Slashdot Mirror


China Says It Lacks Skills To Hack US Systems

ScentCone writes "A spokesman for China's foreign ministry says that — China being the 'developing nation' that it is — he doubts that his country has the sophistication to hack foreign systems. This in response to statements by two congressmen regarding apparent probing by China-based crackers into congressional systems for information about communication between US officials and activists in China."

13 of 507 comments (clear)

  1. step 1, hide source by Keruo · · Score: 4, Informative

    For talented crackers, it would be relatively easy to cover their tracks by using several compromised machines as proxies for their attack.
    China has large internet user base and the average Jin would likely secure their home machine as well as average Joe across the ocean.

    --
    There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
  2. Re:whats more likely by jimbobborg · · Score: 4, Informative

    Read the fine article. Quoted from second article:

    "The extent of the intrusions on Capitol Hill, which officials said began in August 2006, was unclear, although Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), whose office had four computers affected, said that other members of Congress were targeted, as well as at least one congressional committee. "They got everything," Wolf said at a news briefing, describing the attack on his office systems.

    Wolf said that after one of the attacks, a car with license plates belonging to Chinese officials went to the home of a Chinese dissident in the Washington suburbs and took photographs of it."

  3. Re:China lacks the skills? by datan · · Score: 4, Informative

    it's part of the Chinese culture. The polite way to receive a compliment is to be modest; in fact it's bad manners to receive a compliment without protest...so in this case, the Chinese foreign ministry is merely being polite

  4. Re:South Park defense by datan · · Score: 4, Informative

    it's a polite way in China to receive a compliment

  5. Re:South Park defense by AvitarX · · Score: 3, Informative

    China is an amazing culture with lots of fantastic history, and racism/culturalism is bad. That does not mean that taking stereotypes and portraying them as ridiculous is, and most of your "facts" are silly.

    China does get into wars (though historically with itself, and is claiming areas taken by the Mongols(Tibet is not historically part of China). Though "The Art of War" advises against fighting, it was not written because of a history of peace.

    People started moving out of caves 8,000 years ago, with the advent of agriculture in the fertile crescent.

    --
    Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
  6. Re:South Park defense by Yetihehe · · Score: 4, Informative

    What they are answering now, comes from a culture that is very, very, very smart. Old. Intelligent.
    Yeah, especially after cultural revolution (1966-76), when they effectively removed scientists from public life and science never quite reborn after this. Very smart indeed.
    --
    Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
  7. Re:South Park defense by Carewolf · · Score: 3, Informative

    Nonsense. China banned science and innovation more than 500 years ago, and science and technology has not since been more accepted and applied than recently under the so-called communist regime.

  8. Re:South Park defense by Lord+Ender · · Score: 3, Informative

    You have to consider this - does China get into wars? No... they're NOT that stupid!
    You must be Chinese because you know nothing of Chinese history. How about the Korean war? And Tibet? China is still slaughtering peaceful political dissenters. And as a Chinese person you probably know nothing of the slaughter of dissenters at Tiananmen Square.

    China gets in wars/military actions like anyone else, but when they do it, the purpose is to take away freedoms.
    --
    A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
  9. Re:South Park defense by smclean · · Score: 3, Informative

    Right click it, do 'Copy Link Location', paste it in your address bar, hit alt-enter to open in new tab.. :)

    --

    "'Yrch!' said Legolas, falling into his own tongue."

  10. Re:China lacks the skills? by rworne · · Score: 3, Informative

    There's a big difference between a phonetic alphabet and an lolograph based language.

    To English and German, an "A" is an "A" and really does not mean anything in and of itself. The alphabet denotes sounds that when strung together have a meaning.

    In Chinese and Japanese, each character has a specific meaning in itself. It is that meaning that carries between both languages - one does not even need to know how to pronounce the character to understand its meaning.

    --
    I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
  11. Re:Yeah, right by flosofl · · Score: 4, Informative
    Yes it was broken.

    On 1 March 2005, Arjen Lenstra, Xiaoyun Wang, and Benne de Weger demonstrated[8] construction of two X.509 certificates with different public keys and the same MD5 hash, a demonstrably practical collision. The construction included private keys for both public keys. A few days later, Vlastimil Klima described[9] an improved algorithm, able to construct MD5 collisions in a few hours on a single notebook computer. On 18 March 2006, Klima published an algorithm[10] that can find a collision within one minute on a single notebook computer, using a method he calls tunneling.
    The concern is less for password hashing than for cryptographic signatures based on MD5. It destroys one of the principles of a crypto signature: non-reputability. By being able to create an arbitrary collision, that is removed.

    Here's a good site to give you an overview.
    --
    "This calls for a very special blend of psychology and extreme violence" - Vyvyan "The Young Ones"
  12. Re:South Park defense by Bazar · · Score: 3, Informative

    I've done this argument before many times.

    US Congress didn't declare war, what they did was that they gave authorization for Bush to use armed forces in defense of USA and for enforcing UN policies. Thus Giving Bush under conditions, the right to send America into war.

    Now heres where things get interesting.
    Firstly with Iraq, you were not at peace, you simply had a cease-fire arrangement. Peace was never officially declared after the Gulf war in 1990.
    Thus by UN standards, USA never started a war, they simply resumed the Gulf war many years later. Thus they were in compliance with UN requirements

    As we know, Saddam broke many un policies, including allowing UN weapon inspection teams.

    Because of the refusal in compliance to UN policies, and the authorization from congress a year earlier in defense of UN policies, Bush had legal entitlement to used armed forces.

    Thus we find that by legal UN loopholing, and by a no balls/brains congress, Bush legally sent USA into war.

    What i also find interesting, is that the USA are still at war with N. Korea, since they never made peace there either, its still a cease-fire arrangement after several decades...
    I guess Bush just had his hands too full with Iraq during his terms in office.

    --
    To avoid criticism; Say nothing, Do nothing, Be nothing.