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CNN Website Targeted by DoS
antifoidulus writes "CNN is reporting that they were the target of a Denial of Service attack yesterday. According to the article, there have been reports on Asian tech sites that Chinese hackers were targeting CNN for their coverage of the unrest in Tibet. One has to wonder if this hacking attempt was government sponsored or not. The Chinese government hasn't been very happy with CNN -- in fact, the Beijing Bureau Chief has been summoned about a day before this happened."
Attacks of this kind are usually distributed over a "botnet" so not from one particular geographical location. The amount of traffic needed to affect a large scale property such as CNN would effectively clog the bandwidth for a country like China so they would be affecting hundreds of millions of users just to allow a singular hit. That is why distributed attacks are more common.
"after so many years of communist rule, it is hard for Chinese people to make a distinction between government, communist party, policy and country"
Couldn't disagree more. As a UK born Chinese I can honestly say it more about the sheer hypocrisy of the west and also the 'way' in which those protests against the torch were carried out. Just to set the background, I was born in the UK, have some English relatives, went to public school etc. and probably speak better English than 99% of English that you find on the high street. For all intents and purposes I am 'British'. I am also very aware of my cultural identity and ties and am very comfortable in both environments. However for all my Britishness, the way that western media have portrayed this whole saga has been very disturbing for me. So much so that I am actively questioning my loyalties to the UK and the west in general.
We are all aware of human rights abuses in China (yes, even the Chinese in China) but the fact is if you go there you will see that the great majority of people are happy and grateful to the government for raising them out of poverty. What westerners can't grasp is how people can have such loyalty to a communist government. But that is a westerners' view through western tinted glasses and I can't help but feel there is lingering colonial attitude to the idea that somehow western democracy is the only way to govern and whether you like it or not, you "other countries" should have it as well regardless of what the majority of people in the country think. The fact is the relationship between the Chinese population and the Chinese government is much more, shall we say paternal. We do recognise that there needs to be change but that change must be at "our" pace, not yours. China has achieved more since opening up than almost any other country in history has in the same amount of time, but even that is not enough, the time scales most Chinese think about for democracy is in terms of 30-50 years. Not tomorrow or next month or next year. For some reason what took centuries to achieve in western democracies by western demand, must occur overnight in China. That of course doesn't preclude it from being possible but it is not necessarily desirable. China looks at the incredible instability that the break up of the USSR brought about and it nerve wracking not just for China but also for all the neighbouring countries.
On the subject of Tibet, it is not as simple as "Free"ing Tibet as so many band wagon jumpers have proclaimed. The fact is the histories are intimately tied and in addition to that Tibet has one vital resource that China absolutely cannot do without. Water. Both the Yangtze and Yellow river are sourced from the Tibetan plateau. An independent Tibet means there is no longer a guaranteed source of water. Without that, you have a country the size of the US without a major source of water. So what do you do? If you allow the break up of a unified China, you lose control of your source of water and run the risk of 50+ ethnicities all going there separate ways. You also lose control of all the nuclear weapons and have to deal with the ensuing headache. Those that say talking to the Dalai Lama is the solution also only have half the story. The Dalai Lama only speaks for a section of the exiled Tibetan community. Although he states his aims are an "autonomous" region with true autonomy, there is firstly no accounting for mission creep - give an inch take a yard, and secondly he does not speak for the Tibetan Youth movement who demand full sovereign status. The two entities are entirely at odds with each other. What is more the Dalai will die eventually; the youth movement will outlive him so it is their demands that have to be dealt with. So speaking to the Dalai Lama does not lead to a solution, it leads to maybe half a solution whilst he lives but would ultimately, with his death (insert reincarnation joke here!), lead to demands for fully sovereignty which, given the resource at stake is not acceptable.
Much is also made of the non interve