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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.
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.
Yeah. We have seen how much china cares about UN's protests. Why would they care the slightest when only a single nation of UN protests? A nation that is very much in debt to them at that. Not only does USA have a massive debt but even the soldiers' helmets have been made in China... As long as USA needs more money from there each year, all these protests are simply for the show and both nations know it.
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.
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.
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.
It's probably these guys.
Kind of a weird phenomenon. Makes me wonder if youthful rebellion manifests itself in a society like that.
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
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.
"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.