Slashdot Mirror
Chinese Government Accused of Hacking Congress
Alotau writes "Chinese hacking is getting some serious Congressional attention. Two House members said Wednesday their Capitol Hill computers, containing information about political dissidents from around the world, have been hacked by sources apparently working out of China. Virginia Rep. Frank Wolf says four of his computers were hacked. New Jersey Rep. Chris Smith says two of his computers were compromised in December 2006 and March 2007. The two lawmakers are longtime critics of China's record on human rights."
The U.S. makes a lot of money off doing business with China, something like $386 billion in 2007. Retailers like Walmart and Target, manufacturers of every description, and shippers all have a huge stake in U.S.-China trade, even though China enjoys a growing surplus with the U.S.
Under these circumstances, it's not surprising that some mischievous hacking of Congressional computers is overlooked by the people who are supposed to care about such things. Where it gets more serious is the hacking of Pentagon systems that seems to be originating from sites in China.
China's government today is trying to juggle a growing nationalism among younger Chinese, a nationalism that is not friendly toward the West and the U.S. in particular, despite our close economic ties. They have fostered a hostile attitude toward the U.S. through years of propaganda, and this, too, the Americans have ignored in the interests of making money.
It will be interesting to see what happens come the day that China's huge internal market is affluent enough and their technology level high enough that they no longer need the U.S. as either a customer or investor. But in the meantime, it would be advisable for these Congressmen and other officials like Carlos Gutierrez (whose laptop was compromised during a trip to Beijing) to switch away from easily hacked systems like Microsoft Windows, and maybe keep their systems offline or only on a secured and firewalled intranet.
I also think that the U.S. government should not be using home computers like Dells running Windows. The hardware components are largely manufactured in China these days and who knows what evil back doors might be implanted in ROMs, akin to the compromised printers that were shipped to Iraq from the U.S. in the pre-Gulf War days.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Most of the rest of us get cheap inferior crap, lead poisoning, manufacturing sectors out-sourced, and jobs greeting people at Wal-Mart. I am not the least surprised by this China is on a bid to become the dominant super power through what ever means necessary, the only thing they have in their way is the United States (there are others above them, but not as far). Therefore by keeping tabs on and gradually infiltrating the US they advance their way to dominant status. I just wish some people other than us left-wing nutjobs would actually start looking at this and thinking about it.
Like arts? Like cheesy little Indie mags? Check out www.artwerkmag.com, and don't laugh at the bad coding please.
Having not read TFA but read the summary, it only says that they were working out of China. That could mean that any person in China with access to a computer and *possibly* access beyond the great firewall of China could have done it. The summary sounds like if a US hacker hacked the Chinese government it would have to be the US government and not some ordinary hacker.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
inb4 war with china also inb4 the US gets wtfpwnt by china
would be to author software to circumvent chinese censorship, and distribute it widely
shouldn't be too hard to distribute, just hack in
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
But as we see in the business world, even though there are technologies that are 10000X superior to what you are currently using and may even cost less, those in upper management will complain that it isn't familiar and they might have to learn something new. I wouldn't see anything different in this case.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
So what makes China any different. Lobbyist groups have been "hacking" congress for ages.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Am I missing out on something here, you're responding to a post that seem to be calling Windows an insecure operating system by saying that the author was hired by microsoft.
the congressmen should have realized a sock shoved in the "series of tubes" would have been an effective countermeasure.
Sheesh! Politicians these days. They don't know anything.
Jebus...can we leave the OS wars out of it? Just this once?
From the line you quoted, it sounds like they had physical access to the machine to do the copying. Any and every OS will fall if you have the thing in your hands.
I know how it happened: These congresspeople received an anonymous gift of a Chinese-manufactured digital photo frame shortly before their Windows-based PC's were compromised. It seemed harmless enough at the time!
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
An unpatched hole in winders grabbed by malware brandx served up from the cn tld does not rise to the level of hacking in my book.
Because I think its going to be a useful skill given the way the wing is blowing.
Only a few years ago the eclipsing of the US by China was seen as a far off, ad even an unlikely, contingency. Now it is looking almost certain. They've quietly kept their heads down, developing their economy and their military, whilst the US has blown trillions of dollars on a pointless war, fumbled its economy and trashed its international reputation.
What kind of superpower can't do anything in response to such an open violation of its national security? It is the same kind of powerlessness that was demonstrated by the UK when the Russians openly murdered someone in the middle of London and we did nothing of consequence.
We in the west have squandered our soft power and shown our hard power to be just about adequate for securing two barely armed third world shitholes. This fact hasn't been missed by Russia and China.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Let's kill two birds with one stone here.
Yes. It's quite clever. MS hires a bunch of long haired hippies to rant and rave about Linux and vaguely mention insecure operating systems (notice that they didn't mention any names). Soon government types will get tired of hearing the rants, especially if they get associated with terrorists or communists (notice how they chose Bastile Linux, which is clearly playing on the US's odd aversion to anything coming out of France). A few well placed reports on how All American MS Windows is "more secure" than this foreign based, communist/terrorist Linux, and Boom! Government sales out the YinYang.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I bet those computers weren't running Ubuntu. :-)
Attention! CODE RED
Hacked By Chinese!
I have a server the size of a double CD case locked in a dark generator shed on a tiny island miles from anywhere that sits alone 9 months of the year reporting battery bank voltages to me.... Chinese hackers attempt to break into it several times a day.
The fact is, there is a metric shitload of Chinese hackers out there. Just because you think you are something special doesn't mean they are targeting you.
(of course the hacker may not be from China, they are just using a machine in China as the most recent hop.)
Duhhh. More congressional stupidity. Let's put confidential or secret information on a Windows PC that's connected to the Internet. Duhhhhhhhhhhh.
Those morons should be impeached.
OTOH, I am pretty much totally in favor of firewalling off all of China's IP address space...
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
Exactly! This is why sensitive data should not be stored locally on laptops, and if it absolutely must be on there it should be highly encrypted. Microsoft doesn't ship an OS at it's highest security, but a competent administrator can finish the job (albeit sometimes with 3rd party tools).
Suppose China were found unequivocally guilty by this congressional hearing, what kind of punishment/sanction is our pro-business government (both parties) going to impose? There'll surely be economical retaliation and Walmark are not going to like that.
Just like suppose Windows were found to be running on most of the hacked computer, is our government going to to tough enough to demand replacing all our military computers with something more secure? Not when a multi billion contractor from Redmond has anything to say about it.
This raises another point. Surely our enemies with resource (and computer resource is cheap and abundant) are going to try to hack us. Shouldn't we be more focused on securing our system: something we can do pro-actively. Instead of blaming the attacker, over whom we have to jurisdiction (or unwilling) to punish, shouldn't we punish those people who leave us vulnerable here, at home, when we are paying them shit load of tax money to secure our infrastructure? And if the infrastructure is to blame, should we blame congress?
The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the 'social sciences' is: some do, some don't
Our congress is the most inept, pathetic, and treasonous part of our government. Nearly as bad as Dick Cheney himself. Attacking us there is really like hitting below the belt. WTF?
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
In any case, they had physical access to the machine, so unless you're encrypting the HDD, it's game over. Your stock Debian laptop would have been compromised as quickly as the one with Windows XP. Bastille Linux is just the same type of protection that can be had for Windows if you want or need it, and I'm guessing in this case they do want and need it. But it's not Windows' fault, and it's not Microsoft's fault, no matter how much you want that to be the case.
The twitter monologues. Click on my homepage and be amazed.
Okay, considering what I know about hacking, how do you 'hack' your way into a laptop? I bet the real truth of the situation is that these two users installed some malware or other malicious files on their computers, that pushed sensitive data out, or at least gave them a back door rather than hackers 'hacking' it out. But using the word hacking sounds more sensational.
And it isn't even a democracy, so how exactly does a user of a computer on a Chinese subnet equate to the Chinese government? Furthermore, the US Air Force has public advertisements for hacking positions on national tv, it's not as if the USA's government is above hacking.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Hmm, have subscribed slashdot all day, found the common Chinese Logic: China: GFW, Human rights, democracy, hacking, red-commie
Why are there Congressional computers with lists of political dissidents from around the world on them? Should I have checked 'Post Anonymously'?
Physical access will get them what if whole disk encryption was used? Hasn't that been a feature of Bastile Linux for five years?
Does working out of China mean they work FOR the Chinese government? Or is it just speculation?
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
Unlike his claim that anyone who disagrees with him must work for Microsoft, I don't actually believe that. But the fact that someone would actually consider it is bad enough.
Instead of changing his behavior though, he just creates more sockpuppets (three of which have already posted in this thread), garnering even more derision and ridicule in the process.
The twitter monologues. Click on my homepage and be amazed.
This has been happening since China first got IP space. Their defense department was the origin of their first (very amateurish) hacks, those against pro-Tibet web sites. Thousands have happened since and have been reported, and it's no more likely to end than any other intrusions.
If the US wanted it to stop they'd put up honey pots with credible but artificial data and then wait for it to get used. This is how you catch the intruder and protect the real data at the same time. And the US knows this. This is first semester psyops. Fact is, they're almost certainly doing it, making this announcement utterly meaningless. And it is, unless you stick around for second semester psyops. That's when they teach you how to craft a story that makes such a big splash that something more important but entirely unrelated gets missed.
The present administration rarely hides its efforts along these lines, or Jon Stewart wouldn't have nearly as much material to work with. It's when something is really threatening to them that they work in the grey. Just as a possible for instance, in how many sources can you find this story, and in how many can you find the story of Kucinich's reading of articles of impeachment? And which is the more important story?
When something gets way too much coverage than it deserves, look around and see what's not getting enough. It'll be there because they can't make it go away. All they can do is tie a bell around the media's neck and wait for the sheeple to follow it.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
"westbake" is one sock-puppet account of a notorious troll named Twitter. Most folks object to his hijacking of threads because he uses nine other accounts to hold conversations with himself and trick moderators into believing an actual exchange of ideas is occurring. A signature clue to his posts include the excessive use of M$ for Microsoft and his terminology for their OS: Windoze.
Here is a journal entry listing Twitter's sockpuppets: http://slashdot.org/~willyhill/journal/204399
I use GNU/Linux myself, but think this guy detracts from the discourse with his knee-jerk argument that Microsoft is pure evil.
twitter (and twitter I guess... uh), please read my reply to your original post. This is not about what OS you use, but what tools you use with your OS to secure your data effectively. It's not useful to turn this into another "Microsoft sucks!" diatribe.
The twitter monologues. Click on my homepage and be amazed.
I wouldn't think that cracking the pc of the average Congressman would be all that challenging. A bit of spearphishing and you're in.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
All the other governments just wait for another former White House aide to write a book. Or Bob Woodward to dump the contents of his latest stack of notebooks onto the Barnes and Noble "new releases" shelf.
I work at a place that is routinely attacked. As someone else noted there's a load of hackers in china, most script kiddies, but when you work at a nice juicy target you get thousands more hits. Where I work I've watched the hack attempts come in and regardless of other posts saying "Oh, China's actual government would be more careful", most of the time they are pretty brazen, easily traceable and there isn't a damn thing we can do about it. We tried to run it up the chain once and after a lot of complaining we got sat down and told:
"Even if we confront someone from the Chinese government they'll just look at us and deny it."
but we have the logs.
"They'll say we faked them."
but we'll let them pull the logs themselves.
"They'll say that we are staging the attacks to frame the chinese."
I didn't have a response to this.
"We've done this before. Don't feel bad. Everyone who gets assigned to monitoring thinks they will be the first person to prove the chinese government is allowing its employees to target us. You get used to it after a while. Next year come to the import meeting and we'll let you hear how we are obviously setting up insecure servers just to tempt moral citizens to hack us." said the PHB.
George Bush and his crew of incompetence have NOTHING on the chinese when it comes to flat out lying, ignoring evidence, and blaming the target of the attacks.
gnutoo and westbake are both the same person
Is it really all that difficult to conceive of disposing of the nation state? Now that we live in an age of a global society, what do nations do for us? Do they not just divide us and make us fear each other? Enter open source governance and the metascore open source project. Instead of having Chinese hackers and Rep. Smith fighting it out on the net, why not have everyone all in the same mix?
Bastile-Linux. Great tool. It doesn't prevent you from booting the laptop with knoppix or something of the like, then mounting the drive and dd'ing it. They should be using multi-tier'd security for any system that leaves the premises. With considerations for different types of attack vectors. Physical and virtual. JMO. Also... If they can fry the electronics in a plane with the flip of a switch why can't they make the laptops self destruct when something cracks or penetrates the case? You could easily kill anything that would of had data on it by frying it if someone tries to remove it. Or better yet... Don't carry a laptop with data on it. Get the data via some secure channel and have it armed with a TTL, so it removes itself from existance. But what do I know, all my important stuff lives on the flash drive in my pocket and its encrypted.
I notice the article doesn't mention if any of the data on these computers was encrypted. It's one thing to hack into a Windows desktop. It's quite another to have to break a 1024-bit AES cipher to actually make use of the data you find. This should be (yet another) wakeup call that any data of any importance should be encrypted with a strong cipher. It's not like it's difficult to do, and it's not like the software is expensive (TrueCrypt, anyone?). I encrypt all my personal data, and if it was compromised, worst case scenario my identity might be stolen. These idiots (sorry, that's Representatives...) are storing personal information about political dissidents and refugees. If THAT data is compromised, worst case scenario people get killed, and entire political movements are quashed by force.
What is this, the new terrorist scare? Instead of the war on drugs and the war on poverty and the war on unjust 3rd world regimes, will they have the war on information theft and intellectual property theft? Is this Bush rallying for a 3rd term?
You're replying to your own posts with sockpuppet accounts. The ONLY possible reason that you're doing this is that you KNOW you are utterly incapable of making a legitimate argument, and must therefore LIE to make it look like you have a shred of credibility.
You don't even do a good job of hiding the fact that you're cheerleading yourself.
You are PRO-Microsoft, far more than even you claim your critics are.
Sorry, they could have been running a fully locked down setup that even the legitimate END USER has trouble getting into, and it wouldn't make any difference.
If they were able to get the laptop long enough to copy the system, you're screwed either way.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
We have nothing on China. According to the BBC's annual poll of nations opinions of other nations influence, 90% of Chinese think China has a positive influence on the world. Ninety percent. That's not only provocative, but outrageous. That's surely similar to 1940s-era America, hardly like now, where only 56% of Americans believe that America has a positive influence on the world.
China has an unquestionable horrifying nationalism problem. This can be seen in issues such as Tibet and Taiwan. What's troubling isn't that Chinese want Tibet and Taiwan to be part of China, I can view that as acceptable. What isn't acceptable, however, are such obvious propaganda-induced lines of reasoning such as "Tibet has always been a part of China and forever will be a part of China." Not only is that false -- Tibet was its own country until China marched in there 50 years ago and took it, but that's how it works in war; winner takes all. But then the Chinese government proceeded to educate their entire 1+ billion population that, indeed, Tibet had always been a part of China, and that anyone who questioned otherwise was not Chinese and was siding with the Dalai Lama, who isn't even human.
Another Nationalism-brought issue outlined by the BBC poll is its hatred of Japan. There are only two important countries in the world that hate Japan -- China and South Korea. One might argue that it's because of Japan's war-time atrocities that they never properly atoned for. They have apologized many times, however poorly, and Japan is not elegant in international relations. That said, my argument is, East Asia was hugely and negatively affected by the Japanese Empire. China and South Korea aren't the only countries affected with horrendous atrocities. But why then, have all of the other South-East nations forgiven Japan, but China and South Korea haven't? Only 12% of Chinese carry a positive view of Japan's influence on the world -- not opinion of Japan, but opinion of the positiveness of Japan's influence on the world. Whereas in Taiwan, Japan's very popular culturally, even though many elderly people still speak Japanese from being forced to learn it during occupation!
And my last argument -- Anti-Anti-Chinese protests? VIOLENT Anti-Anti-Chinese protests, with prevalent stalking and death threats of anyone that criticized China? C'mon, that's pitiful.
And to any Chinese that might be reading this, my message would be that there's nothing wrong with being proud to be Chinese. There's nothing wrong with wanting the Chinese people to be united and patriotic. But people and government are separate. Just because you're Chinese doesn't mean you have to defend your government for no other reason than that it's my government, just how Americans don't have to defend President Bush just because he's my President. Nationalism is good in small doses for the morale of a country, but in large quantities like currently present in China, war is almost certainly inevitable. Think about the nationalism of 1940s America, 1940s Japan, 1940s Nazi Germany (hah, Godwin's law strikes again!). Unchecked Nationalism only brings horror and foolish decisions, all for the sake of being Chinese, or being American, or being Japanese, or being German.
Unfortunately there seems to be a Fight Club-like rule that talking about twitter in a thread where he's posting with five different accounts is a big no-no. You're a troll and offtopic if you dare do that. But twitter's OK, he just replies to himself with as many accounts as he can and rack up the karma, since he gets modded down on sight whenever he posts with his original account (and that tells you a lot about his standing around here).
"Moderate the post, not the poster" is all well and good, except when you're posting as five different people. I don't see how difficult it is to figure out that westbake, gnutoo and Odder on this thread are the same person (and more on the way, no doubt).
Maybe I'll get me some sockpuppets and do the same. Who knows, maybe I'll be popular and cool. But this is just bizarre.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Well, that's what you get for not using OpenBSD. =)
It's not just money, it's not because they're a political adversary. It's because they can do it, and get away with it. They know we won't do squat.
Our supposed friends do the same sorts of things.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Your theory would be true if it were 1970's now. I have not heard much anti-West or anti-US propaganda from the government since then. As you said, the Chinese enterprises, many are state-owned or creating lot of jobs, have been profiting from US-China trades. Why would smart business organizations like the Chines government kill their golden goose?
Rather, the new trend of anti-West nationalism seems triggered by Western media from CNN to Slashdot -- the Chinese are just pissed off by the seeming biased and inaccurate coverages of those media outlets. Why are these coverage bias? Just read the TFA. How can any reasonable person blame, or even hint, that in the era of email spam and malwares, some unknown hacking from an IP address within China as state-sponsor "activities" while there are many many other possibilities? And not to mention, we have read these unprovable accusations every other week for the past 3 years.
No no, guys this is our government. You know, the one that thought DES was secure. The government that keeps "losing" veteran records. The same that thought you could delete IE just by dragging a desktop shortcut to the trash bin and then actually bought the argument that the web browser is an integral part of the operating system. Maybe they need systems a little more appropriate for their level - how about a bunch of XO's?
I, for one, welcome our new Chinese masters... On a related note, Falun-gong is simply the chinese version of scientology; and the public outcry about it's repression is a lesson for those in the states who think a harder stance should be taken re: Tom Cruise. Discuss.
Jebus...can we leave the OS wars out of it? Just this once?
No, we can't. And we shouldn't.
People in the government are putting life-critical and national-security-critical information on computers driven by a software system that is notorious for a multi-decade history of being riddled with security holes, some of which are architectural and unfixable.
Doing this - and CONTINUING to do this when they should know better - is a major part of the issue under discussion.
In this case it has resulted in the disclosure of the identities of dissidents to the intelligence agencies of foreign governments who wish them eliminated. This will probably result in a number of incarcerations, tortures, and deaths.
In other cases it may even lead to outcomes as serious as the US losing a war, being conquered, or being destroyed.
This is an important issue. Failing to fix it may result the deaths of multiple millions of people and creating a future consisting of a jackboot on humanity's neck for generations to come.
For us to refrain from discussing it because you're sick of "OS wars" would be beyond criminal. It only lacks a declaration of war to qualify as treason.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Are you serious? Or were you going for the funny mod here?
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Stay off the pr0n sites and stop using IE on windows ME but would they listen ... NOOOOOOOOOO!
Whole disk encryption fails if you have physical access to the running machine, as the keys are in memory somewhere, but it's certainly better than nothing.
It's not at all hard to use whole disk encryption with a Windows laptop. The complaint here should be "why wasn't the laptop encrypted", not "why was it running an unfashionable OS".
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
No, actually, the "Solitaire dig" was hilarious. I almost spit my half-chewed pretzel all over my keyboard, when I read it. :-)
... snort!
Nevertheless, you are right: Even a Windows machine can be secure, and even a Linux machine will be compromised if physical access is possible and the data is not encrypted.
Still: "... never intended to store anything more important than Solitaire". HAHAHAHAHA
And the same things have been said about unpatched Windows without an anti-virus. About how easy it is for spyware and keyloggers to help steal your identity, about how they will ruin your OS install, about how they contribute to spam, slow down your computer, etc. Still, I run into unpatched Windows installs with no anti-virus will probably hundreds of types of malware on the machine. These people probably see their machine as insignificant, and think that the laptop they have will never get a virus, will never get stolen, will never have a security breach ever in it's lifetime because they are the *insert high ranking official here* or think that because they don't go to *insert website here* or use *insert anti-virus here* or even have *insert names of tech-support people and sysadmins* working for me nothing can go bad! Basically, it is the "it won't happen to me" syndrome.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Is it really all that difficult to conceive of disposing of the nation state? Now that we live in an age of a global society, what do nations do for us? ...
You are in much the same position as a cow or sheep proposing to get rid of farmers.
It's easy to conceive of getting rid of nation states. It's really hard to do it. The people in power raise, herd, milk, and slaughter the bulk of the population for their own benefit. Part of this process is culling from the herd those "rogues" who attempt to change the situation, before more of the herd starts following them.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I know many native chinese and have even been to Beijing. I can say that you should take Mandarin if you want to learn more about Chinese culture or because you want to travel there, not because your afraid of China becoming a super-power. They're not super-powering anywhere yet.
The same cultural factors that cause them to ship lead paint based toys and glycol laced toothpaste affects them too. It's called corruption. For one thing, the whole place is an environmental disaster. For another, if you look at building quality there it's the same thing -- buildings in China that have been made 15 years ago look like they were made 50 years ago, with water stains and poor quality maintenance. A good example of this? Look at the school buildings that fell down in the earthquake, bricks that fell apart like sand, rotten supports, etc. etc. etc. Classic corruption at work. This also extends to their military.
Let's put it this way, in the U.S. we have occasional overt corruption of politicians and government officials (notably the current administration and their no-bid contracts to Halliburton in Iraq, etc.), and some institutionalized corruption such as lobbying, but it's nothing like China. Imagine politicians like Bush and Cheney, or the democratic congressman with the $90k in his refrigerator were the norm. from the state to local level. Nothing would work, everyone would be promoted due to loyalty rather than competence. In the U.S. there's been tremendous damage just from seven years of the current adminstration, but think about what the country would look like after 50 years of it: that's China. So yeah, if the Chinese were to suddenly change their culture and make it dishonorable to be corrupt rather than just get caught, we'd have problems but as it is China is going nowhere fast.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
GOOD. Maybe they can get some fucking work done.
of making themselves unpopular... poison pet food, tons of recalled lead based painted toys etc etc
.. accidents? greed? the chinese think in decades, americans think in seconds.
chinese recall -- search pulls 600k results, here's a few of the first ones listed:
bad tires
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11433244
shit at starbucks
http://www.forbes.com/2007/10/10/starbucks-china-recalls-markets-equity-cx_ml_1010markets29.html
lead-based ink on fortune cookies (funny/deadly)
http://isophorone.blogspot.com/2007/11/chinese-recall-fortune-cookies.html
a few haphazardly chosen selections, i'm sure there are many more, and its amazing that as soon as shit like this happens the executives either "kill themselves" or are executed openly and yet the shit continues
China is the biggest threat the world and the us and
By buying at Wal-Mart, you are helping the poor workers in the 3rd-world country.
By bashing wal-mart, you are just helping rich Jews to world domination. Communism is their tool. Don't fall for it.
The government has more secure systems for people's laptops, like Bastile Linux, and should be using them instead of a consumer grade OS that was never intended to store anything more important than Solitair.
Ah. Been using that Bastille Linux spell checker again, have we?
Good point. Let us all act like sheep and never conceive of life without orders from our betters. That is, after all, the safe way to go. Baaaaaa. Baa.
There was an article on Slashdot main page about machines in China being taken over by Russians to conduct campaigns related to the GPcode virus. This "congress hacking" could be the same thing. Just remember people in China are just started to use Internet. When 90% (I estimate) of the Chinese internet population use $3 versions of Windows XP, don't expect they practice common sense on protecting their machine from viruses.
"The New Age. The New Beginning."
mmmm, USA bugs UN Phone system, and complain about hacking attempts from China, Do you people really think that the USA is not doing this???
Garbage In - Garbage Out anyone?
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
What do you consider funny about the incarceration, torture and murder of dissidents in China? It is sickening that a government that so often stonewalls it's own citizens is using software that leakes the same information to it's worst enemies. It's sad incompetence which does real harm to people.
I am a name troll of Westlake. Visit my homepage to learn why.
Any computer is vulnerable if you give someone physical access to it, unless the hard disk is encrypted. Even then, it's just a matter of time.
However, the article talks about computers being hacked over the internet. I'd bet they were using Windows and MS Office. They should be using a government certified version of Linux or Unix, built from source.
We shouldn't forget that the US and probably every other Western country with the capacity is spying on and hacking into China.
Sure this doesn't makes China's stuff any better, but this China is the only evil on earth is just as much propaganda as they get over there.
Well ... duh, did the Chinese government try it's hand at some cyberspying? Perhaps, perhaps not. Well, I reckon it's their *job* to try and break into systems (if foolishly left unsecured) from friendly old Uncle Sam, to try and glean "sensitive" information.
Does anyone really doubt that some arm of the US government is doing exactly the same thing as we "speak" - trying to break into critical systems of "rivals" and "allies"?
(see subject)
not much to store, eh?
How is that more secure than a default install of Ubuntu 8.04 with all ports closed and no services running? OpenBSD is totally irrelevant when writing documents... Oh and BTW... OpenBSD is running services by default, so it's even less secure than Ubuntu...
Here be signatures
Or do you feel it unsporting to try to find out any chinese spies or moles in your government buildings?
Some excellent points.
./ readers are angrily thinking of ripostes; "China/Japan has always treated Japan/China badly!"
My wife is Japanese. Her mother has visited China several times and is learning Mandarin. But two things I know better than to do is attempt to discuss whaling, or Japan's actions in China during the war.
The Chinese population may well be indoctrinated but they're not the only ones. Try and find a Japanese school book which examines - honestly - Japan's history as it pertains to WW2. Good luck with that.
Japanese people do not learn about such subjects and they are perfectly happy and content to remain blissfully ignorant of such things. Out of sight, out of mind.
My Chinese friends believe that China is as good as it gets, but they are no worse than my American friends in that regard: Just be a foreigner and criticise the US to see even the most leftie-liberal Yank's eyes flash with anger.
Asian cultures seem to have much longer collective memories than most others. Japan and China will use truly ancient historical events as examples of why we should hate their enemies too.
I love my Asian family and friends with a passion. They are intellectual and sophisticated in ways too many westerners aren't. I wouldn't be without them. But, yeah, like the rest of us, they have their faults and resorting to rampant Xenophobia at unfortunate moments (such as anytime) is one of them. An unwillingness to accept that they could ever be wrong about any of the perceived threats and offences of the other is another dismaying issue.
Even now, Chinese and Japanese
I don't see attitudes changing any time soon.
No. It's propaganda. Or rather, strategy. Modern China is largely a result of the great Dr. Sun Yat-Sen. For a concrete example (ha ha ha, please shoot me) he wrote a detailed plan in his book The International Development of China a plan for the building of the Three Gorges Dam (in 1929!)
Anyway, in his VERY popular book The Three Principles of the People the concept of nationalism is highly stressed. It was his opinion that nationalism was the most important element in destroying the Confucian family-clan loyalty that he believed had held China back. He also (correctly) believed that it built powerful societies (which WW2 Japan, Germany, America and Italy all proved correct.)
If there is anything which makes Americans look like jackasses, it's the idiots like Nancy Pelosi who go over there and lecture the Chinese about Tibet. For one thing, Tibet has been part of China in several periods of Chinese history. Secondly, America was a moderately imperialist nation (Hawaii Anyone?) For us to lecture Chinese about Tibet is like inviting George Bush to teach English or Bill Clinton to give a sober lecture on the moral purity of abstinence.
I think that's basically what you're saying, anyway.
I do have to take issue with your vague assertion that "the US has not exactly made friends throughout the world recently." We have one tenth of the number of sworn enemies we had just fifty years ago. Hell, China makes every damned thing you can buy at Wal-Mart. Fifty years ago they fully intended to kill us (the Vietnam war was largely a war between China and the United States.) Now, they simply intend to humiliate us by making so much money they buy us out. And I hope that they do.
It's important to remember that governments do not matter, people matter. The actual end results are what matters. This is the problem with nationalism. Liberty matters, governments do not. Liberty matters, nationality does not.
And those in the West to criticize China on this issue are often entirely ignorant of the gross infringements on our liberty here in the west.
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. - Hunter S. Thompson
Think you should make the link where twitter admits his actions much more prominent. A casual glance would suggest the link goes to a page defining sockpuppets for the uninformed folks.
Even I with my limited knowledge about how one can hide one's tracks on the internet, even I know that it is exceedingly easy. I'm sure if the Chinese government has a number of cyber-operatives hacking into American servers, they will be a bit more knowledgeable about these things than I am. In fact, wouldn't the most reasonable approach be to not do it from somewhere in China? Or even better, not be so clumsy that you leave dirty fingerprints all over a second-rate politician's Windows machine.
A much more likely scenario, if you ask me, is that this is either a simple, barefaced lie, or it is somebody who has spoofed his address to somewhere in China, which is not at all hard: Just hack into a machine in China, then go from there.
Seriously, who wants to guess on the astronomical chances this isn't actually "hacking" - but more like a few lawmakers, senators, *judges* were surfing porn or clicked the "free ipod for you!" ad, got some malware installed, which was traced back to the one of thirty bajillion malware servers in China, and because its something to do with info security that they don't understand, it's automatically "I got H4X3D!"
Didn't Marx say something to that effect about Capitalism? We have ignored our own infrastructure and manufacturing capacity for so long that we're tied to the iceberg that is sinking us. I'm homeschooling our kids and teaching them Mandarin as a survival mechanism for working with our Chinese overlords in the next 50 years or so.
As for the hatred of Japan, China and Korea were horrendously treated by Japan. The crimes Japan committed in China, for example, made the very worst behavior of the Nazis seem like simple childish pranks in comparison. Japan's Prime Ministers occasionally offer heavily qualified apologies, while the officially sanctioned history books for Japanese school children continue to paint Japan's occupation of China as being charity for the Chinese people.
Japan has yet to face up to its own history, and until the Japanese do in concrete terms, the Chinese and Koreans are completely justified in treating the Japanese with deep suspicion.
Additionally, it is often hard for people to separate outside criticism of their government from criticism of their country. For a close-to-home example, what happened when the French criticized America's invasion of Iraq? "Freedom Fries" and "Shut up, you cheese-eating surrender monkeys!" When the world's model democracy and shining example of "Freedom" gets it so wrong, how can you criticize the Chinese?
As for Tibet being an "independent" nation prior to 1950, touch up on your history a little. The position of Dalai Lama has been one that was vetted, vetoed or outright appointed by the Chinese government since the position of "Dalai Lama" was created by Kublai Khan in the 13th century. Being that Tibet was "governed" through theocratic feudalism until recently, being able to influence the religious head of the church there gave China all the control they ever needed over the province. However, by the 1950's, it was time to start paving roads, building schools, hospitals, water treatment plants and the like. The feudal theocracy with nominal authority in the region was incapable of accomplishing this, so they had to be removed from direct control. The aristocracy didn't like this, so they rebelled, but failed to attract the support of the Tibetan population, which caused the rebellion to fail miserably, despite financial and strategic support from the CIA. Not wanting to actually, like, get jobs, the former Tibetan aristocracy bolted to India and America, where they've been living on welfare ever since.
It is easy to hate on the player that seems to be the indestructible juggernaut, and from a Western perspective that is what China seems to be. But realize that from the Chinese perspective, they are the underdog struggling against impossible odds and succeeding. The fact is that the Chinese perspective is the more accurate one.
Finally, Western nations conduct espionage against China. . .No one will claim that isn't happening and no one will claim it is wrong. Why get hypocritical and indignant about China doing the same?
Final note: You are right to be worried about unchecked nationalism, but you are wrong to think that China is the major threat to the world because of it. The Chinese have accomplished a great deal and have a right to be proud of their accomplishments, but if you think that their anti-anti Chinese protests are inappropriate, then justify the fact that most of the anti-Chinese protesters in Japan couldn't speak Japanese (or Tibetan) and, likewise, that few of the anti-Chinese protesters at the Olympic torch relay in Seoul, Korea could speak Korean (or Tibetan)? I was at both, and this issue completely floored me. If Americans and Brits are going to go to Japan or Korea to attack China, i
Assuming these were targeted more specifically than "Congressional Computers," it is interesting to note that this could easily be criminal crackers as opposed to national crackers--Rep. Smith was a fairly substantial motivating force behind the US Government's Anti-Trafficking legislation.
Note that's anti-Human Trafficking, as opposed to anti-Drug Trafficking; slavery is one of the largest criminal enterprises in the world, and people with a financial interest in it suffer, somewhat, from the consequences of legislation Smith introduced.
That doesn't necessarily mean it is cracking by or on behalf of slave-traders, of course; they've been hurt, slightly, by some Congressional action and some consequent State Department action, but I'm not sure what the financial advantage of the crack would be, and criminals usually go for those.
Still, some of the people involved clearly have strong ties to criminal organizations with significant cracking experience, so it's worth noting the possible connection.
Thousands are enslaved every day. A River of In
Were these actually attempts at hacking by the Chinese or were members of Congress guilty of letting porn-site-distributed spyware get onto their workstations?
Good! The more top people hacked and damaged by hackers, vandals, spyware, viruses, malware, the better. Hell, I oughtta start emailing bombs to he whole Congress!
Because the sooner the FBI and other agencies get active (and we start getting laws with teeth) against these bastiges, the sooner the problem will maybe be addressed.
I'm so sick of cleaning viruses and spyware off PCs (I work in a computer repair shop, and it's easily 50% of our workload), I could puke!
And it's a no-brainer identifying the culprits and miscreants too. Just follow the money, see where the viruses and spyware come from, and where they "phone home" (as most of them do).
Damage must be in the billions (repair costs, time lost, damaged and lost data), yet the Feds do nothing.
That's stating the blindingly obvious. If whole-disk encryption worked any other way, you wouldn't be able to get any info on or off the computer even while it was running..?
You thought you could break the laws of physics without paying the PRICE?
HACKED BY CHINESE
Actually it's 'deadzero' that is twitter's sockpuppet, it's meant to be a parody of 'dedazo'. Unless you're one too.. who even knows anymore. Twitter should be a politician or an actor if he thinks he's so entertaining when talking to himself..
which is totally what she said
It's because Twitter dislikes Microsoft and makes it obvious, but in the process he ends up being even more of a jackass than Gates or Ballmer ever were, so we all end up secretly wishing that MS would succeed just so that Twitter will cry. Gnutoo and Westbake (as well as Odder, Deadzero.. and some more that I can't remember) are Twitter's accounts too. That guy must have a really warped reality-tunnel.
which is totally what she said
Anyone recommend an online Mandarin turorial?
...researchers supported by Michigan State University and the Office of the Chinese Language Council International have a game for you. http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/05/1744252If you have access to a running machine but still need a password to log in, it's not blindingly obvious how to take control of it (even a Windows box). Proven attacks are somewhat new.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
If he's trying to steal karma, he's not doing a very good job. In fact, all of his sockpuppets have remarkably bad karma. Getting enough downmods to destroy the karma of a dozen different accounts is actually pretty impressive!
Twitter doesn't have a big Master Plan. (Dare I point out that assuming that he does is a very twitter-like mistake?) He just has a big ego. Hence his believe that it's OK to dominate discussions by fair means or foul. And, of course, his inability to admit that all his downmods are not the result of some big conspiracy, but simply the reaction of other users who think he's a jerk.
What the hell were these two intelligence briefs doing storing sensitive data on boxes that were hard-wired nodes on their personal slices of the US Congressional computer network, that if compromised could easily lead to Chinese dissidents' imprisonment, severe harm, and even death?
These two guys should be publicly flogged for their promiscuous in-office security protocols.
Listen carefully Congressmen Tweedle-Dee, and Tweedle-Dum:
ANY DATA that resides on a server accessible from the internet
SHOULD ALWAYS be assumed to be inherently at risk of being compromised.
Contemporary Conservatives are never willing to accept responsibilities for the negative effects that naturally flow as cause from their past actions, but are always inclined to publicly state, for the record, after being arrested in a pulic restroom facility for solicitation by an undercover law-enforcement officer:
1) for a $20 blowjob; or
2) performing a soft-shoe routine while gesturing suggestively with a hand under a stall wall;
that They Are Not Gay.
Rush Limbaugh is a perfect real world example of an oxycontinmoron
I'm not saying to knuckle under and be good sheep.
I'm saying that to end being a domestic animal you first need to be aware that you are one - that the farmer isn't going to just let you go and/or do things your way because you want to. You must make your plans accordingly.
It also helps to be smarter than the farmer - though that isn't required.
Part of being aware of the situation is being aware that just goring the farmer and running for the woods won't usually work. Farmers are ready for that: Animals that attack them are quickly and systematically eliminated from the gene pool, making things quiet in the short term and the next generation that much easier to manage. Far better to convince the farmers to give up on farming your species, let you go peaceably, and find some better way to earn a living. But you don't want them to switch to hunter-gathering, with you as the hunted and your goods as the fruit to be gathered, either. B-)
Utopian dreams require a practical implementation plan.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I was actually alluding to the "Enemies" part: The foreigners we're not getting along with don't rise to the status of "Enemies" in the treason definition unless there's a declaration of war. (This is why Jane Fonda got to marry first Tom Hayden and later Ted Turner, hang out in mansions, and do her dancing on an aerobics video, rather than marry a fellow inmate, hang out in federal prison, and/or dance at the end of a rope.)
But, yes, refraining from discussion is not an overt act. So I guess the only guys who are skirting the treason definition are the ones who actively argue against arguing, such as the poster I responded to. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Are you serious? Or were you going for the funny mod here?
Serious as a nuclear attack.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
That said, we as a world are moving towards a global state. The United Nations was the first step, but was a bit too ambitious to really succeed. The European Union has been very successful, however, and it is easy to imagine the member states of that union losing their individuality. Interestingly, there's a Latin American equivalent to the EU in the works, and Australian PM Kevin Rudd recently been proposing a similar Pan-Asian + US union. I don't know whether these unions will ever succeed in uniting the world, but we could be in for an interesting next few decades.
(posting as AC because I can't be bothered to sign up for an account)
elle. oh. elle.
a system of government in which pigs farm sheep? seems kind of orwellian, doesn't it?
i think it needs to be understood that those in power are GIVEN power through social contract, and that their position DEPENDS on the needs of the people they govern.
through [h]ac[k]tivism, we have the opportunity to show those in power when and where positions of leadership are sensible and necessary.
rather than sit back, hand over our rights and watch the "farmers" reap the benefits, we need to show them that we have an ability as a global community to take care of our own species.
the only way to do this is through self-efficacy, education and communication.
which is precisely why i'm in favor of free/open text books. [also, i'm a broke college student :p]
i think it needs to be understood that those in power are GIVEN power through social contract, and that their position DEPENDS on the needs of the people they govern.
I never signed a social contract. When did you sign yours?
Last time I looked, a contract required adult informed consent of both parties to be valid. Calling the status quo a "contract", social or otherwise, doesn't make it one. Even if some historic figures actually signed an agreement long before the current "parties to the contract" were born.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
"The term social contract describes a broad class of philosophical theories whose subjects are implied agreements by which people form nations and maintain a social order. Such social contract implies that the people give up some rights to a government and/or other authority in order to receive or jointly preserve social order."
Keyword: "implied". (Wiki is your friend. Embrace her.)
In other words, social contract is the basis for all government. For that matter, it is the basis for all systems of power - from family to friendship to community to tribe to municipality to nation.
It has nothing to do with signing your name on a piece of paper - scribbles on paper only mean what you attribute to them (and what you attribute to them is based in the social order that is built on...*drum roll please!*...social contract).
And no - calling the status quo a social contract does not make it so - you're absolutely right about that. As it stands right now, the status quo is theft of power. Which is why we need to take back what it rightfully ours. You know: exactly what my point was above.
In addition to Rousseau, I would suggest reading up on Thomas Hobbes, upon whose writing Rousseau based his ideas. Also, John Locke, whose writing was one of the primary influences on the American Declaration of Independence. Isn't philosophy fun?
Thanks, but I'm quite aware of the theory of the so-called social contract.
However: libertarian, anarchist, nihilist, Objectivist, and a number of other political and philosophical persuasions consider "implied contract" to be an oxymoron and the theory of social contract to be a totally bogus construction used by apologists for state power to justify their impositions, for generation after generation, on people who never agreed to be oppressed.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Surely if you manage to infect a PC with a nasty process of your choosing, it can sit there sending out data to the internet without needing to know the password? OK it's trivial to stop, but in theory.
You thought you could break the laws of physics without paying the PRICE?
Certainly, if you already have malware on the box. The interesting attack is: given physical access to a running laptop that's protected by password and full disk encryption, can you quickly insert malware while, for example, the owner is distracted by your associate? Or, somewhat easier, given a stolen (but runnning) laptop protected by full disk encryption, can you gain access to it eventually?
Full disk encryption was thought to be a solid defense for a laptop, as long as you remembered to lock the computer if you stepped away. Now it seems you have to actually power the machine down (and wait a minute to be sure the memory has discharged) before it's secure. I supect it will be quite some time before this hole is closed -- I was working with a standards group for a while that had an answer, but I think it's association with the Trusted Computing folks might have killed the effort off.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
When I said "more to come" I didn't think you'd create a name troll for me. Good job.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Yeah, but he still has two accounts with good karma. They should be modded down until they disappear from sight, in my very humble opinion. He has pretty much proved that he doesn't deserve the pixels used to render his posts.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
No need to thank me for the response, BTW. Since you started this flamebait thread and created your 11th account in the name of trolling me personally, the least I can do is address your concerns - especially if you're linking to this post in the .sigs of a few of your sockpuppets.
Oh, by the way. When you have some time on your busy trolling schedule, I would appreciate it if you would post a response to this and this (posted as you might realize as a reply to this). Both threads are now expired, but let me know if you're up to it and I'll create a journal entry so we can discuss without being modded offtopic and so on. Thanks!
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Thanks!
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
I don't care about the dude's karma. Slashdot karma is not a reward or a punishment, it's a tool to help those of us who want to have a serious conversation ignore the lamers. Your obsession with this particular lamer is making it a lot harder to do that.
The more lamers with 10 accounts there are here, the less serious conversations you are going to have in any case. He already thinks you're my sockpuppet (or a sockpuppet of someone he dislikes, it doesn't matter) so if he has accounts in good standing with karma and mod points, he can just punish you accordingly at his leisure.
There used to be a time when Slashdot was a pain in the ass to read because all the crapflooders, GNAA trolls, ASCII artists, page wideners, Klerck, bonch and all the other fauna. CmdrTaco and his crew have done a very good job of controlling that. Now the problem are people like twitter who create threads out of thin air using six or seven different accounts. The more success he has at it, the more other people will try to game the system that way. And then we'll go back to the same shit.
By the way, Slashdot karma is a reward and a form of punishment to him. Discounting things like family and work, it's very probably the most important thing in his life.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo