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Is China Creating the World's Largest Botnet Army?

Posted by timothy on from the economies-of-scale dept.

david_a_eaves writes "The Chinese government is mandating that all computers sold in China come with Internet blocking software. Rob Cottingham writes an excellent piece noting how the censorship application of this software should be the least of our concerns. This new software may create an opportunity for the Chinese Government to appropriate these computers and use them to create the worlds largest botnet army." Update: 06/11 21:26 GMT by T : J. Alex Halderman writes "My students and I have been examining the Green Dam censorware software. We've found serious vulnerabilities that can be exploited by any web site a user visits with the software installed. We also found that some of the blacklists seems to have been taken from the American-made filtering program CyberSitter. We've posted a report and demo."

9 of 195 comments (clear)

  1. Is this a problem? by ArcherB · · Score: 1, Interesting

    How hard is it to block all traffic based on the country of origin, China in this case?

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  2. People are such suckers by qortra · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The goal, authorities say, is to protect children from pornography

    Of course, that morsel isn't for the Chinese people. They could tell their own people "we're creating a botnet to terrorize you", and nothing would happen. In fact, it's for the benefit of people in other countries. Social conservatives everywhere will exclaim "what an excellent goal!" Those people have simply failed to realize that governments will use whatever power they have for whatever they want, and never exclusively for its "intended purpose". The US does this too, but they've been moving more slowly because more people fail to notice when the power shift is gradual.

  3. M$ made largest botnet, Cisco the next Echelon by kubitus · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The US is in the dominant position regarding hidden backdoors and establishing Trojan Boot loaders into routers.

    I advice any government to use in their networks only SW they can compile by themselfes!

    And even more important: use routers ( and switches ) where they compiled the firmware/software themselves!

    1. Re:M$ made largest botnet, Cisco the next Echelon by Darkness404 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The problem with this paranoia is where does it end. Compilers have known to have backdoors, you can code in assembly but you still need to compile it, what about a backdoor in the BIOS? Hidden microcode in the CPU?

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  4. Look.... by Darkness404 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Look, in a "cyber war" you don't fight with DoS attacks, you fight by simply severing the undersea cables. If we were really "attacked" by China this way (which, we won't be, it would end their economy and their leaders seem to be halfway sane unlike that of North Korea) we could simply sever the lines.

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    Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
    1. Re:Look.... by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Look, in a "cyber war" you don't fight with DoS attacks, you fight by simply severing the undersea cables.

      Well, severing the cables would be expensive. More likely we'd just filter incoming traffic from that address space. If every computer in China today started sending a DoS attack at something in the US or Europe, an IT guy would get beeped and would authorize their automated system to blackhole that traffic at the core routers. Basically, it would just cut off traffic originating in China and the rest of us would go on as usual except there would be some interesting network security articles. Heck, with some of the systems in place, companies with regular traffic to china might not even have their normal traffic disrupted since it had been previously mapped out as normal and white-listed.

  5. Stating The Obvious by BigBlueOx · · Score: 2, Interesting

    From the FA:
    Conceivably, everything from hospitals to electrical power grids could be targets.

    Here's a thought! Make sure hospitals and electrical power grids AREN'T ON THE INTERNET! This is hard? VPNs and darknets are hard??

    Choir, consider yourself preached to.

  6. while of course this is fud by circletimessquare · · Score: 3, Interesting

    trusting the chinese government at their word is equally foolish. there are no deep nefarious plots and twisty hidden meanings in this piece of censorware most probably. but at the same time, the chinese government is certainly no paragon of virtue that we should trust is motivated by exactly what they say

    not that western nations are any more trustworthy. its just that there is this idiotic notion i often encounter that says "western critics are complaining the chinese have hidden purposes, so since i don't trust western mouthpieces, i'll believe the chinese at their word that they are completely virtuous and innocent in their motivations"

    you know, like iran is enriching uranium for peaceful purposes. "that's what they said, that's what i believe. because i won't be a naive idiot for the west. i choose to be a naive idiot for the west's enemies"

    hey, here's a radical idea: how about you trust no one and be a naive idiot for no one? that is: distrust the west, distrust china, and distrust iran, all at the same time

    thunderclap

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  7. Re:Or just block their IP space by timeOday · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I agree, personally I would worry more about the private key for Windows Update finding its way into the wild. Now that is centralized administrative authority.