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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.'"
To date, we've had hacks that are serious enough to alert us to the real threat, but rarely or never serious enough to cause us real harm.
It's a gentle warning to our vulnerabilities, with plenty of lead time to do something about it. At this point, if we keep on producing vulnerable and exposed important computer systems, we share the blame for the consequences of a serious hack.
I read that article in my latest Pop Sci issue. It was very interesting that many of the Chinese hackers were not explicitly sponsored by the government, but do it for the fame and nationalistic pride. The hacker that the article zeroed in on seemed to disappear after college, but it was fairly obvious he was hired by some level of the government. It's like the Chinese government lets these young hackers learn on their own (so long as they aren't hacking their sites), then offers them jobs once they get skilled enough. The more direct damage from Chinese hackers is more likely from these uncontrollable hobby hackers than from the government sponsored and controlled ones.
The chinese are just as nationalistic as any other group.
Judging from some of the comments about Tibet and the reaction to the protests regarding it during the Olympics I'd say that they are even more so.
Basically, we are still in a cold war with one side KNOWING that it is, while the other side hopes that it is not.
Isn't that the truth? Secretary Gates wants to cancel the F-22 and cut our aircraft carrier fleet down so that we can focus on fighting insurgencies. That's understandable in short term but I pray to god that it doesn't bite us in the ass in the long term. I'm not real worried about insurgents altering the geopolitical balance of power. I am worried about China doing the same.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
by the idiocies of nationalism
if anyone looks to the far east and sees a land blissfully free of the stupidities of monotheism, think again: china does have a religion. that religion is called china. han imperialism is on par with all of the other vicious forces in this world we must contend with and defeat. not that china is alone. russian nationalism and imperialism, american nationalism and imperialism... it's all evil, it all must be defeated
one day we will have a world if not free of organized religon and ethnocentrism, at least outside the all-controlling clutches of such
until then, we must all contend with blind pride: the source of so much evil in this world
nationalism and organized religion are forces in this world which must be defeated if we are all to live in peace
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Secretary Gates wants to cancel the F-22 and cut our aircraft carrier fleet down so that we can focus on fighting insurgencies. That's understandable in short term but I pray to god that it doesn't bite us in the ass in the long term.
At this moment, we have no choice. Our budget and economy is a TOTAL disaster. Where we need to put the money is into getting this war and invasion/occupation finished. Sadly, Pakistan is shaping up to be a new mess that we will have no choice on (at least as long as they have nukes and the technology). Personally, having the F-22 cut back while we have 180 is not a big deal. BUT I would rather that we continue with the ABL program. In addition, my understanding is that he is putting a lot more money into intel-gathering. That makes sense.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Actually, China has a social security and socialized medicine. In addition, they spend a LOT more money on their internal security (trying to keep ppl in check). IIRC, They actually spend more on their civil programs than America does (in terms of what we think their budget is; we really do not know exactly WHAT they spend). And right now, they spend a LOT more money on their space program as well as military. Of course, they can afford this at this time.
The real difference is that they have their money tied to the dollar designed to drain our jobs and W allowed this. That is why China has major barriers to imports and is asking for another decade to drop them, even though they were suppose to drop them in 2002.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Congressional whitepapers on China have been warning for 15-20 years that they are actively working to develop non-traditional means to pursue asymmetrical warfare against the United States. That is, China has been gearing up to go to war with the U.S. that whole time, and we foolishly allowed ourselves to be distracted by the ridiculous Chicken-Little "Terrorists! Terrorists!" meme. It is China, not a bedraggled pack of guys hiding in caves in Pakistan, who poses the existential threat to us.
Everyone acknowledges that Taiwan will be the flash point, meaning that the mainland will forcibly repatriate them if the Taiwanese don't surrender peacefully. Beijing took a run at it about 15 years ago when they started shooting missiles across shipping lanes in the Strait of Taiwan. The U.S. sent a carrier battlegroup to sail up and down between the two parties and that put a hasty end to that, because the Chinese realized that one tiny part of our navy packed enough firepower to sink the entire Chinese navy in 15 minutes.
Since then they've been going at it much more systematically. They've been working hard on the diplomatic front in Africa and South America to develop relationships with resource-rich countries there who are tired of the West lecturing them about morality and corruption. On the business front, they've been moving their corporations closer and closer to strategic locations and critical technology; a shell company for the People's Liberation Army, for example, now administers the Panama Canal, which the U.S. navy uses to redeploy ships between Atlantic and Pacific. Economically, they have built up enormous reserves of U.S. dollars and have now got the entire U.S. economy by the throat--all they'd have to do to throw us into a tailspin is to STOP buying our debt. On the cyberfront they're infiltrating our systems and trying to crack our power grid and military satellites and gain access to classified information. And even their military is catching up. They're actively acquiring Russian Alpha submarines and aircraft carriers, shore-to-ship missiles, amphibious landing craft, and anti-satellite weapons (which they tested last year, you may recall).
The CCP has been very crafty in doing all this, quietly building up their capabilities and pinging us from time to time to test the viability of their strategy, which is to attack first economically and with crackers, and then while we're running around screaming at the chaos, they'll move to seize Taiwan. One of those pings was a couple weeks ago when the Chinese minister expressed doubt about the utility of the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency. The shockwaves from that one are still reverberating. Another ping was a couple weeks before that when their ships were harassing our boat in the South China Sea. They may believe the time is almost ripe to make their move, because this stuff is coming more frequently now, and because there are signs that the Obama administration, unlike the Bush administration, is choosing to employ intelligent, capable people who keep careful watch on things that matter and are winding down the terrorist! terrorist! crap so they can focus on China.
But that's why the decentralized nature of the Chinese crackers is so dangerous, because it may make the cascade of events to open hostilities inevitable--they can't be controlled by the Chinese government and may start things in motion on their own.
Fortunately, for now, the United States still has the ace up its sleeve that instantly puts an end to all the CCP's plans, as well as the crackers. That ace is called nuclear submarines. China's numerical troop advantage matters naught there, and American submariners have been past masters for decades at outclassing Alphas run by Russians who know how to drive them. And 15 minutes after the U.S. president gives the greenlight, the brutal reign of the Chinese leadership would come to an abrupt end.
I hope the guys in Beijing bear that thought in mind, and reel in the yahoos like the crackers before they start real trouble. I'd really like to avoid us having to draft every single male with two legs and a pulse to fight a war with them, and for my baby daughter to have a chance to grow up.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
What's up with all these "chinese menace" news?
<sarcasm>Yeah, and what's up with all of the "Obama administration is corrupt" news? If we keep this up, there might be an all out civil war soon. I mean, Texas is already considering secession. </sarcasm>
Seriously, there is a difference between being racist/nationalist, and stating facts. This article is fact, and you are recommending censorship. If you don't think this article is true, than prove otherwise. Don't ridicule this article because it's "not nice."
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
The question remains, if this just (a very large) bunch of isolated individualists on the hunt for fame and fortune, or if they could be united under a common belief and turned into a nationalistic, anti-foreign mass movement like the "Boxers" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxer_Rebellion, lashing out violently against anything or anyone that critizises or threatens mother China. A lot has been writtten about the downtrodden rural masses that could destroy the chinese "Wirtschaftswunder" in a bloody uprising with unforseeable consequencesfor the world, but I wonder if we also have to be wary about something like a boxer movement in cyberspace.
We have an extensive and poorly secured (as no un-passworded systems, vulnerable dictionary-based passwords, no system auditing, almost no network auditing) IT infrastructure, we have loads of national and international computer burglars banging away at it, we have a lot of people who know something about IT looking for a job, and we have a government looking for sensible ways to spend money so as to alleviate the recession.
Am I alone in thinking that it would be money well spent to set up 3 or so military schools in the US specifically to train network administrators? Students to enlist for the duration of their training (basic raining plus 2 years specialist training), subsequently 5 years of operational service as a sergeant. Graduates of this course to be unconditionally qualified for all basic network security and operation anywhere in the government (from local to federal).
It helps protect both our civillian and our military IT infrastructure, it builds a reservoir of people who know how to secure and operate a computer network for any government agency to draw from, and it provides jobs.
So ... how about it?
this assumes they have any vested interest in keeping the civilian population alive.
turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
Other than most IT newbies-gone-hired being unable to politically think critically, and therefore being liberals wanting a huge government that doesn't care for them....how does hacking *ever* spur social change?
And not just that, but how does enough of it happen from American to identify it with the nation?
Let's not forget Cap'N Crunch and the guys hacking for fun. That's where we came from. The modern hacker does it for fun, money and vanity.
But just like journalism students go to college "to make a difference" when all they're supposed to do is report the truth, hacking now is hacking. It's almost always just ugly, damaging, and flat mean.
That's not American; that's Communist.
I was in China 2001, and I can promise you that the DDoS is not generated by some advanced tools or scripts, it just because there were too many people connecting. People sent each emails and agreed on visiting the White House website several days before the "attack". Among those who visited the website, 95% were just normal internet users using Internet Explorer 5.
i describe an intellectually dishonest point of view, and you come in with a comment which is exactly that point of view i am trying to describe
if you are trying to be slyly humorous: haha
if you are actually so dense as to miss the irony: it is perfectly appropriate to criticize china from a point of view of principles, having nothing whatsoever to do with western nationalistic agendas
lookie here:
http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/controlling-the-chinese-people/
so when taiwan and hong kong go apeshit over jackie chan's remarks, which are clearly pandering to the regime in beijing, are the hong kong and the taiwanese merely puppets of western nationalism in your point of view? or are they angry at jackie chan out of their own independent principles?
actually, its funny, because your words are exactly what the propaganda mouthpieces in beijing say all the time when someone tries to criticize beijing from inside china: they are stool pigeons of the west and they are serving china's enemies. as if you can't criticize china, even if you are fucking chinese, without being some sort of secret agent. that any criticism of beijing only weakens china: as if internal debate within china can't actually STRENGTHEN china. no, there's only one point of view from beijing, and it can never be wrong and it can never be questioned. pfffffft
why is it impossible for you to perceive that you can criticize china on the grounds of purely principles, having nothing whatsoever to do with western nationalism? maybe even what motivates you is love of china when you criticize beijing? imagine fucking that!
do you believe the slashdot editors are serving secret masters at the cia? or perhaps the slashdot editors are neocon dick cheney sympathisers? gee, maybe the editors see a genuine issue, and report it, out of purely principled reasons? naah.. impossible! secret nationalist agendas EVERYWHERE!!! ;-P
in your worldview, everyone is just acting on a nationalistic agenda. no one can be motivated on principles. you're fucking retarded
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it