Journalists' Yahoo E-Mail Accounts Compromised In China

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."

Comments

Damn Chinese!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Don't you know that you should do your wiretapping directly at the ISP level, like real Americans?

Re:Damn Chinese!

[KiloByte]

https is very easy to MITM if you can inject bogus signed certificates. For that you need to control a CA. Like, for example, CNNIC whose root certificate is included in MSIE and Firefox.

Please to vote on the bug report to remove this security hole.

Re:Damn Chinese!

[muckracer]

> 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?!

Is anyone surprised?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Is anyone surprised?

[dkleinsc]

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.

Re:Is anyone surprised?

[Hijacked Public]

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.

This is why you don't do business with China

[smooth wombat]

People roll their eyes when I tell them I don't buy products made in China. I refuse to support a government with such an abusive human rights record.

It's tough at times finding a product not made in China, but I use the free market to make my point.

Some people talk the talk when it comes to making a statement. Very few actually walk the walk.

Re:This is why you don't do business with China

[u38cg]

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.