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Another Attack, On Law Firm Suing China
An anonymous reader writes "In the wake of the attack on Google, another company claims to be the victim of a similar attack. Gipson Hoffman & Pancione is a Los Angeles law firm whose client, CYBERsitter, is suing the government of China and several Chinese companies for using their intellectual property in the infamous Green Dam censorship filter. According to the firm, they have been targeted by a spear phishing attack from China." Relatedly, smartaleckkill writes with news that the US state department is to formally protest to China over the alleged cyber-attacks on Google, "likely early next week."
I am actually glad to see that lawsuits over software patents aren't being used for silly purposes to remove competition. Cyber sitter could have put together this lawsuit long ago, but they go in on the heels of the google hacking fiasco they got caught in.
...we are gonna open a big ol' can o' formal protest on all y'all! Take that beeotch!
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
the ensuing protests will be worth a laugh or two.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
what the hell does China care about a protest in California?
"Spear phishing"
Really? Really?
In the wake of the attack on Google, another company claims to be the victim of a similar attack. Gipson Hoffman & Pancione is a Los Angeles law firm whose client, CYBERsitter is suing the government of China
Is, this some sort of, competition for most, confusing use of commas?
,
Whoops, wrong article. My multiple tab browsing privileges should have been revoked a long time ago.
China now owns the US dollar, thanks to the Fed. But don't take my word for it. If I were the US I would invest in some lube and bend over quietly.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Dumb US firms! You know better to work with the Chinese Communists before you went over there and do business!
Stop complaining if you want that 1.5 billion piece of pie.
What, is "targeted" too many letters for you?
1. Set up honeypot and bogus law firm.
2. File big lawsuit against China.
3. Log sources and vectors during ensuing cyberattack.
4. Sell results to DoD.
5. Profit!!
Q: what do you call 80 tons of lawyers on a slow boat to China?
A: a good start.
Seriously though, if we really could figure out to export lawyers; it would balance the trade deficit, and just think what it would do for the quality of life domestically.
I try to keep the JavaScript horror confined to one tab at a time, so I never understood how people could comment in the wrong article.
Thanks for clearing that up. :)
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
Don't be sucked in by the Propaganda!
Why is this being treated like it is a big event? This sort of thing has been going on for years, probably more commonly from the US toward China.. How about some balanced reporting? Don't clog up Slashdot every time something technology related appears on the net!
This "Oh China owns all the US's debt, the US has to do whatever they want!!" stuff is silly. It shows a lack of understanding of how money and debt work at an international level.
So, what China owns are US securities. These are promises to pay a certain amount of US dollars on a certain date from the US government. How long that time frame is depends on the type of security. Also if they pay interest periodically or if it is a lump sum also depends. The treasury sells securities as short as a few days, to as long as 30 years. Now there's a couple important things to understand about these securities:
1) They are payable in US dollars. What that means is that they are susceptible to devaluation by large amounts of inflation. If they US wanted to it could simply print the money to pay them and devalue the dollar. That has consequences for the US, but also for the holders of the securities. If the dollars your securities are paid in suddenly worth 10% of what they were when you bought them, your investment goes in the crapper.
2) The securities are the equivalents of IOUs. There's no international agency that enforces their repayment or worth. The US just says that their full faith and credit backs them. This means the US could default on payment. That of course has serious consequences for the US, but again for the holder. Suddenly your notes are worth nothing. Countries have defaulted before, though it is rare (the US has never defaulted on payment).
What this means is that you China can't simply call the debt due. They can't say "We want all our money now." It is paid out when it is paid out. Also, taking any drastic action with regards to their notes could lead to the notes losing a lot or all of their value. For example they could potentially try and dump the notes, sell them to other people. Doing so would undermine fail in US securities and make it extremely difficult for the US to sell new ones. However, it would also mean that because people were so worried, China would have to take a massive loss on the notes they sell.
Further, something like that might even lead to a situation where they lose all their value and the US keeps its credit. Remember the credit of the US is all in what people believe. So suppose the US convinces its allies, particularly the European and Asian nations, that China is waging economic war. As such the US has to null all of China's treasury holdings. Not to worry, the US will still honour notes issued to all other countries, just not China. They pull that off, suddenly China is left with a bunch of worthless notes (well nothing actually, they are just accounting entries at the Department of Treasury) and they are in a world of hurt.
What we really have with the US and China, and indeed much of the global economy, is an intertwined system of economic mutually assured destruction. China could create problems for the US economy because of the large amount of US debt they hold, but to do so would create massive problems for their economy.
It is not at all a situation like a person faces, where you owe money in a currency you don't control, and they can come and take the items secured by the loan (like your house) if you fail to pay. Treasury notes are paid in US dollars, whatever a US dollar happens to be worth at that time, and only have value because the US says they do, there's no assets that can be seized in the event of non-payment.
Who am I kidding.
E
Can Airbus Sue the US now? After all, if hacking into communications is now a lawsuit offence that can be persued against a government, the US interception of Airbus negotiations to land a sale so that this could be leaked to Boeing and then let Boeing win the contract should likewise be open to lawsuit.
Will the US agree?
Or is it only bad when China does it?
I remember the good old days. America did not complain and write letters or stamp feet. I sent solders planes and bombs. Ah well I guess the recession really has hit the US hard.
-EDM
For the humor impaired the above is not serious. It was just my first thought when I saw the title.
.... the communication media of the internet.
I discovered I had a whole and large website installed within my own web site a couple years ago and from this I was able to determine that many otehr sites including many found on sourceforge to as well have had such hidden websites installed.
I was able to determine it was from china that this was happening.
Many of these hidden site installations are probably still existing today. I'd advize everyone with a site, individual to corporate to government to do a full inventory of their site directory and files.
What does that have to do with this story?
Its really quite simple, China persist with efforts to overrun and control the internet.
Do I believe its the people of china doing this or organized effort supported by their government?
The general population has their lives to live and could care less about such things as internet control, as is the case with over 99% of the worlds population of near 7 billion people.
So how is it that such a fraction of 1% of the population has such pain in the ass influence in screwing the rest of us up?
So here is the solution to the china effort to over run the internet and its open communication media, which BTW is needed in order to put out of business the fraction of 1% PITA power/control mongers.
Identify them down to the organizations and individuals, publish this information and turn their own practice on them, make their efforts backfire, censor them via public listing and filtering (we have spam and virus filters, we now need filters for these). Wide scope Public Exposure is a wonderful thing and is what the internet can achieve.
with the money. THey invest it in Western companies, but they are using multiple proxies. What is interesting is that a number of the investment companies are actually quiet fronts for China money. Then the VCs INSIST that the production moves to china saying that it is the lowest costs. It is thought that many more of the investment companies are owned by CHina, even though they are suppose to declare it as such.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Are all of these attacks really a surprise? Remember that Microsoft gave China access to the Windows source code years ago. http://solarislackware.blogspot.com/2010/01/china-microsoft-and-why-you-should-be.html
These kind of attacks usually are only deployed against one country (namely, the US).
It's not like every country is being attacked by every other spying party.
As this affects just one country, it cannot be considered a general breach.
Windblows and Internets Exploder continue to be the dominant players.
Thank you.
@ ... free sarcasm sign (inverted)
"There are attacks every day. I don't think there was anything unusual," Mr Ballmer added.
Seriously, Ballmer? Have you read the part where the Chinese government has been labelled as the attacker of over 30 international companies by Verisign? Not just some guy in China, but the Chinese government. I would consider that pretty damn unusual.
This is cyber terrorism.
We love been able to buy all sorts of widgets for cheap because they were built in China. We don't care if the workers are being explored, if the companies are polluting, if their government is a vicious dictatorship with a poor human rights record. We don't care about any of that. If we did, we would have already embargoed China. Don't we have an embargo on Cuba? But no... we don't do that. Just keep those cheap goods coming and we will be happy. We have blood in our hands as well.
If China invaded Hawaii, California or Alaska, but did not kill any US citizens we would treat this very differently as the Fed would take this very seriously rather than saying, Yeah, cyber attacks, they happen every day, nobody got hurt etc etc.. Maybe if the Fed realized that when China steals intellectual property, it might not hurt the US today, but it enables China to get a free pass on research for which we had to invest our own time and money into.
During WWII there were many Germans immigrants that didn't support the Third Reich and many Japanese immigrants that didn't support what Japan was doing in the Pacific. I wish the US Gov't would grow a pair instead of saying, "Stop or I'll say stop again!" mentality. When did the gov't become a bunch of pussies when it came down to this? The US employs millions of people associated with the protection of property, both physical and intellectual. Yet this is like the equivalent of some guy ignoring it when his boss gropes his wife because his boss signs his paychecks.
Played by WHAT rules??? "they know USA has played by a strict set of rules", until they don't like playing by those rules.
See, for example, early copyright (Dickens), Canadian Softwoods and more recently, home vs foreign betting.
THIS is why the US won't get anywhere with a UN or WTO censure: the US is in as deep or even deeper water with world trade and the United Nations than China is.
I want them there. Fast. Now.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
and they will send you a spam.
Give China your entire manufacturing base
and they will crush your entire empty shell of a country.
The government which is strong enough to protect you from everything is strong enough to take everything from you.
It's time for Congress to exercise one of their little known powers and issue a letter of marque to Google, authorizing them to take action against Chinese nationals via the internet. We are effectively in a state of conflict with China, with them attacking US interests via "private" proxies. Google and other organizations could be allowed to exercise some self help and go on the offensive.
And it would make "Talk like a Pirate Day" really mean something.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Are they drunk? How do you sue a country??
Which common law do they think both entities (China and CyberSitter) exist in and are forced to adhere to?
I don’t see any multinational organization with the power of enforcing shit on China.
But I can see China’s agents shooting the CyberSitter boss in the head on his next voyage to some small/shady country.
Dumb move. It’s like taunting the USA to “come get me, suckers”! Basically, you’re fucked. ;)
There should be a Bad Idea Jeans advertisement with that story. :D
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
"But neither the United States nor any state shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States"
That answers your question clearly and totally, yet you seem to have missed it while simultaneously citing it.
Or, if you don't like a direct and obvious answer
"The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article."
Congress could cancel it.
You're right, you aren't a constitutional scholar.
Actually, the Bush/Cheney administration were "chaotic evil"... just because they talked about "the Rule of Law" in accents resembling Bismark talking about "Blood and Iron" doesn't mean they intended it to apply to themselves.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
How do we know they didn't just get /.ed? With all the publicity it's not that far fetched.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Would be Google dropping all Chinese and China-related websites from their search results (including AdSense if they really want to talk the talk). They could easily justify such actions by pointing to the attacks they suffered from China and declare it a lawless no-commerce zone where no one can be trusted.
"No - that part means that the US and the southern states have no requirements to pay back Confederate debts"
No, actually, you're totally wrong.
"And if it did"
It DOES.
The fact that you don't know that, and admit as much when you say "if it did" tells me you're relying on your READING of the wording, which means exactly fuck all since your reading of it sucks.