Chinese Websites Used As Launchpads For Cracking

An anonymous reader writes "A Washington Post article reports that Chinese networks are being used to breach hundreds of unclassified U.S. government systems. The article goes on to say that some analysts believe the activity to be tied to the Chinese government, although there is also some dissent." From the article: "Whether the attacks constitute a coordinated Chinese government campaign to penetrate U.S. networks and spy on government databanks has divided U.S. analysts. Some in the Pentagon are said to be convinced of official Chinese involvement; others see the electronic probing as the work of other hackers simply using Chinese networks to disguise the origins of the attacks."

Comments

Breach unclassified documents?

[BlackCobra43]

What's the problem exactly? It's not like this is an act of espionnage.

Re:Web sites

[Anonymous Coward]

The same kind of evidence that the US Government used to justify war on Iraq? i.e. Falsified intelligence and packs of lies.

fuk china

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had it up the here with the chinese half capitalist, totalitarian regime. What happened to the Truman Doctrine? Lets just stop doing business with them and wait for their economy to collapse. Sure, it will suck for us but why are we propping up dictatorships with our trade? Is it for small pieces of plastic. Looks like it from here.

Real Bigness

[Doc Ruby]

The Chinese government is a mafia. Which controls its population through propaganda, purges, public executions, defamation, and other terrorism. Terrorism isn't the planebomb that blows up the building. It's the planebomb that blows up the building on TV, controlling literally millions of times as many people as it killed. That's the "asymmetric" threat, that weaker/poorer adversaries like the Qaeda, China or McVeigh can use to beat the US government and the American people. There's no line between "terrorists" and a country's military, as Kadafi, Gerry Adams, Saddam or Arafat would tell you.

The decentralized Internet can be threatened only by decentralized attacks: DDoS, for example. Russian Communism was no match for decentralized American Capitalism, focused in centralized American Federalism. But Chinese Communism, grafted into their state capitalism, is much more decentralized. With a huge domestic population, connected to a distributed, sophisticated "overseas Chinese" population, they have a much larger "surface to volume" ratio than we do for challenging the US. Combined with their insider clout, controlling so much American manufacturing while owning so much Treasury debt (and providing its best market), they already have the US over a barrel.

It was a terrible mistake to put George Bush in charge of defending us from enemies like China. Not only can't he think for himself, but his (literal) legacy is the market that his father opened as Nixon's first ambassador to China. Judging merely the results of that policy through the decades since, I'd say that the deal was cut 35 years ago. Carving off a huge chunk of American security to China, with the Bush dynasty taking its fat cut. Fortunately for us, America is so open, decentralized, aggressive and regenerative that we start out with a huge advantage. But if we keep letting these Bush people run the show, we'll start looking a lot like England did through the 20th Century, as their former hick colony obliterated them on the world stage. The difference is that China is no American colony, they don't speak the English that could combine our societies for truly mutual benefit, and the world is a lot smaller today - while China is a lot bigger.

Re:Real Bigness

[Pig Hogger]

But if we keep letting these Bush people run the show, we'll start looking a lot like England did through the 20th Century, as their former hick colony obliterated them on the world stage.

But you are already declining... What do you think the stupid creationists are making, but significantly weakening the US science, which is the basis for technological domination? Likewise, all those students becoming lawyers because "that's where the money is"... Lawyers do not create any wealth at all, they do not manufacture goods, they do not create original intellectual content, they are mere parasites to an economy.

Re:Real Bigness

[jcr]

Sorry, I was lumping the "Great Leap Forward" and the "Cultural Revolution" together. Whichever way you allocate the body count, the Red Dynasty killed many more Chinese than the Japanese Imperial Army ever did.

-jcr

Cut the Chinese off of our internet

[InsaneProcessor]

I am going to get hammered for this one. Here is the problem as I see it. 1. Chinese IP addresses are known for massive hacking attempts and brekins. 2. Excessive amounts of spam come for Chinese IP addressses, quite possible the largest percentage. 3. The Chinese government censors the Internet for it's public, not permitting a very large percentage of U.S. sites access. For these three reasons alone, the U.S. government needs to pass a law, that until the Chinese get thier act together - ALL IP ADDRESSES ASSIGNED TO THE CHINESE BE BLOCKED. The only acception for this is email addresses be allowed only to companies that formally request access. This is harsh but necessary. I see the Chinese as a threat to the freedom that is the Internet.

Re:Idealism

[Pig Hogger]

There is a difference between the citizens of a country knowing every detail of the government's actions and a country that is actively against many of those actions knowing. The problem is that most of the people I hear from seem to think that if everyone just would calm down, smoke some weed together and such that we would all be friends. No more adversaries... Right.

Perhaps if you started to smoke some weed, people would stop seeing you as an aggressor and a plunderer, too. You oughta get out of your SUV and walk more.

Re:Idealism

[badmammajamma]

Oh please...this shit is taught to every fucking person in the military (E1 and up). I know this because they taught it to me in basic training. This is not a new, interesting, or even insightful. EVERYONE who his given access to ANY classified material is taught about how information can be obtained in a puzzle piece fashion. Consequently, if news organizations or anyone else publishes information that they should not, it's simply a matter of someone fucking up and not doing their job of keeping their traps shut.

There's a huge difference between "open and transparent" and accidental release of classified material and you better be very careful about it because the consolation prise is fascism. Please don't come here and spew this shit in broad brush strokes about how we need to keep quiet. Classified information IS kept quiet. People who fail to keep classified information quiet should be prosecuted (and usually are unless you are Dick Cheyney) as traitors or whatever is appropriate.

If the choice is between a more open government and the possibility of releasing some potentially valuable information on occassion and a closed government with a very low chance of releasing valuable info, I will take the open one, thank you. You can keep your fascist utopia for yourself.