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Evidence Weakens That China Did the Recent Cyberattacks
click2005 notes an article in The Register calling into question the one piece of hard evidence that has been put forward to pin the Google cyberattacks on China. It was claimed that a CRC algorithm found in the Aurora attack code was particular to Chinese-language developers. Now evidence emerges that this algorithm has been widely known for years and used in English-language books and websites. Wired has a post introducing the Pentagon's recently initiated effort to identify the "digital DNA" of hackers and/or their tools; this program is part of a wide-ranging effort by the US government to find useful means of deterring cyberattacks. This latter NY Times article notes that Google may have found the best deterrence so far — the threat to withdraw its services from the Chinese market.
Second, we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.
Emphasis mine. Nowhere is he talking about a CRC algorithm or even fingerprinting the attack to a particular country. Instead, the obvious question is simply this: Who else would hack one of the most successful companies in the world only to read the e-mails of Human Rights Activists in China? What possible gain could anyone else have from this information?
I'm not saying hard evidence has been provided one way or the other (I'm not even sure it could be proven one way or the other unless someone claims ownership) but the only evidence the accuser offered up was this. Not that the "algorithm was only known to Chinese" nor anything as simpleton.
My work here is dung.
Evidence weakens that Joe Stewart's analysis shows that the CRC algorithm used in the attack was developed by Chinese programmers.
As other folks have pointed out, this is NOT the basis of Google's or others' assessments that the attacks originated from within mainland China, and in no way does it weaken the evidence regarding the origin of the attack.
Google doesn't have to prove things beyond a reasonable doubt. More to the point they don't have to prove it beyond any and all doubt no matter what, which is the standard many geeks seem to use. Internally, they only have to prove it to their own satisfaction, which it would seem they've done.
How hard is that? Parse /var/log/secure, do a lookup and see where the attacks are coming from.
Right, because there's no such thing as proxies.
Do you recall how unfair you thought it was when your third-grade teacher punished the entire class for the misbehavior of one student because she couldn't identify the perpetrator? That's exactly what Google is doing. It's not "deterrence" at all. At best it's indirect deterrence, since it doesn't affect hackers directly; what it affects is the entire Chinese "class" by withdrawing from its network and e-economy, hurting or diminishing the many in an attempt to change the behavior of just a few.
Except that the scale of the attacks, the targets of the attacks, and the fact that they went on in a country that is fanatical about monitoring internet use, strongly suggests that the Chinese government either conducted or encouraged the attack. So it is reasonable for Google to hold the Chinese government responsible. Clearly Google's view is, "We try to cooperate with your unreasonable censorship rules, we expect you not to try to crack into our systems. You didn't hold up your end of the bargain, so the deal is off. If you don't like it, we'll take our ball and go home."
I suppose you'd argue in favor of holding the phone company responsible if you received a harassing phone call as well? You're right, that is a bit of a stretch.
/var/log/secure will only catch the most amateur of 'hackers'. The topic at hand is what else one can do to determine who's ultimately behind it.
My point was that it's really easy to mask where you're coming from by bouncing through legitimate services provided by companies all over the world (who I'm sure would be quite reluctant to release their logfiles just because you asked for them really nicely). Looking at