Slashdot Mirror
Taiwan Under Cyber Attack from China
An anonymous reader writes: "O'Reilly Developer News is reporting this morning that Taipei is under cyber attack by a Chinese 'army of hackers'. The Taipei government is saying that the attacks are trojan-horses against windows machines that are being staged to break in to government databases."
This is extremely interesting. In his book "The Bear and the Dragon" this is exactly what happened, only it was China and Russia.
COULD THINGS GO NUCLEAR!?!?
It's pronounced nu-cu-lar.
WHATEVER!
Now please, don't flame me as a fan of mainland China's repressive regime. But the Taiwanese government doesn't exactly have the world's best track record, as I recall. I hear occasional notes about "problems" with civil rights, and then there's the whole pirated anime problem.
So when I read this line:
"National intelligence has indicated that an army of hackers based in China..."
my BS-o-Meter starts clicking. Though the article is non-technical, it includes other notes that make the meter tick faster:
"...has successfully spread 23 different Trojan horse programs... 10 private high-tech companies... break into at least 30 different government agencies and 50 private companies," Cabinet Spokesman Lin Chia-lung said yesterday.
We have a lot of big, scary numbers... but no hard information about the programs, the companies, or the government agencies.
In fact, the "23 different Trojans" makes me think that the government cabinet member is talking out of his butt. More likely, nobody's been running virus protection, and those 24 Trojans are simply members of F-Secure's wildlist.
Then, there's this "helpful" suggestion:
"If there's any lesson from this experience, it is not to use software developed in China or hire Chinese computer programmers, because you're running the risk of having the software you use implanted with the Trojan-horse program," he said.
That sounds like nothing more than the usual tit-for-tat barbs that Taiwan and China have been throwing across the strait for decades. In fact, I suspect that's what this whole Trojan Horse issue is -- all bluster, no substance.
And finally, off the actual topic: let's watch the Slashdot effect in action! When I first hit the Taipei Times article, it included this text at the bottom:
This story has been viewed 1128 times.
By the time I typed this comment, the number had not changed, so I'm probably getting a cached copy. What did it show when you hit it?
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
I did not make it to the article, so I am basing this comment upon the posted text.
"China has launched a systematic information warfare campaign against Taiwan"
That would be propoganda. Hackers, or more technically, computers, in China have launched an attack. Not the Chinese government, not the nation of China, a group of individuals using computers in China.
"'National intelligence has indicated that an army of hackers based...'"
Again, a little over the top with the "army of hackers" reference. This makes it seem like the hackers have some official link or even political cause.
"'If there's any lesson from this experience, it is not to use software developed in China or hire Chinese computer programmers,'"
Propoganda. Incredibly, this sort of logic would mean that living or working within a country means that you are a malicious agent of that country. Ludicrous.
Oh, and please do observe the editor who approved this article.
Or the constant port scanning.
Well, this is the first I've learned of it. My ultra cheap standard issue 1.5Mbps DSL connection seems to be going just fine. Got a few connections to the WayBack machine going and I just finished the rounds at a dozen web sites, EETimes, DisplaySearch, BioTech East, Digitimes, Google News and on and on. None of them had any problems, nice snappy connections. A few of those are in Taiwan so locally and internationally the network itself seems fine.
The only thing I couldn't get to was the feakin' story at the notoriously paranoid Taipei Times because apparently the greater threat to the local net than the mainland is slashdotting!
How do they know "China" (as in the Chinese government) is attacking Taipei, instead of just a group of people? I mean, if Joe Hacker from the USA attacks the Belgium government servers do you call it an attack by Joe Hacker or an attack by the USA?
s/army of hackers/script kiddy in US with a bunch of hax0r3d puters from china/
I think that would be more accurate.
Regardless of the implications of this:
1) This is, to put it concisely, goddamn cool. We've been hearing for years about how countries might wage some kind of hax0r-cyber-warfare on each other, but aside from a few isolated instances (e.g., the U.S. disabling Iraqi computers in 1992 by introducing a hardcore virus via, of all things, printer driver software), we've dismissed it as futurist hogwash. But it may be happening now. If so, it's an historic moment in computer science.
2) This is better for people than having any country invade or bomb another. This type of invasion may be a precursor to that one - but if, in the future, a country can be brought to its knees with minimal loss of life by just wrecking its computer infrastructure, then that is a good development of history.
- David Stein
Computer over. Virus = very yes.
The two main Taiwanese routers are presently showing a 192ms and a 203 ms response time with a 0% packet loss. China, OTOH, has four main routers with two of them showing a 0ms response time coupled with a 100% packet loss.
Smells a bit like propaganda to me...
These kinds of "attacks" have become commonplace. They happened after the election of the new Taiwanese president as well.
It's widely believed that these hackers do in fact have an official link with the Chinese government as part of the People's Liberation Army in their efforts to prepare for what they term "asymetrical warfare."
This would involve using systematic computer attacks to take down the Taiwanese technological infrastructure and communications in the moments before or following a massive short-range missile attack across the Taiwan Strait.
The goal would be to spur massive confusion and allow the substandard Chinese naval and amphibious forces to seize the island before the United States could mobilize to its defense and making any attack by American forces that much more difficult.
The Taiwanese position isn't "propaganda." It's information based on what they know is happening in China. And yes, China does have a goal of reunifying the island with the mainland and refuses to rule out the use of military force or any other method necessary.
Do you think the hackers just happened to attack Taiwan because they were in the neighborhood?
Personally a lot of the Chinese I know think of the Taiwanese as people who can't speak proper Mandarin...They also believe that Taiwan should be part of China again. I'm not sure how much this can really be blamed on government brainwashing though. Chinese (well Han Chinese anyway) have always believed very strongly in the concept of China as one people and one culture. Periods of time when there have been two or more "Chinas" have always resulted in much effort expended in reuniting the country. There is no celebration of disunity or having independent Chinese "countries". One wonders how the Taiwanese actually reconcile this cultural history with their desire to remain separate from China. In the Chinese mode of thinking, the desire to NOT be Chinese, is very strange.
In Chinese folklore, literature and popular history all divisions in China (a very popular topic), whether through civil war or barbarian invasion always end up with the country reunited by some glorious hero (or occassionally talented despot who is then deposed by a glorious hero). Having Chinese accept two Chinas is like asking Westerners to accept that yes, the villain really should win the war and beat the good guys. In the books, China always gets reunited by the good guys and everyone rejoices and lives happily ever after.
Carter had education & training as an engineer (including nuclear) which is why he was able to go to Three Mile Island and not put in just a token appearance. This was a bit of a shock to the idiots who wanted to talk down to him.
Carter was absolutely, undeniably, one of the worst presidents this country has ever seen. He attempted to micromanage the entire US Government single-handedly. Track down pictures of him before and after he was in office. He aged about thirty years during that time. When he left office, inflation was 14%; mortgage rates were 22%. Compare that to the previous ten years (now): 2%-3% inflation and 5%-8% (max) mortgage rates.
That said (I'm sure pro-Carter folks have stopped reading because they've made their minds made up by now as to what I'm saying (or not)), Carter has been probably our best ex-president this country has ever seen and will will ever see, bar none. It's unfortunate he didn't handle his time in office better so it makes it difficult to weigh whether what he's done since leaving outweighs what he did in office.
For those who weren't around then:
"On today's menu: A Jimmy Carter sandwich (Peanut Butter and balonga sandwich)"
Popular Slogan: "Fritz and Gritz"
And last, but not least, his brother Billy, who had a brand of beer named after him (Billy Beer) and had the practice of unzipping and relieving himself in some of the most unusual places (e.g., the side of an airport building, in plain view to anyone who wanted to watch).
Is that these attacks are being committed by provocateurs who are purposely trying to cause a war between the two.
Taiwan is a democracy. China is not. We have a defence treaty w/ Taiwan. We'd be very obligated to get involved.
I'm sure China would then say, "Psst! North Korea! It's ok, if you attack South Korea right now, we'll back you up!"
Still sound nice to hear about?
[o]_O
What's really interesting is that Microsoft allowed China access to the source code from Windows. Could the Chinese have used this information to aid in attacking Taiwan?
Sino culture is different. There are no individuals in China. Nobody thinks of themselves as individuals and this hive mind mentality makes propaganda spread easily. Those that think of themselves as individuals tend to be visiting Western professors under state surveillance or Chinese citizens in prison.
Americans have their behavior rooted in a mythology of distant settlers fucking over a detached empire. If you want to call that mythology overrated, maybe you have a case. If you want to call that mythology false, just try to push the citizen next to you and hope he doesn't have a gun.
Any individuality that China had either ran like Hell or was ruthlessly slaughtered during Mao's Cultural Revolution.
Laws are for people with no friends.
Remember the incident at Tienanmen Square in 1989. After it happened, the Americans and other Westerners froze or curtailed investments into mainland China. Even the Japanese followed suit, and for the first time after 1945, the Japanese condemned China. Western nations like Japan and the USA immediately slapped economic sanctions against China.
What did the Chinese in Taiwan and Hong Kong do? The Taiwanese immediately seized this window of opportunity and accelerated financial and technological investments into China. The Taiwanese provided any money or technology that the Westerners refused to provide . Since 1989, Taiwanese investment into mainland China has grown at double-digit rates. As of 2003, the Taiwanese have invested more than $50 billion into more than 50,000 businesses into mainland China.
Furthermore, the Taiwanese request and receive preferential treatment when they invest in China. By contrast, American companies do not receive preferential treatment. The Chinese government occasionally punishes American companies because the American government sells weapons to Taiwan. While the Taiwanese demand that Americans sell them weapons, the Taiwanese insist that Tibet is part of China: the Taiwanese constitution says that Tibet is part of China.
The time has come to stop this nonsense. The Americans should cancel the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) and stop selling weapons to Taiwan. The Taiwanese have exploited American generosity and naiveness. Americans should not allow Taiwanese hypocrisy to hurt American business opportunities in China.