Hundreds of Thousands of Chinese Black-Hats

An anonymous reader sends us to Popular Science for a long article on the loose, uncoordinated bands of patriotic Chinese hackers that seem to be responsible for much of the cyber-trouble emerging from that nation. Quoting: "For years, the U.S. intelligence community worried that China's government was attacking our cyber-infrastructure. Now one man has discovered it's more than that: it's hundreds of thousands of everyday Chinese civilians. ... Jack Linchuan Qiu, a communications professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong [says:] 'Chinese hackerism is not the American "hacktivism" that wants social change. It's actually very close to the state. The Chinese distinction between the private and public domains is very small.' ... According to [James Andrew Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies], 'The government at a minimum tolerates them. Sometimes it encourages them. And sometimes it tasks them and controls them.' In the end, he says, 'it's easy for the government to turn on and hard to turn off.'"

Comments

Re:What's up with all these "chinese menace" news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Greetings citizen,

We need to raise taxes to fight the Chinese.

Yours menacingly,

The Government

Re:Cyber terrorism

[AndGodSed]

So as opposed to a "Weapon of Mass Distruction" the chinese hacker force is a "Weapon of Mass Dysfunction"

When do the yanks invade?

>sorry could not resist...

The Realm vs China?

[SEWilco]

Following the tradition, I did not RTFA, but I did read the ad on this article. Cisco is advertising something called "The Realm" and illustrating it with some superhero types. Can't those guys take care of China for us? Cisco, save us! And make a reality show of it for our enjoyment.

Screw em

[eschnell]

Somebody cut the fiber optic lines leaving China.

Re:Not surprising

[JustOK]

y o u l a c k i m a g i n a t i o n

Re:They aleady did

[interkin3tic]

Simple test. Get two oil tankers.

See, its good that you're coming up with tests that are simple, but to better prove your point, you would also come up with one that is feasible to those of us who are not oil tycoons. As such I have no way of running your test: Exxon won't let me borrow any more of their tankers after that Valdez thing, no matter how many times I apologize.

Re:I, for one,

[VampBoy]

Shen jing bing!