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Vast Electronic Spying Operation Discovered
homesalad writes "Researchers in Toronto have discovered a huge international electronic spying operation that they are calling 'GhostNet.' So far it has infiltrated government and corporate offices in 103 countries, including the office of the Dalai Lama (who originally went to the researchers for help analyzing a suspected infiltration). The operation appears to be based in China, and the information gained has been used to interfere with the actions of the Dalai Lama and to thwart individuals seeking to help Tibetan exiles. The researchers found no evidence of infiltration of US government computers, although machines at the Indian embassy were compromised. Here is the researchers' summary; a full report, 'Tracking "GhostNet": Investigating a Cyber Espionage Network' will be issued this weekend." A separate academic group in the UK that helped with the research is issuing its own report, expected to be available on March 29. Here is the abstract. They seem to be putting more stress on the "social malware" nature of the attack and ways to mitigate such techniques.
You can't bitch slap China. China owns the USA to a large extent. They could bankrupt the USA.
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
Yeah, it's definitely the government and big business. It couldn't possibly be hundreds of millions of Americans spending hundreds of billions of dollars, demanding cheap products made in China.
Maybe not
Sanctions against China are way overdue. Our gov't and big businesses are just feeding that monster.
That won't happen until (and if) we get our own manufacturing base back on track and can wean ourselves off the Chinese tit of cheap imports. That, or grow some balls and raise the tariff structure to prevent the destruction of our remaining domestic industries. I don't see that happening in the near future: the Feds are too corrupt at this point and don't really care about our future (or even, I'm convinced, understand why a dependent cannot ever be a truly free nation.)
Right now, any noises we make towards sanctions are just that: noise. All they have to do is threaten to send fifty or sixty million "refugees" here and that's that.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
This doesn't sound like Echelon or Carnivore, but more like spyware being installed on computers.
My blog
It would destroy their economy to do so... Reminds me of a quote about the definition of allies being two nations with hands so deep in each other's pockets that they cannot fight.
China does not have to get anything it owns to pwn you. They just have to stop buying your treasury bonds and you'll go down in a blink.
If China stops buying our treasury bonds, they won't be able to support their export economy. Sure, they could destroy us economically, but they would fare no better. It's economic MAD.
... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.
That is only happening because america's excessively strong intellectual "property" dogmatic bullshit prevents real manufacturing taking place on american soil (because you get immediately sued into the ground by vampiric lawyers). The best way to compete with china is to break the WIPO propaganda machine (the chinese sure as hell aren't stupid enough to pay more than lip service to western intellecutal monopoly laws), and reestablish independent american manufacturing - which you do by weakening patent recognition. The perennial solution offered by already-rich-and-wanting-to-stay-that-way "captains of industry" of strengthening the patent system is exactly the wrong thing to do, a "beatings will continue until morale improves" solution.
With their 3 million troops, 860 warships [...]
So they're going to pile ~3,500 troops per warship, cross the entire Pacific Ocean, and launch some kind of amphibious assault against the continental US? We had a hard enough time crossing the English Channel.
[...] 60 submarines, 400 nuclear missiles and 1400 fighter aircraft.
A submarine isn't capable of taking territory. Fighter jets can't make the 10,000 mile round trip. And nuclear missiles are a death sentence for us both.
... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.
Errrr, you're about half right. Stupid people do demand and buy the cheapest thing they can find, even if it's melanine laced. So, yes, they are at fault for not recognizing or demanding quality. On the other hand, government and big business has been actively exporting American jobs for quite a long time now, along with American technology, American money, and American education. Yeah, the idiot "consumer" takes his share of the blame, but the coordination comes from higher up. Who was it, exactly, that gave China it's "most favored trading partner" status? Oh yeah, that same traitor who sold missile technology to China, later sold to N. Korea, then exported to the mideast for use against Israel. Hmmmmmmm.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
And keeping that work in China signals to all Americans that "you will not be able to earn a living doing mindless work".
Presently, a lot of Americans are laboring under the delusion that they should somehow get a house, car, TV, medicine, and internet in exchange for installing wingnuts all day on an assembly line.
High-sounding but irrelevant verbiage having no bearing on the facts. I mean, how grandiose you are in dismissing one simple fact: working our manufacturing economy was how Americans managed to have a standard of living envied by most of the world. How do you think wealth is created? By magic? Hardly: it's by building and selling things to other countries, it's called trade. The fact is, we've been doing a lousy job of that for the past thirty-odd years and that's why our standard of living is dropping and unemployment is increasing. Suppose we took your idea to its logical conclusion, and ended up with an entirely automated production system with no need for people at all. We'd all be unemployed at that point. No thanks. Fact is, there are millions upon millions of people that are perfectly happy installing wingnuts for a living, and there's not a goddamn thing wrong with that. Sure, in your idealized world we'd all live up to our "full potential" (whatever that is) but the reality is, most people are all they're ever going to be.
Open your eyes, and dispense with the notion, nay, the fiction, that a nation can be an industrial superpower without the industry. People with blinders on call that a "service economy" but it's really a synonym for "third world hellhole." Now, it may be that you're willing to live in some socioeconomic armpit (my girlfriend came from one: I could let her tell you what that means) but I'm not. Let me tell you, I've spent thirty years as an engineer working in our industrial sector, and we need it.
China may be willing to accept pollution (for now) but that doesn't mean that you must accept pollution in order to have an industrial base. We cleaned up our act and still managed to become a superpower. So can they, and eventually the cost of Chinese-made products will increase to reflect that. So the question is: will we still be around, or will we be just another third-world country ripe for the plucking?
You decide. But at this point in history, there's only one way to create wealth, and you don't do it by not working. Robots may be more efficient at manufacturing some products than human beings, but keep firmly in mind that civilization does not solely revolve around manufacturing trade goods efficiently. People have to figure in there somewhere. That's China's biggest problem right now: their people are little better than organic robots. In any event, if you look at efficiency as the only reason for industry, then you're no better than the typical American CEO slimeball that sold his own people down the river for a quick buck.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Perhaps, next time, you might not want to impose sanctions on the government that holds by far the largest share of the US debt:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Foreign_Holders_of_United_States_Treasury_Securities-percent_share.gif
You impose sanctions, they call in that debt. And who else do you really think is going to loan you the money to pay that back?
The US/China relationship is not as much of a black-and-white situation as nationalistic extremists both in the USA and China would like it to be. If the Chinese 'call in' all of that debt at once in some way, shape or form, there is no way the USA could pay up. Effectively the US would have to default, i.e. welch on the debt. That would wipe out an awful lot of hard earned Chinese wealth. Some of the noises coming out of Beijing lately only confirm that the Chinese are getting nervous even at the mere suggestion of the possibility of a US default. Another thing to consider is that the Chinese are very dependent on exports to the USA and it's NATO allies who are likely to eventually follow the USA's lead, however grudgingly, in any major conflict of any kind with China. If the Chinese were to 'call in' this debt it would be self defeating exercise, as likely to harm the Chinese them selves as much as it would harm the USA. The economies of these countries are very intertwined.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
i just love the way people poopoo american foreign policy and big business
as they gas up their SUVs
and go shop at walmart
the problem is not big business
the problem is not the american government
nothing but empty cruft compared to the real problem: the behavior of the american consumer
you convince them to spend $10 a gallon on gas, you convince them to buiy their crap at 2x the price. go for it
stop blaming esoteric entities when the real problem is sitting right there, in front your computer, reading this post
YOU AND YOUR OWN BEHAVIOR
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You are right about MAD at some level, but not for the reason you think.
The reason why the Chinese have to be careful is that, by wiping out the US economy, they would pretty much ensure that their biggest market collapses, so their own economic growth would be severely affected.
By comparison, spending excess money is easy. They could invest it in other economies, or just ramp up their own R&D or military development, thus boosting their own job market & economy.
The Chinese economy is not self-sustaining at the moment - they are very much dependent on an export market (primarily the US, but also Europe to some degree). However, they are taking huge steps towards economic independence, and in a decade or two, the situation will have changed drastically. That is the day the US should dread.
The only Burmese contact he had at the time was Skyping with his ex-girlfriend, a student at a nearby liberal arts school who organized protests of greater scope on her campus
Did it occur to you that maybe, just maybe, your roommate was sold out by his "burmese contact"? Skype sniffers can't tell the Burmese government that the other person was the ex-girlfriend of a...I don't know what the fuck is going on in that set of connections, but dude, it's far more likely the guy in Burma is on the take...or someone in his apartment is.
Or maybe you all wildly misinterpreted his mother's "don't make waves" urgings.
Please help metamoderate.
The post reminds me of the parable of the broken window. $20 of wealth is not created. If one book is created and sold for $10 then $10 value is created. The various items purchased along the way merely effects distribution of that $10 value, in the form of currency. To put it another way, you add the value of the book to the $10 currency spent, but forget to subtract that $10 currency which already existed.
It's an easy mistake, evidenced by the need for the parable. But I'll labour the point since it's something of a bugbear of mine, especially since politicians and the media seem to follow the same error.
True, $20 of movement is recorded in the economy, but it's merely a case of cash flowing from one pocket into another. Consider what happens if you paid the $8 to one guy who not only prints, but produces the paper and ink too. Or, how about just passing money to and fro between two companies? Similarly, if once the book is bought the buyer decides the book is only worth $5, the increase in wealth is $5! The other $5 is merely an exchange of wealth from one person to another.
It also shouldn't change GDP, which is "It is the total value of all final goods and services produced in a particular economy". It probably would, but that's a problem of measuring GDP.
The funny thing is that even when 'many eyes' fail (for example, the recent Debian SSL debacle), people still assume that the process works, including the bad guys.
I wrote more about this issue in an article titled 'Trust Works All Ways'.
I'm no security professional, so I could be wrong here, but I've seen no indication that there was any systematic exploitation of that gaping security hole during the 18 months it was present. Yes, the reason is laxity, and that's a flaw in the process. But the fascinating part is that it appears everyone - white hat to black - has faith in the process.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.