The article does not discuss much the motivation they might have had for this hack, aside from the fact they're probably looking for gaps in general US systems. But I'm very curious about the economics of hacking another nation's weather service; China could give itself significant (and creepy) economic advantages my MITMing the data from the satellites. I wonder if they're considering things like this?
Edit: Also, if they just wanted weather data, they should've signed up for http://pressurenet.io ;)
It gets even more incredible. The landings would have been canceled for the day they actually happened, except that the meteorology officer in Eisenhower's staff predicted that there would be a short break in the bad weather sufficient for the landings to occur.
Eisenhower rolled the dice and the weather did indeed hold up long enough for the invasion to occur. His opponent, Gen. Rommel, felt the weather was going to be so bad there was no way the invasion could commence so he was actually away from Normandy on D-Day to see his family.
> The article does not discuss much the motivation they might have had for this hack, aside from the fact they're probably looking for gaps in general US systems.
NOAA is a branch of the US Department of Commerce - it's likely that is a relatively interesting target. And the NWS probably has data feeds that are based on non-publicly available information: maybe they've got some military satellite feeds out there. Who knows.
But in reality I'd bet this was just a "cast many lines, see what we catch" operation. And most people probably discounted the risks of Chinese attacks against the weather service. I'd further bet that there are plenty of lesser-known government organizations out there that are being actively exploited right now.
It is probably less Hollywood-like, such as predicting cloud cover over areas you'd be interested in using your satellites to look at. Or maybe they had a cyberhacking campaign and broke into as many US orgs as possible simultaneously, but each department discovers it at different times. Or, as others have said, maybe it isn't China at all but some other party?
Edit: Also, if they just wanted weather data, they should've signed up for http://pressurenet.io ;)