Chinese Game Operator Used DDoS Attacks On Rivals

carusoj writes "An attack by a Chinese online game provider meant to cripple the servers of its rivals ballooned to cause an Internet outage in much of the country in May, according to police. The escalation began with a distributed denial-of-service attack on a domain registrar that serves many small gaming companies. While the national scale of the effects was unusual, such attacks are common among some small Internet businesses competing to draw customers in China, security researchers say. Police have arrested four people involved in the attack."

Comments

Happens all the time in China

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

The only notable deviation is that the perps were "detained" in this case and the disruption was large enough that it got some unwanted attention.

Translation: The government cronies paid off by the "detained" individuals had less power than the government officials paid off by people inconvenienced by the DDOS attack.

It wouldn't have made the news at all except the bumbling "hackers" and the bag man (who rented the servers) managed to let their private commercial dispute disrupt DNS services in a couple of provinces. These bag men are just proxies for people in positions of power in the government who are profiting by skimming profits from these illegal servers.

*shrug*

Re:Happens all the time in China

[Anonymous Coward]

Certainly reinforces my view that China is, for business purposes, still the wild fucking west. The Chinese also have an odd sense of fairness compared to elsewhere, a neurotic desire to save face by denying any wrong doing even in the face of overwhelming evidence, and an astounding ability to rationalize truly horrendous acts if the benefit from them.

Yes, there's plenty they do well that other countries would benefit from emulating, but the trade off is a truly cut throat view of business and social interaction in general.

Re:Happens all the time in China

[Anonymous Coward]

But at least business in ther countries know that what they are doing is unethical: they just fail to care. Chinese on the other hand see these actions as being completely normal.

Re:The effect of culture

[DigiShaman]

They're quite common all over the world. Three major examples come to mind here in America. Chicago, New York, and Washington DC.

Re:Why?

[vertinox]

I mean, is it really worth it? Isn't this the kind of behavior in China that earns you a bullet in the back of the head?

Depends on who you bribe and who you piss off.