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Google Attackers Identified as Chinese Government
forand writes Researchers, examining the attacks on Google and over 20 other companies in December, have determined 'the source IPs and drop server of the attack correspond to a single foreign entity consisting either of agents of the Chinese state or proxies thereof.'"
Coming to a planet near you.
âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
It couldn't be them. China would never do anything wrong.
That... or they'll just blame it on their status as a "developing nation" and that they shouldn't be held to the same standards as everyone else.
Oh there's a big surprise! That's an incredible - I think I'm going to have a heart attack and die of not surprise!
now that its clear that the attackers were government agents the question is what will the US state department do.
It's hardly a secret that governments conduct cyber-espionage - what seems shocking in this instance is that they have been caught and that a major company, a telecoms giant and the US government have all gone on the offensive. This seems like a pretty dramatic shift, and you have to wonder what China's really done to provoke such a reaction after everyone's spent the last decade quietly appeasing them to try and get a foothold in their markets. It sounds like reading the subject lines of a few Chinese activists' emails is only the tip of the ice berg in this case, it'll be interesting to see what else has yet to be revealed.
Bad China! BAD! Now give me more cheap, exploitable labor. AWWWE, how can we stay mad at you!
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So what are we going to do about it? By we, I mean we as:
1. a body of corporations (those 20 or so affected)
2. a nation
3. a global community of nations (UN)
4. a cybercommunity
What can we do, and what is most likely to happen?
If a foreign government had attacked non-digital assets of any US corporation, you would expect some kind of formal reprisal. Maybe not an airdrop of Marines, but certainly something more than Hilary Clinton threatening to write a stern letter.
What I have not doped out yet to my own satisfaction is whether the tepid response from Washington is the fault of the current administration, confusion regarding the digital nature of the breach and assets, or a little of both.
Who didn't see that one coming from a mile away? I called it the moment I read that there was a sophisticated attack on Google.
Whether its all fabricated or not, I like the idea of Google pulling out of China. Google is one of the leading innovators in the western world - and by keeping their services out of China it sends a message to the government: Stop Oppression.
and tell them how proud you are that they finally took a stance befitting their "do no evil" stance. Better late than never, and they deserve our support for this courageous action. I for one have changed my mind about them significantly based on this single action alone.
If the EU can fine a US company for what amounted to unfair business practices, what should the US do to China? Debt? What debt?
Idiot AC is trying to troll by calling others trolls. Amen.
I know it was you, China. You broke my heart. You broke my heart!
sincerely,
Google.
Working for a Defense contractor, one of our systems was compromised. Fortunately, the idiot who gained access screwed up SSH which alerted us to what was going on, and prevented them from erasing their tracks. All SSH connections were from computers in China. They've been doing this for years, and no one has really called them on it until now. It takes Google to make a big enough splash before anyone really pays attention to it.
This question is repeated endlessly at almost every major world event, "Does this come as a surprise to anyone?"
Stop already, its just a useless waste of bits.
...embargo on!
After RTFA it seems the only thing solid is that command server was located in China, them belonging to "agents of the Chinese state or proxies thereof" remain pure speculation at this point unless some one come out and provide evidence that links to the government ,such as registration records or money trail etc. This could still well be the works by some local hacker groups, and since the servers being attacked is outside of China they are not even breaking local laws there. Though I wouldn't be surprised they have a wink-wink relationship with the local police.
Google was never ambiguous that the reason they are threatening to leave is because the government was hacking their servers. The removal of the filtering was just an extra "fuck you!" to the Chinese government. They tried playing nicely with the Chinese and they still took advantage of them.
Sorry, I don't think it's likely Google will switch to Microsoft IIS anytime soon.
The Wall Street Journal had a great article about some of the details behind the scenes of this particular incident, and also another article that did a good job of summarizing what has been discussed here over the last couple of years. The main stream media is openly stating that the People's Liberation Army is actively encouraging "citizen cyber militias" to conduct "cyber attacks" (good Lord how I hate that term) against foreign (read, United States) corporations. Although they haven't gone so far as to state that those militias have active backing of the government, they have said that the government is turning a blind eye to their activities. Furthermore, the WSJ goes on to state that there are United States agencies involved in similar espionage activities.
Given that background, it seems like hacking Chinese companies should be fair game for up and coming "security researchers" here in the United States. In the 1990s the United States government made it quite clear that they were going to come down hard on people who mess with government and Fortune 500 systems. Given the option between really securing the systems and punishing those who exploit the lack of security, they went with the latter. A lot of people, myself included, decided that once we turned 18 and faced the threat of real Federal prosecution, the wise move was to turn off the war dialers, stop snarfing ESN/MIN pairs out of the air, and stop trying to run exploit code against computers that we don't control.
We can't hone our craft in the United States anymore. Although there is a whole market for securing IT resources against attack, there isn't a playground to pick up skills in. My suggestion is that China is that playground. My suggestion is that Chinese corporations in the United States are the targets. I mean lets face it, there are hundreds of thousands of compromised computers in the United States. The United States government can't be held accountable for malicious activity directed toward Chinese corporations. It would be unfortunate for those entities to be DDoS'd. It would be unfortunate for their internal workstations to be the target of vulnerability research.
I can't find the link to the actual report in TFA.
I don't doubt that there's a strong suggestion that the Chinese government was somehow involved in the intrusion attempts mentioned by Google, and generally it isn't Google's habit to lie or deceive in these high profile matters.
But two days after the Google announcement a report comes out saying "yes it's the Chinese government, yes it's them!"? Without obvious links to the actual report?
I just sense it's just the "security companies" trying to ride the PR bandwagon. I mean, it's just on everybody's mind, and "somebody had to say it out aloud". So you cobble together related bits and pieces and make a grand pronouncement, making everybody happy. But does it prove anything? Not until we find the evidence. Until then it's all just hearsay.
Besides, would you really base your conclusions on findings from "VeriSign's iDefense security lab"? From the company who tried to f*ck up NXDOMAIN?
This is not the end of the story. I suspect more juicy bits will come through.
Don't quote me on this.
Gmail, the aspect of Google that was being hacked is not available in China.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
The premise is that China hacked Google to access the accounts of these Chinese Human rights activists. Given that Google already complies with Chinese law, why did China not openly contact Google over this?
If they are using something like a NAT Gateway with port mapping, then the actual IP address would not be visible outside of China. I thought it was standard operating procedure for hackers to route through several intermediates rather than connecting directly, thus increasing the time and effort needed to find the actual endpoint. I'm sure these hackers were smart enough to do that as well; the IP address seen from the outside may have nothing to do with the IP address the hackers was actually originating from.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
In the article it says they located the Command and Control box. I did a little investigation of my own and see what they mean. It's oh so obvious this was perpetrated by the Chinese government. Just look at the facts!
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Domain ID:D2289308-LROR
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"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy - Benjamin Franklin"
What kind of /.'r do you think I am to have a girlfriend?
Pshh I snort at you sir, now excuse while I go back to my parents basement to play WoW.
They don't have to pull out, but removing "Most Favored Nation" trade status might help.
The government/culture of The People's Republic of China has only been in existence for about 70 years. Before that, it was the nationalistic Republic of China for about 35 years. And before that, it was an hereditary monarchy or thousands of year.
Maybe you should pick up a history book some time.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Web server log entries from the past 8-9 years show 95% of the attempted break-ins originating from China. They've been checking the locks on the doors and windows for along time. But, when I suggest that we simply block all IPs from that part of the world (I usually added a course explicative that conveyed that they could make sex with themselves), management says no. I'm a full-blooded capitalist and believe in the power of a free market and society, but this is ethics, pure and simple. If I were Google, I'd be spinning off large team of people to start working on hacking into anything in the PRC they can find. If the "Law of the Land" condones computer breaking-and-entering then, by God, full steam ahead!
Western culture goes back to the ancient Greeks, Hebrews, Phoenicians, and even Egyptians. It is extremely likely that Western culture and Chinese culture share a lot of similar roots, and they definitely did a lot of cultural trading throughout the millennia. So clearly you are not referring to culture with your 'few thousand years' statement.
As for the current government, it's only been around for sixty or so. During that time they killed millions with famine caused specifically by poor government policy (the great leap forward: people were literally eating their own children. It was horrible). Then they killed and tortured millions more, in the temper tantrum of the youth known as the Cultural Revolution. This was once again encouraged and caused by poor government policy.
Furthermore, I don't think I need to go over all the things the government currently does that violates human rights. Let's just say when the torch came to San Francisco, protesters had to color coordinate so they could keep track of what exactly they were protesting.
Qxe4
I think you need to give the Chinese more credit. As you've said, they have a billion more people than we do, yet those people are living on a similar sized landmass with similar resources. If there were a billion more people in America tomorrow, you can bet your ass that the interests on Wall Street would be aligned with Washington and implementing some serious production and other controls on the population. Look at what a big deal illegal immigration is. Americans are already stingy with resources and concerned about maintaining vague notions like "quality of life" for naturalized citizens. You can bet your ass that if there were a billion more people here, we'd have a Politburo like organization doing whatever was necessary to maintain their status while at the same time doing everything necessary to prevent a full on social uprising.
If you think China's government isn't effective, you have a very narrow view of the world. Spend a few hours researching what China is up to in Africa, and then contrast that with how well our State and Defense Departments are doing in that part of the world. Take a look at who is winning oil contracts in Iraq... Here, I'll save you the work (http://money.cnn.com/2007/04/05/news/international/iraq_oil/index.htm .. http://moneymorning.com/2008/08/22/china-iraq/) The Chinese don't have "terrorists" attacking their homeland because of misguided foreign policy blunders (warning, potential red herring).
Sorry, I don't think it's likely Google will switch to Microsoft IIS anytime soon.
I believe that you seriously misrepresent Microsoft IIS. I have significant experience proving that IIS does not require Chinese seizure in order activate its self-destruct sequence.
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
Actually, China
The reason China is able to compete is because of a handful factors:
* Enslavement/enticement of foreign countries to utilize their natural resources (see: Africa)
* Cheap-as-fuck labor
* Wanton IP theft
* A docile populace
* Totalitarian state able to push all this through to the populace
* UN complicity towards Chinese abuse of standards which everyone else "has" to abide by. (See: pollution/global warming crap)
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Sorry, I was about to make a really rude and sarcastic comment here, but I won't.
Western culture began in the ancient Mediterranean thousands of years ago. You would find most aspects of modern western culture in ancient Greece, but a lot of it was around even before that. The major elements are government by representative democracy, the rule of law and emphasis on scientific legalism (I don't know what else to call it) in the fields of science and philosophy. Also the belief in the right to personal liberty for land owning males remains intact even today. Your claim that western culture is young is patently absurd.
You're trying to make a comparison between the age of the USA and the age of eastern culture. That comparison makes no sense.
This would have been the Chery QQ which GM accused the manufacturer of copying the Chevrolet Spark/Daewoo Matiz.
Check out
http://paultan.org/2006/02/18/chery-qq-crash-test/
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daewoo_Matiz
Since China is a full-fledged member of the WTO, MFN has now become a right of China, guaranteed by multilateral treaty. Attempting to enact trade sanctions against China would result in the U.S. being sanctioned in the WTO dispute process.