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Journalists' Yahoo E-Mail Accounts Compromised In China

Posted by timothy on from the perhaps-it-was-smersh dept.

andy1307 writes "According to this article in the New York Times, 'In what appears to be a coordinated assault, the e-mail accounts of at least a dozen rights activists, academics and journalists who cover China have been compromised by unknown intruders. The infiltrations, which involved Yahoo e-mail accounts, appeared to be aimed at people who write about China and Taiwan, rendering their accounts inaccessible, according to those who were affected. In the case of this reporter, hackers altered e-mail settings so that all correspondence was surreptitiously forwarded to another e-mail address. ... The victims of the most recent intrusions included a law professor in the United States, an analyst who writes about China's security apparatus and several print journalists based in Beijing and Taipei, the capital of Taiwan."

5 of 130 comments (clear)

  1. Is anyone surprised? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    China is a totalitarian state. Has been since 1949. What free trade has done is to make it a rich totalitarian state instead of a poor one. I never understood the argument that capitalism would lead to anything like democracy. Democracy [usually] leads to at least some level of capitalist/free-enterprise economy, but not the other way around.

    1. Re:Is anyone surprised? by dkleinsc · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I never understood the argument that capitalism would lead to anything like democracy.

      The reason you can't understand that argument is that it's complete BS. It was created to try to convince Americans that the reason our government is making it extremely easy to trade with China is to spread democracy, not increase corporate profits at the expense of American workers' careers.

      And historically at least, the system of government best suited to corporate profits is not democracy, but fascist-leaning dictatorships. That's true whether we're talking about Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, Pinochet, or Batista.

      --
      I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
    2. Re:Is anyone surprised? by Hijacked+Public · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I don't understand it either, mainly because I think the climate in China is closer to free market capitalism than the climate in the US. In relative terms China is a capitalist utopia, particularly from a producer's perspective.

      --
      "Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
  2. Re:This is why you don't do business with China by u38cg · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The quickest way to sort out the human rights situation in China is to create a population with enough of a stake in society for it to be worth standing up and be counted. Free speech means very little when you're on the breadline. Even if your boycott had any meaningful effect, it would just make government repression easier, not harder - and China is quite easily big enough to run a closed economy if it wanted to.

    --
    [FUCK BETA]
  3. Re:Damn Chinese! by muckracer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    > https is very easy to MITM if you can inject bogus signed certificates.

    agreed

    > For that you need to control a CA.

    agreed

    > for example, CNNIC whose root certificate is included in MSIE and Firefox.

    agreed

    > Bug 542689 - Please remove CNNIC CA root certificate from NSS

    agreed BUT: Why do you single out this particular CA when the valid issues you raised APPLY TO ALL OF THEM?!