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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."
...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.
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.
What do software patents have to do with anything? This is a copyright infringement and trade secret misappropriation lawsuit and it was filed BEFORE Google went public with their issues.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
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?
Whoops, wrong article. My multiple tab browsing privileges should have been revoked a long time ago.
What, is "targeted" too many letters for you?
It gets worse. According to the linked Wikipedia article:
"Several recent phishing attacks have been directed specifically at senior executives and other high profile targets within businesses, and the term whaling has been coined for these kinds of attacks."
Presumably said senior executives tend to be fat and blubbery.
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
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
,No
And because it has been going on for years it is okay? No, USA and allies needs to retaliate and take the battle to China. Or to put it plainly wage a cyberwar against China until they understand that this kind of behaviour is not tolerable. Otherwise we are just asking for more.
And of course USA and allies need to be careful to contain the conflict. And no, I am no war monger. But I do not believe that weakness is the path to lasting peace.
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?
The CIA could be shipping a digital "Lenin" into China.
Google is the sealed train.
What the CIA funds and sells to the world, they can also use to inject NGO's, cults, porn, MS based services, democracy, encryption and other harmful ideas.
As for "origin of their traffic" who knows what they where fishing for. America is smart at tracing the net, You can send your ip's and data stash around the web a few times.
Unless you pick it up in some huge pipe equiped EU/US low security walk in office next day with a drive and clip board, someone will keep on tracking.
Someone wanted something bad or wanted the access to google backend in a more 24/7 way, like some of the US telcos and their outsourced billing systems 'gift' to distant parts of the world.
Someone was not smart and slipped up.
Google is not MS with best effort, shared time visa cents in the $ opps we did not backup adims, someone trained the google staff well.
My feel is MS and yahoo rolled over long ago.
Google had something neat going on, someone wanted a back door and learned not to mess with a NSA/CIA funded US telco front.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
.... 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.
Captain Kirk, is that you?
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.
."China now owns the US dollar
You don't need to understand anything about the global economy to realise that's bullshit. All you need to do is ask yourself if China could gain an advantage by using it's holdings to manipulate the value of the dollar then why has it not done so already? Surely your not suggesting that China is currently propping up the US out of the goodness of it's heart?
The fact is that the Chinese and US economys are like two drunks leaning on each other, if one stumbles they both fall. I put it to you that your link is little more than an advert for something called "China Investment Corp".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
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
"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.
Unsure where patents come in to this. If there was a software patent being copied, which there isn't, it would not be valid in the EU, let alone China.
Actually, it is not. China is after every western country. Many a company and countries have gripped that they are seeing massive hits on their systems by CHina. And all are being spied on.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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.
It gets worse. According to the linked Wikipedia article:
"Several recent phishing attacks have been directed specifically at senior executives and other high profile targets within businesses, and the term whaling has been coined for these kinds of attacks."
Presumably said senior executives tend to be fat and blubbery.
Also interesting (from your Wikipedia article), is a new phishing technique aimed at academia (presumably targeting those of higher intelligence). This new "dolphin phishing" along with all these "whaling" attempts appear to be originating solely from IP addresses in Japan.
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
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
If it was so common from US to China, it would have been nice if they blocked the import of poisoned pet food and Drywall made of industrial waste. (If we are not, it would be the first good use of spying!)
Got give it to the Chinese some credit. When they found milk was tainted, they executed the guy in charge of food safety.
Wish we could do that with a few incompetent bureaucrats here. Or at least they could sit on death row for the rest of their lives.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
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.
No - that part means that the US and the southern states have no requirements to pay back Confederate debts, so anybody who lent money to the Confederacy loses. Congress still isn't allowed to cancel debts made by the US itself.
And if it did, because we didn't have enough tax base to pay the government's debts, fat chance on borrowing more money from the still-solvent parts of the world. Unfortunately, given the spending habits of the US government from Reagan on, borrowing money instead of saving it while spending the Social Security surplus when the Baby Boom and post-boom birthrate declines are setting us up for a workers-to-retirees ratio that can't sustain itself, we may get to find that out a few years after I retire.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
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
The Arab nationas bought US Bonds. And they provided value and stability. In the Bond market US has played by a very strict set of rules, and no matter what the political turmoil or whatever is going on, US Treasury has been very fair to them. The ministers are actually shocked that they could mouth off USA so badly and have very tough acrimonious talks with the ambassadors and play hard ball. But the interest payments on the coupons arrived on the dot. Never any doubt or linkage between the two. This is the kind of credibility that is very difficult to build in the international arena. There is not a single non Western government that is trusted by the Arabs, Indians, Chinese, Communist bloc, and the third world.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
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.
Your response was pretty retarded, equating the definitions of insurrection or rebellion with something other than the matter being discussed. To answer your taunt, it would appear that my lack of constitutional scholarship is topped by your lack of reading comprehension. I guess expecting intelligent conversation on Slash was a bit delusional on my part.
"Your response was pretty retarded"
And yet, you did nothing to prove it wrong or refute it apart form call names.
More to the point, you illiterate cunt, you ignored the part about congress, which is totally unrelated to YOUR taunt and COMPLETELY answers your question.
YOU'RE WRONG, eat my asshole while you cry about it bitch.
"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.
From your over the top response of crawling over all my threads and spamming with profanity, this apparently stung you pretty deep. You would be able to easily avoid the emotional pain you just experienced by avoiding the taunt in the first place, you know. Are you aware how your lack of self-control is resulting in self disgrace?