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CIA Warns China Might Be Planning Cyber Attack
malibucreek writes "The Los Angeles Times is reporting that the CIA is warning of possible cyber-terrorism against U.S. and Taiwanese computer systems by the Chinese Army. Or, China could just launch a massive denial-of-service attack by sending billions of "GET HERBAL VIAGRA" e-mails from the .cn TLD." The article has a reasonable amount of information
and is probably worth a read if you're curious about what could be a real big
deal in the future.
How do you think people in the US would respond to a national firewall to protect from outside attacks? Would people view it has a means to control the internet content? Or a valid and necessary element in our nation?
My personal choice would be to have a national firewall, even though it could be used against us, or limit our privacy. But at least we could completely shut off our internet access if another country decided to attach us.
China could just launch a massive denial-of-service attack by sending billions of "GET HERBAL VIAGRA" e-mails from the .cn TLD."
.cn TLD (as well as pretty much any other domain known to originate from China), who is the massive DDoS going to affect?
Since many mail administrators have simply blocked anything coming from the
I think for this to be effective, not only would Chinese administrators have to smarten up and close off their mail servers, but they would have to prove it to the rest of the world... that could take years.
What do you think the networks will do when a nation's government proves to spew this kind of noise all over the world? China could get on everybody's hit list by doing something like that. In that regard, it seems somehow counterproductive.
I'm not saying it's impossible, a sufficiently short-sighted government (say, one that calls itself the "Peoples' Liberation Army" and expects people to believe it after mashing students with tanks) might attempt it.
But in light of the possible consequences, it seems somehow e-suicidal.
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
All of a sudden?! You just been born or something? Apart from our out and out allies (read: NATO) the rest of the world at best despises us and at worst actively works for our distruction. We are the envy of the world, so by extension, we are disliked by the majority of people out there...
Hell, I'm an educated, straight, white, christian, american male, aged 18-35... I might as well be satan himself as far as the rest of the world is concerned...
Get used to it... I have.
Jason
He's totally creeping out the Great One, eh...
Unfortunately what the administration has found is that it has opened up Pandora's box and does not know how to handle it anymore. And like you said, it has fallen back 15 years to Reaganism. The thing is, a good majority of the administration are from the Reagan era. It is much easier to lead a country back during the Cold War than it is now. When you know who your enemies are and can rally support against a common enemy, you can pretty much push anything through legistlation. In the past 6 months or so, the administration has tried to find a common enemy (first terrorists, but since that is a broad term, moved onto Usama Bin ladin, and since we can't find him, moved onto al Qaeda then Taliban, etc, etc...)
Bush has had it out for China since he first stepped into office. Remember the US spy plane incident?. And honestly, China isn't doing anything worse than what the US has been doing for years. I would say distrupting and ousting a democratically elected leader of a country is a bigger crime than DDoS that is talked about in this article.
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
If China is our enemy then why do we buy so much of their stuff? Wouldn't having a trade deficit with China then be contributing to the enemy? Germany, Japan and Italy in WWII, you didn't see the US buying tons of their goods.
There are tons of Chinese exchange students. We have had presidents visit China. Why would a US president visit our enemy?
Yah, China my not be a US puppet, but that does not make them our enemy. Didn't you read 1984?
The chinese have a massive military, billions of people, incredibly modern technology, a space program, etc. You honestly think that if we firewall off their nation, that will stop a *planned, deliberate attack*? OK, even assuming you have a fullproof method to wall China off from the internet (and Pakistan, and Russia, and all of the 23 other countries sympathetic to China and willing to let chinese communications companies route through them..) They could just come over to the united states covertly (they have these things called "submarines") drive to some telephone switch in the middle of nevada, and install a box that recieves commands from china via satellite and injects whatever its commanders tell it to into the american communications network. Boom, they're inside the firewall. You think if america couldn't keep agents of a disorganized, wacko terrorist network from infiltrating the U.S. and obtaining pilot's licenses last year, they would be able to keep agents of a nation of 6 billion from infiltrating the U.S. and signing up for free internet accounts on AOL?
Remember the old adage: Digital security measures are always useless against someone who has physical access to the machine. Firewalls aren't much use if the hacker can physically get to a machine on the inside of the firewall..
Remember then Chinese hacker push in early May of last year? It was to coincide with May Day and in protest over the whole U.S. Spy Plane Hainan Island debacle the month before that.
;-P ). I guess honker is hacker in Chinese. It was a toolbox of scripts and methodologies.
Some MS boxen got "f**k USA government f**k poizonbox" pasted all over their IIS roots. Not much beyond that, and I think some American hackers returned the favor. A little miniature patriotic hacker war.
Out of curiosity, I kept up to date on Chinese hacking at a site whose address is www.cnhonker.com (visit at your own risk, and don't hit the Back button
But very recently, in March, the site was closed by someone called "lion". I had a Chinese coworker of mine visit the site, and she translated the brief explanation for the site's closing as "After long thinking, we have no choice but close it. Please don't write to us asking why, give us a little time. We'll be back. September 2002, we'll see you again"
I am not much of a conspiracy theorist, but when it comes to autocratic governments, my instincts change... any bets on whether or not the Chinese Government has coopted some of their talented hackers for a patriotic cause?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Check these articles: 2nd Leak Of Anthrax Found at Army Lab
Or this one: investigation raised the possibility that there was a secret CIA project to investigate methods of sending anthrax
Excerpt:
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
On the other hand, that DOS attacks will occur is as newsworthy as saying that your children will have colds sometimes. It's all a part of growing up.
Think, write, think, edit, think...then post.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but if you'd put your attitude aside (America gets all the attention, boo-hoo!) and actually take a look at the rest of the world, you'd see that it is you who are mistaken...about a great many things.
Go to any under-developed country and see who they think is the envy of the world. Whether they like us or not, they envy us.
That's not to say that any number of other countries don't also deserve envy. But we get all the attention, whether or not we deserve it (and whether or not you like to admit it).
probably ran around kicking squirels, and wondered why they bit him... maybe he liked the shots? rabies, rabies!!!!
sounds kind of 1984-ish. the alliance is in great danger of attack from those that are evil. oh yah, everyone except us is evol! kick kick!!!
nader was right though, gotta wonder what we got ourselves into...
1. World war - Take out the entire Internet infrastructure, same as binLaden tried to take out the world financial system.
2. Surgical strike - Take out parts of the Internet infrastructure. The Chinese already have heavy controls on their own Internet. If they're this paranoid, they'll want some control over the outside. How do I shut down cnn.com in an emergency if China does another WTC as a diversion to create panic? WTC2 is a diversion for the Chinese military strike force to invade Taiwan while the US licks it's wounds assisted by panic due to the Internet being down. Hit the edge routers, via a weakness in IOS or DoS giving the BGP tables corrupted updates at major ISPs (use an infiltrator if necessary), plus SNMP plaintext password etc.
3. How do I silence a Chinese whistleblower that just posted some Chinese secret to indeymedia.org? DDoS against inymedia.org webserver, edge routers, Kazaa login system (single point of failure), Gnutella, and Freenet networks. Harness extra CPU by hijacking SETI@home program auto-update's DNS entry (IP address) OR reverse-IPmasquerading to Chinese Govt. server with trojan SETI@home update (their routers already do fancy stuff). This trojan will gradually roll out to all Chinese SETI@home clients and perform DDoS against the above targets. While the website is down the nearest Chinese spy will kill whoever, like when the Russians assassinated Vladimir Kostov, a journalist that talked too much while he was walking down a London (England) street.
A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?
Personally, I wish that the US govt would do more to examine what it is doing and stop going out of its way to make new enemies. Believe it or not, I'm not alone in this wish... maybe someday we all can get along...
My friend, I wish I had your enthusiasm. More than likely, perhaps millions of years in the future, the last living man on earth will most likely drown trying to attack its own reflection in a lake.
The truth of the matter, I believe the wholesale behavior of nations are just as insane and lacking in judgement as the people that make them up. So if a nation (as a whole) acts nuts, well then, there you go. Perhaps most of the people there are nuts too.
The USA doesn't act stupid. The USA is admittedly greedy. Not nuts or stupid. Not any more nuts than Rome acted before the whole lead in the drinking water thing, and look what they did. To think that other nations think that we are a bunch of stupid cowboys only gives us a tactical advantage. Keep thinking that. Its that same thinking that deep, hidden rock caves can save you in 21st century warfare. And that you can attack innocents in a twitchy, militaristic nation and not get some serious retribution.
I share the same feeling about most nations as I do the USA. Not nuts, not stupid, just trying to carve something for themselves. Not as greedy as America perhaps, but certainly not a bunch of saints because they're not America.
However, Saudi Arabia (and many Arabic nations) appear on the outside to be nuts. Not evil. Nuts. Any nation that enforces its dress code lethtally, speaks to the President of "the meanest dog on the street" like he is a piece of crap and HAS NO REAL ARMY TO BACK THAT SHIT UP, and then has a member of its diplomatic corps for the UK print poetry about the glorious death of their hijackers killing innocents, well then, there you go. Nuts. Not acting in a sane way. Practically begging to get fucked with by the CIA. Or killed. You just don't talk to "ol hot head" like that.
Don't even get me started on Israel.
Also, I would argue that the US has done great controlling the world. We shouldn't want to control the world, but we certainly aren't piss poor at it.
The anti-civilization nutties are rising up now, but that is because they haven't threatened me (meaning the citizens of the world) personally.
When Hussein or someone decides to make New York dissapear in a blinding white flash, well, then they will see what happens when the US starts conscripting troops, and we open up all of those warehouses full of rifles and ammo we've been stockpiling for two generations. We're the only ones fully prepared for straight up war all over the globe.
I've been to those military bases, it scares the hell out of me to see that much weaponry, and I'm an American.
But I don't think we're going to flip out real soon, though, unless someone flips out on us first, and I think that many Arabic nations have been waiting to flip out on everyone not themselves. They have been attacking the reflection in the water for generations.
Yes, last I heard China invaded fifty years ago, as I said China has not invaded anywhere recently. Not since Mao died and the gang of four were put on trial.
Don't tell me you believe the Chinese propaganda that Tibet has always been part of China
The 'propaganda' has considerably more truth than the US media admit. But the issue of what country has been part of another is irrelevant. The relevant question is what the people who live in Tibet want. You don't have to go back very far to find Texas and California used to be part of Mexico and were acquired through conquest. That does not mean that Mexico has rights to have the land back.
The nearest equivalent to the Tibet situation is in Turkey which is the remnants of the Ottoman empire which was formed through conquest. We don't know for sure whether the Kurds really want to be independent or not, all we do know is that the Turkish government ruthlessly supresses their language and culture, oh and they are one of our glorious NATO allies.
Call me a cynic, but I for one don't think it a good idea to blindly accept the administration telling us who the enemy is. I think the enemy of democracy are the folk who were busy organizing a coup in Venezuela. If we accept the administration line we have to consider that the governments who did not oppose deposing a democratically elected President, closure of the legislature, supreme court, etc. etc. were in favor of it.
I am quite willing to support organizations like Amnesty who report the attrocities committed against both the Tibetans and the Kurds. I am less willing to listen to the administration crying crocodile tears while selecting causes by the extent to which they meet their own ends.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Whether they like us or not, they envy us.
Why?
No really, why?
Because we have the most money, that's all. And that situation could change a lot faster than you'd probably be willing to believe.
Now, I remember a time when America was envied for reasons other than its money and power.
I seem to recall the US being regarded as being politically free, religiously tolerant, and relatively peaceful. Frankly, I think we became rich in the first place for these reasons.
Now, I am afraid, there are many countries that are more democratic, more free, and more tolerant than the US has become. Capital will now flow out of America to these places for the same reasons that it flowed into America in the first place.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao