Slashdot Mirror
Google.cn Attack Part of a Broad Spying Effort
CWmike writes "Google's decision Tuesday to risk walking away from China (Um, the world's largest Internet market) may have come as a shock, but security experts see it as the most public admission of a top IT problem for US companies: ongoing corporate espionage originating from China. It's a problem that the US lawmakers have complained about loudly. In the corporate world, online attacks that appear to come from China have been an ongoing problem for years, but big companies haven't said much about this, eager to remain in the good graces of the world's powerhouse economy. Google, by implying that Beijing had sponsored the attack, has placed itself in the center of an international controversy, exposing what appears to be a state-sponsored corporate espionage campaign that compromised more than 30 technology, financial and media companies, most of them global Fortune 500 enterprises. The US government is taking the attack seriously. Late Tuesday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton released a statement asking the Chinese government to explain itself, saying that Google's allegations 'raise very serious concerns and questions.' She continued: 'The ability to operate with confidence in cyberspace is critical in a modern society and economy.'"
That ought to scare 'em.
Why is the government wasting time with this? Everybody knows what the answer is going to be, the Chinese government is going to deny everything and change nothing. Unless Secretary Clinton is willing to back up those words with some sort of action, they are just a waste of breath.
I read the internet for the articles.
... that what began as a simple web search company is now so large that it is capable of potentially altering the course of international diplomacy.
As a tech community, we are always reading articles about Google, computer security, etc. It's surprising to see one of our hot button topics being picked up by the mainstream and becoming an international diplomatic flap. I'm stunned that Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State, has waded into the discussion.
They may lose china, but in the eyes of many, "not being evil" is worth more.
Go Google, make me proud!
The Digital Sorceress
Everybody seems to walk on egg shells as to not cause friction with China because of the "possible" loss of customers they get access to. I applaud Google for this. Just because China has 1.3 billion people does not make them all good customers. I know a lot of software developers who would rather stay out of China because after the first license is sold, it's pirated and re-distributed by their competitors. So my point, why compromise your ethics for a hostile business environment that might lead to further problems and minimal increase in the balance sheets. Way to go Google!
Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX
That's because they apparently were able to access a system used to help Google comply with search warrants by providing data on Google users, said a source familiar with the situation, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with the press.
See why leaving back doors open for law enforcement and other Government organizations actually decreases our security?
See why "if you do nothing wrong you have nothing to worry about" is complete utter non-sense?
By making the government's job easier, they've opened up the door to malicious attacks by foreign governments.
The FBI (the whole Executive branch for that matter) and Congress should be ashamed of themselves for their stupidity in ordering such back doors.
The only fear I have for my security is the idiocy of the US Government in "protecting" me.
Morons.
China is not a powerhouse.
It is growing rapidly but it is a nightmare police state joke.
When the demographic collapse hits all the "miracle" dreams about China will fade.
Their population is ageing rapidly, they have an imbalance of women to men and they have huge internal problems.
This is going to go down as the biggest piece of corporate "do-gooding" since Henry Ford did the $5 day. I can't even begin to calculate how much Google went up in my mind for doing this. They may have lost a bunch of potential customers, but for what its worth, they've just got me for life.
Whatever their motives, Google did the right thing, and in a big way. I didn't see Microsoft stepping up to the plate like that, Apple didn't step up to the plate like that, and I'll remember that when I choose platforms.
This is my sig.
Why is the government wasting time with this? Everybody knows what the answer is going to be, the Chinese government is going to deny everything and change nothing. Unless Secretary Clinton is willing to back up those words with some sort of action, they are just a waste of breath.
Because by publicly asking the government to respond, they are making them look like a pack of inept idiots. It tells the rest of the world that they are attempting to spy (still), and doing a bad job of it. Security services globally will probably now be reviewing their intrusion detection procedures, making it more difficult for the Chinese government skript kiddies to make headway toward their goals. It will scare away some companies considering investment in China, slowing their internal ecenomic growth, and costing them money. It is also the first step in the diplomatic process that can lead to condemnations from the UN, sanctions, or even war. Rational states don't simply skip to straight to attacking other states over stuff like this.
The very fact that they have put this in the public realm as opposed to quietly telling the Chinese government that they know what they are doing (which they have been for years) indicates that the next step in the process is being taken.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
a little suspicious that they release this right after all the bad press about nexus one customer support, hmmm?
One fascinating aspect of this story is how Google, just a private corporation, is able to credibly threaten an entire country -- and a near-superpower one, at that! That used to take the kind of might only a government could wield.
No longer.
The web levels everyone -- and I mean EVERYONE -- to one, lowest common denominator: access.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
The Chinese government is corrupt, authoritarian, and oppressive.
Sticks and stones... Oh wait, you're talking about China?
Carry on.
Yours,
The US government
The Chinese are all about assimilation of technology. And most companies are happy to help. Boeing, you want to sell us planes, then you have to build some components here. Bring in your fancy machine tools and expertize.
Conservative, mod down for violating
Further reasons the administration might not like what China is doing right now are economic. China ties their currency exchange rate to the U.S. dollar in a way that keeps theirs low relative to ours. This essentially creates a permanent trade imbalance between the exporter (CHina) and the importers (U.S. mostly, also Europe). I hear people say all the time that China owns a huge portion of the U.S. debt and it would be a big disaster economically if they sold that debt. This is incorrect, if the Chinese sold their U.S. debt they'd be doing us a favor because it would depress the value of the dollar and make our manufacturing more competitive. In the past when unemployment has been rock-bottom in the U.S., this wouldn't help us much. Right now it would help our economy a lot to create manufacturing jobs because our unemployment is 10%. Paul Krugman quantified this by saying that China's exchange rate policy amounts to 1.4 million lost jobs in the U.S. The people at the federal reserve and the treasury know this. Ben Bernake himself has been quoted as saying chaiman-speak equivalent for the Chinese are playing with fire.
The conclusion here is that I suspect that if Clinton is mentioning this, the administration is planning on using this as leverage to get economic or other concessions out of the Chinese.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
Can't believe people still fall for the naive "Don't be evil" motto these days.
It may shock you, but corporations are made of people, and sometimes, the people that make them up are moved to do ethical things. That Google's actions are newsworthy is a reflection on us, not just an abstraction of the corporation.
This is my sig.
Indeed it's true. I see many people talk of fearing China, but the reality is it simply doesn't have the military equipment to fight far from it's shores, it doesn't have the stability to guarantee that if it does send it's soldiers outside it's borders that it wont lose territory to dissidents inside it's borders. Contrary to popular belief it doesn't have that much support from Russia, partly because it's still locked in border disputes with them, the same goes for it's other neighbours in almost every direction who would love the opportunity of China spreading itself to far to claim territory they believe is their own.
Economically it could certainly be a problem, but in terms of us losing it's manufacturing facility the likes of India which is of a similar population would gladly pick up the slack, and in the current weakened economic situation in fact, most countries would be willing to take on a big manufacturing boost.
That's not to say they couldn't be a problem at all of course, if they backed up North Korea by having North Korea threaten further to launch nukes whilst providing them military support to try and wave of the US and such from attacking it in response to such threats it'd be a big deal. Similarly any war with them would still be a hell of a headache, but the point to take away is this, no matter what China does, even if in the worst case they decide to pursue a military route, whilst they'd cause a lot of harm and damage, they'd have absolutely no chance of winning. Even their nuclear stockpile is relatively small, particularly when you take into account modern American ICBM defences.
In a way though it's a real shame, because China has so many smart people, it has such potential to be a thriving peaceful modern nation. It's perhaps ironic that the lust for power and control at the top of China is exactly what stops China from becoming a more powerful player on the international stage. It has a big population, but it can't unilaterally take on the world despite seeming to believe otherwise.
This is a backdoor because the obvious way to store search data is to aggregate it immediately and delete the source. Which is what any sane engineer would do.
Enter the cops: Don't delete that data, I might want to spy on someone. What do you mean China is using that data to spy on someone? How dare they!
And that's why it's a back door.
Unless I'm actually in the business of trading with the Chinese, can anybody give me one good reason not to drop all traffic from their IPs right at the router?
I don't think I'd miss anything from there except spam. I bet many Fortune 500 companies wouldn't either, and if they had a business unit that needed to communicate with China, they could set up a special link for that. The rest of your network doesn't need access.
It's kind of a step backwards to have to think about national borders on the 'net; but if they're going to behave this way, that has a cost. We'll just go back to a "placing a call there requires some extra code and expense" mentality.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Back in 2001 I was working for state government. Our web site was defaced and I started tracing the sources through our border routers, etc. It resolved back to China.
So I did what any sane administrator in government would do, I just blotted out the known IP ranges from China.
... they can do whatever the hell they want.
"Google's decision Tuesday to risk walking away from China (Um, the world's largest Internet market)..."
They're not REQUIRED to do business with anyone. Some customers are just too much of a pain in the ass to be worth it. Imagine you own a store and there's an item you buy for $5 and sell for $10. If someone comes in and offers you $9 for it, would you sell? Sure, why not, it's still pretty good. How about $8? $7? $6? $5.50? $5.25? $5.05? $5.01? At what point do you tell them "Piss off, you're wasting my time"? I personally would much rather deal with a thousand nice well-off customers than a million pain-in-the-ass cheapskates.* Seems to be working pretty well for Apple too. :-)
So same thing here. If Google doesn't feel like dealing with China's BS, they don't have to. Let someone else try to make a buck off that headache.
* disclaimer: before anyone gets their panties in a knot, I'm not saying rich people are nice and poor people aren't. I'm talking about CHEAPNESS here--someone who has nothing better to do with their time than argue over every nickel versus someone who's content to pay a fair price. Cheapness** is why the US is so beholden to China right now. See also Schmatta.
** and a few other things
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Google made a move everybody else was afraid to make, and they're too big to be ignored. This is going to have a geopolitical domino effect, that's why everybody is now concerned. It is rare that a corporation should make such a bold statement that preempts what I'm sure are a lot of well laid foreign policy plans both public and private. They're forcing action on the issue, and now each nation is going to have to grandstand. We'll see how much real substance is addressed, but if other corporations start coming forward like a bunch of women coming out of hiding in a serial rape case, then you can be sure that for any number of constituency reasons (contributions included) there will be so much pressure on Congress that it could topple the foreign policy direction of the executive branch.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
When has UN condemnation ever acomphished anything?
Even if the condemnation doesn't scare off investors (Which China wants and needs), it is the next step in the process. International diplomacy is a game with rules.
Who exactly woud sanctions against China hurt? (Hint: not China)
Yes it would actually hurt China. They need markets to sell to. While it wouldn't also cause other short term pain, it would allow development of markets in other countries, eroding China's long term markets. China is not the only game in town by a long shot.
Who is going to declare war on a country with over a billion people and manufacturers most of all but the most secretive millitrary hardware for just about the rest of the world?
Again, China is not the only market, especially for military hardware. While China is a powerful country, it cannot stand alone against the world. While warfare isn't on the table yet, China will not be able to behave like this indefinitely without suffering repercussions.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
The thought was, China will suffer a major loss of prestige if Google goes through with this. Other companies will follow suit, leading to loss of access, loss of influence, loss of opportunity, and ultimately, loss of business.
China will lash out with wounded national pride, as they seem wont to do. This will further alienate them from the international community, leading to further loss of status.
Loss of prestige will encourage civil unrest, something China dreads. In some places, China seems to be a tinderbox, just waiting to catch fire. They are suffering from the global recession just as much as anyone.
That is a whole lot of pain that China doesn't need right now.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Whether you think Google's initial decision to comply with censorship in China is right or not, I think their decision now makes the initial compliance worthwhile. With it Google now has enough influence to the Chinese that the news is big enough to spread to everyone in China. (Remember it doesn't matter how much we know, more important is how much the Chinese citizen get from this news) Google also has enough market share that its retreat can greatly disrupt existing market.
Although there are certainly still a lot of ignorant PRC Chinese that pissed me off, I am very glad to see a lot of PRC Chinese that appreciate Google and disagree with the censorship in China. Many of them know about sensitive incidents like tiananmen. I believe thanks to the "negative" effect of the great censorship effort by the government, some younger Chinese become more aware of such incidents by actively comparing search results of these incidents whenever censorship related news are reported.
I'm quite surprise to not see any Slashdot comment mentioning this. Within moments the news were reported, large amount of visitors are attracted to Google China's headquarter to present "illegal" flowers to Google. The new term "fei1 fa3 xian4 hua1" (Slashdot can't accept my chinese character) is used and no surprising, this term has been banned by Baidu et al. There isn't much you can see from the English Google News, but with the chinese keyword, you can get much more informative results.
(disclaimer: I'm a Chinese but not from PRC)
Yeah, I'm sure China will be as damaged by their 'collapse' as we have been by ours.
China is a powerhouse whether you like it or not. China has been the cultural, political, and economic epicenter of the largest continent on earth for the better part of five thousand years. Almost every society near China is directly derivative of Chinese society. China contains nearly 20% of the world's entire population. They will be second only to the US in GDP very shortly. China is second only to the US in military expenditures, and has nearly 1 million more active duty military personnel than the US (sobering considering that the US could not defeat China in any of the proxy wars it has fought in Asia). Ask the Germans or the French how well technological superiority works against vast numbers and huge territory in a conventional war. And while I'm not one of the nutjobs who think war with China is around the corner, if their economic growth falters and it destabilizes their society, they may change their approach to a more aggressive one regionally to rally nationalism, perhaps even to the point of provoking a war with India over Arunchal Pradesh or trying to absorb Taiwan.
China is a police state, even a nightmare, but if you think China is a joke you might find that the punchline is not so funny.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Where Chinese government has to hack their way in, US govt agents simply show up and asks for disclosure. I don't think they even need a warrant for that.
In what ways are Communists more evil?
Basically, any nation that starts a nuclear war against either the USA or Russia, without being able to win a decisive victory, loses everything. If they manage to destroy say, 30, 40, or even 50% of either superpower's population and assets, they just provide the justification for an absolutely overwhelming retaliatory strike.
Remember US history for the 1940's. The US declares war on Japan, with an immediate demand for unconditional surrender, and publicly announces that this is the only thing they will accept. The War declaration in Congress makes this a binding matter on the executive branch, that the US will not accept a conditional surrender except by direct order of the President.
The following are a few of the publicly expressed remarks of the time, generally approved by the majority of Americans listening:
"By the time we're through with them, the Japanese language will be spoken only in hell."
"I hate Japs! I'm telling you men, that if I met a pregnant Japanese woman, I'd kick her in the belly!"
Both by Fleet Admiral William "Bull" Halsey
You'll note that Halsey is quite clearly talking Genocide as an acceptable response. He got promoted after that.
During the 70's the Soviet Union conducted top level strategic simulations exercises (sit around a table style war games scenarios) with its general staff. One of the noted outcomes of those was that, whenever scenario casualties exceeded the roughly 20 million from WW2, someone on the staff spotted and mentioned that fact, and commanding generals and admirals almost invariably swiftly urged the politbureau to immediately allow retrofitting of cobalt jackets on nuclear devices and permission to deploy them specifically against civilian population centers, or the release of weaponized smallpox or anthrax to the front lines for field artillary use, or other such acts. The Soviet Union's analysis was that, in a real war, once casualties reached about 20 million, there was a better than 50-50 chance command would stage a coup if civilian authorities didn't approve all the most extreme measures in the Soviet arsenal, and an even higher likelihood they would give orders to totally exterminate the enemy population bases with them if they got the means to do so. Whether they would have been so determined to take it into runaway mode in a real war is, of course, speculative, but there's certainly at least some chance.
Who is John Cabal?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
President Hu Jintao: "Ogh! You must have very big pee-anis!"
President Obama: "Excuse me? I was just asking you what you’re up to with these cyber attacks on America Companies!"
President Hu Jintao: "Nothing. We are very simple people. With very small penis. This hacker's penis is especially small."
Chinese Hacker: [fakes a sob] "Uh, smuh, so small."
President Hu Jintao: "We cannot achieve much with so small penis. But you! Americans. Wow! Penis so big! SOOO big penis!"
President Obama: [flattered] "Well uh, he—I guess it is a pretty good size."
Chinese Hacker: "Minata, kite kite!" ["Everone, come come!" A group of Japanese women move in, chattering] "This-a man has veh-ry big penis!" [the women applaud]
Woman 1: Take takeru o da ne? ["It’s rather large, isn’t it?"]
Woman 2: Hai. ["Yes."]
Chinese Hacker: "Uh, hoh, what an enoah-mus penis-uh!"
?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
To put it in perspective, and maybe make yourself feel a bit better, you can crack open the news archives and history books for a look back at American espionage, dirty tricks, corporate/3-letter government agency joint ventures and international "development" over the these many years. We generally give as good as we get.
So China hasn't done anything that America hasn't done. Except this time they got caught with their hand in the cookie jar. That's the real crime.
http://ihatehate.wordpress.com
The morality of the market Is easily reflected in Google's stock price. I think this is why Google is still privately controlled instead of at the whim of the shareholders, or as I like to call them, the greedy ancient Court of Douchebags.
Google Inc. (GOOG, $580.93, -$9.55, -1.62%) said it may leave China after an investigation found the company had been hit with major cyber attacks it believes originated from the country--a move that would amount to one of the highest-profile rebukes yet of China by a major U.S. firm. The talk tossed China's Internet economy into turmoil, and sent Chinese search company Baidu ($431.67, +$45.18, +11.69%) soaring. Deutsche Bank upgraded the company to buy from hold saying Google threat is likely a plus for Baidu no matter how it shakes out. Other Chinese Internet firms also rose, including Sohu.com Inc. (SOHU, $58.98, +$0.85, +1.46%) and Sina Corp. (SINA, $44.87, +$0.30, +0.67%).
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100113-708147.html?mod=WSJ_World_MIDDLEHeadlinesEurope
I didn't say too big 'in China'. That they are not the most popular search there is not material to the situation. They are too big a global company that their issues with China can be ignored by other companies and governments. That is the point.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
I don't think you realise how few nukes China has and also overestimate the size of a nuclear explosion as many people often do.
The only two countries in the world that can unilaterally push the no one wins scenario are Russia and the USA. Other nuclear capable nations simply do not have enough weapons of high enough yield setup to be deployed via the harder to take down ICBMs to fulfil that scenario. They could do a lot of damage for sure, they could whipe out the entire Eastern seaboard of the US, the vast majority of Europe and so forth, but here's the key, if they did either of those you'd still have either Europe left, or the entire rest of the US and it's allies, or a combination of that would strike back. The US would still have facility to whipe out the whole of China via ICBMs in response. My point is, that in a worst case scenario China could not end the world or anything so daft, they could not even end the West, and their price for only heavily damaging it would be their own entire obliteration. China has at most 180 nuclear weapons, of these many are only deployable from shorter range launchers or aircraft, which would be easy for the US to defend against. Of the handful that are ICBMs, many aren't particularly high yield. This is why as I state, China's nuclear capacity is limited far below anything approaching complete worldwide obliteration. In contrast, again, only the US and Russia have enough ICBMs to whipe the world out a few times over.
"Anyway, I can't actually remember China say they're going to "unilaterally take on the world". For now they seem content just to take on the world's manufacturing."
No neither can I, but then, though that's probably because I was quite clearly talking about a hypothetical worst case scenario if things ever really did get that crazy, which I don't believe they honestly ever will.
But I was just responsible for a state web site, not a federal web site. So no harm, no foul.
And even if you were responsible for a Federal-level site ... where is it written that every site operated by a U.S. entity must be visible to people in other countries?
Some years ago AT&T cut its trunk lines to China, because of all the spam coming out of open relays there. The State Department got involved after the Chinese government complained, and AT&T backed off. But this problem is not new, and China's government apparently has no intention of doing anything about it. Why should they? It's just a drain on our economy. Definite plus for them. Personally, I think our government should offer a bounty to U.S. crackers for verified hacks of any computer within Chinese address space.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
The Opium Wars were fought in the throes of a dying dynasty run by occupying foreigners. It was hardly a cause that rank and file Hans were interested in dying for. The Sino-Japanese conflict took place immediately after the fall of the aforementioned dynasty when disunity ruled China more than any man or faction.
However, that is not China today. China is currently very strong and almost as unified as possible (Tibet and Xinjiang have never been more than ornery tributaries, so Taiwan is the only real missing piece). Its military is exponentially stronger, better trained, and with higher moral than it possessed in the century before the communists won the civil war.
You think farmer's revolts cause dissolution? You don't know much about 'their millenia in existence' then. A revolt brought down the Qin dynasty and as quickly raised a unified Han dynasty in its place. The transition from Yuan to Ming was similar.
If you want to deny China's might in spite of what I've already said, be my guest.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit