by the merger of Lockheed Corporation with Martin Marietta in March 1995. It is headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, in the Washington Metropolitan Area....

, Sandia National Laboratories
Sandia National Laboratories
The Sandia National Laboratories, managed and operated by the Sandia Corporation , are two major United States Department of Energy research and development national laboratories....

, Redstone Arsenal
Redstone Arsenal
Redstone Arsenal is a United States Army base and a census-designated place adjacent to Huntsville in Madison County, Alabama, United States and is part of the Huntsville-Decatur Combined Statistical Area...

, and NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...

.

See also

  • Shawn Carpenter
    Shawn Carpenter
    Shawn Carpenter is an American Navy veteran and whistleblower who tracked down a Chinese cyberespionage ring that is code-named Titan Rain by the FBI...

  • Moonlight Maze
    Moonlight Maze
    The name Moonlight Maze refers to an incident in which U.S. officials accidentally discovered a pattern of probing of computer systems at The Pentagon, NASA, United States Department of Energy, private universities, and research labs that had begun in March 1998 and had been going on for nearly two...

  • Operation Aurora
    Operation Aurora
    Operation Aurora was a cyber attack which began in mid-2009 and continued through December 2009. The attack was first publicly disclosed by Google on January 12, 2010, in a blog post. In the blog post, Google said the attack originated in China...

  • Cyberwarfare
  • Advanced Persistent Threat
    Advanced Persistent Threat
    Advanced persistent threat usually refers to a group, such as a foreign government, with both the capability and the intent to persistently and effectively target a specific entity. The term is commonly used to refer to cyber threats, in particular that of Internet-enabled espionage, but applies...

  • Byzantine Hades
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