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China's Politburo Behind Google Cyber-Attack?
theodp writes "While Wikileaks itself is under a DoS attack, details about the US State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks are starting to come out via the mainstream media. Among the most newsworthy, reports Techcrunch's Erick Schonfeld, is one set which deals with the massive computer attack on Google and other companies which was first revealed last January. According to the NY Times, some of the new leaked cables point directly at China's Politburo for instigating the original attacks, which should shed some more light on why the White House and State Department backed Google so vociferously at the time. Developing, as Drudge likes to say."
So the USA suppresses information that china's government engaged in illegal hacking, and the USA is behind the DDOS attack on wikileaks. Why can't China be behind it after a US agent tells a chinese agent what is happening.
I know because China is good and the USA is bad.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
I think that hardly anyone is surprised that China's Politburo (a group of 24 people who oversee the Communist Party of China) was behind the hacking of the Chinese Google office computers. You can see the seriousness of the issue after reading Google's response to the hacking and their threat to pull out of China all together and also after reading the Department of the State's involvement in this issue. The Department of the State, and someone as high up as Hillary Clinton, getting involved in this issue shows how important this single hacking event was, and not just because Google is everyone's the current favorite company.
US asks China to explain Google hacking claims
The Chinese government has proven that they'll do anything to stop distribution of negative information about them. If they're behind the DDoS the goal probably isn't blacking out WikiLeaks... just suppressing it long enough that they can configure the "Great Firewall" to block it (content filters, etc).
It makes sense for a few reasons:
1. The Chinese government has already proven they're not above this.
2. As inept as the US government can be I think they know they can't stop the spread of this information.
3. To public knowledge, the US government hasn't initiated a DDoS. Why show your hand and capabilities on something like this? It's a waste.
There's also a good chance it's another party or that WikiLeaks is just making it up b/c the guys are complete attention wh0res (don't think for a second they're doing it for a "greater good"... the founder _loves_ the spotlight.
I'm very surprised Julian Assange is still alive.
I'm very surprised Julian Assange is still alive.
He is smart enough not to leak Russian secrets.
For such an embarrassment these leaks do go some way to promoting the US world view, or is that just editing from the media outlets. Examples such as many middle eastern counties (Saudi, Jordan and Egypt etc) urging US to bomb Iran, as well as the links below
Iraq document leaks show US forces found WMD after invasion - http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/10/wikileaks-show-wmd-hunt-continued-in-iraq-with-surprising-results/
Wikileaked documents normalise Iraq civilian death toll at 'massive' 66,000
is that 3 ddos attacks going at once?
at this rate the whole idea of a cyberwar is much less idiotic?
warning pointless sig
There is always someone who, after something is relieved, says "told you!" Well, one thing is to speculate, another is to have some [more or less] solid proof. Or are your speculations "good enough"?
If it's said in a private communication between diplomats, the chances are they believe it to be true themselves. Not to say that makes it unquestionably true, of course, but it does make it an awful lot more credible than the PR they dish out to the public. I give these documents a lot more credit than I would to public statements made by the US government, and I see no hypocrisy in that; I'd be interested to hear if you think otherwise.
I'm not vindicating the American government in anyway. They (and by proxy I) do their fair share of very despicable things. That's all I'm going to say. The volumes of evidence against the Chinese government, from multiple sources outside the US, speaks for itself.
And you take a single email (cable) referencing hearsay as "solid proof"?
I'm very surprised Julian Assange is still alive.
The fact that he is still alive raises some questions, for me. WHY is he still alive if what he had to leak was as important as has been said? Was the information not as significant as we have been told? Is the CIA really off their game, and not capable of clandestine actions anymore?
The US government knows what Assange knows, they say him divulging it will endanger security, yet they don't stop him? Is he a necessary demon, needed for the future of their security theater? Something about this saga just doesn't add up.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
Everyone seems to dislike Assange's approach to public relations. But then again, how many people know/knew Anna Politkovskaya? Assange seems to be quite the media's darling and whatever, but that might be essential for his own safety.
Just search for cables about Iran: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2010/nov/28/us-embassy-cables-wikileaks It becomes clear pretty soon that most countries in the region are far most hostile to Iran that I ever knew before (including words like existential threat and direct urging by a number of countries for the US to strike, bunch of leaders call Iran evil and a fascist state) and that Israel will definitely not be willing to live with nuclear Iran and that apparently Iran is not negotiating in good faith and is only buying time until it has enough material for a bomb. Unless Iran backs down, I don't see how that does not lead to a war.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
To be perfectly honest, if you look at the flow of money and the financing and who has placed particular political groups in strategic positions of power around the globe, the mathematical conclusion is that, yes, the United States _is_ behind a good portion of the world's grief.
If, however, you do not like that option then you are free to conduct your own research and determine who is providing the United States with financial authority and pulling their strings to direct how that money is dispersed. Vicious cycle... yes. Do "we" know who is behind it? Well, that depends upon who you believe "we" to be. The people who are controlling the flow of world capital have a very logical interest in obscuring their play (and profit) from world conflicts and financial conquest of nations.
The US government has a known leaker who's talented at personally discrediting himself and deals primarily in proof of widely-known information that's humiliating (sometimes for our rivals rather than us, see this story!) but of low operational value. He also leaks to the public rather than foreign security services, and gives them a month or two for preemptive damage control.
I'm sure he's not exactly in great graces, but the terrible PR of him coming down with a sudden case of the dead would quite possibly outweigh that of everything he's leaked. And then who would they watch, and how would they be able to see leaks coming just by keeping a pet reporter or two at the Times and the Guardian?
sorry, i erred. it's not on the frontpage yet but a search for wikileak gives results: http://search.news.cn/language/search.jspa?id=en&t=1&t1=0&ss=&ct=&n1=wikileak&x=0&y=0
You can ask the same question of Fidel Castro.
--- ,and shot the president all during the hight of the cold war without any assistance from any outside agency whatsoever."
"Lee Harvey Oswald, a former Marine, renounced his citizenship, defected to the Soviet union, married a soviet wife, came back to the USA with state department blessing
-U.S. Government publication
all it takes is the b-tard kid of one G-man and suddenly they know how to ddos. it's not rocket science (and they are at least a little bit competent at that).
and considering the story's only just broken, innuendo is all anybody has. and usual suspects. and occam's razor.
i would be very surprised if the US didn't have some part in the ddos, though there are plenty of other governments that would gladly join in. ...or wikileaks hasn't got as robust a site as we all thought, and it's just been slashdotted by geeks and journalists the world over.
That would be an act of war.
Killing a citizen is just espionage and will get you in a big of hot water.
Assassination of Julian Assange wouldn't accomplish anything. He's just the messenger.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Or is the USA not as evil as everyone likes to make it out to be? If this happened to any of several dozen other countries Assange would be dead already, and there is no doubt that he would be dead if the CIA were ordered to make it so.
Actually, I'm surprised some other country hasn't had him killed just to place blame on the US.
Better known as 318230.
Diplomats are sometimes pawns or go pieces. Depends upon the game. Also what is at risk. It is better for diplomats to not be told something, or to be told a half truth or lie than factual information. Less security problems if the diplomat turns double agent, or is retained for questioning or the eventual human slip up. Reports from diplomats to their home country, may contain some factual information, but is usually spun and twisted. Again it would depend on the assignment. Negotiations usually contain good information. Reports on political activities and observations of others negotiations usually contain sparse data or outright misinformation from the other parties. So... I am really hesitant to accept these documents as credible. Diplomats are like politicians. I don't trust what politicians say.
I suspect I might disagree with a more detailed explanation of your viewpoint, but I vehemently disagree with the anonymous use of mod points to beat you down with a Troll mod, simply because the moderator disagrees with you.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Interesting post, but hobbled by a lack of accounting for Syria.
I first heard rumor not about a Syrian program in 1994, it was emphasized by the CIA (2003), and the Israelis (2007).
The reason you aren't hearing about it is because Damascus is not the oldest continually occupied city on earth by chance. Furthermore, their Jordanian counterparts have a penchant for reaffirming covenants with the U.S. & Israel, performing economic due-diligence, sending their children to American Universities (even their presidents!!), and generally being sane and available to Western actors.
Any belief that Syria and Jordan aren't at least ready to go back-to-back if the Middle East disintegrates is unrealistic.
Obviously you're not reading the discussion in which you've elected to participate, let alone source materials and fine articles. If you had, you would know that the surprises are the support for the "U.S. world view" coming from surprising sources, like other countries in the middle east, who agree that Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons is a very serious threat to world security.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
[T]he military, hates to use encryption on their datalinks, has so poor security that a demoted enlisted man had full access to all sorts of diplomatic, and covert records. Does this group sound capable of not only creating a DDOS but doing it in such a way that it can't be tracked back to them?
Well the managed to arrange 911 and make it look like foreign terrorists were responsible. And that's never been traced back to them, has it?
At least that's what the dude on the train with 'TRUTH' on his tee-shirt was telling me ...
Since Assange claims to be in regular contact with the US government and leaks lots of stuff of questionable value, there's a good chance that he's a total fraud. Supposedly this was all leaked by that army PFC... so the data have been sat on for months.
If you read magazines like the Economist or Foreign Affairs, you've already read paraphrased summaries of all of this stuff. My guess is that these leaks contain misinformation to misdirect folks like the Chinese who have already hacked State Department networks and probably have a limited collection of these already.
Think that sounds far-out? Just Google "Operation Mincemeat".
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
And I think you meant cojones...oh, and btw, "having huevos" it's also used in many Latinamerican countries the same way you use "having guts"...
Correct, which if you'll re-read my post was the exact context in which I used it.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Is it me or does the world look more and more like some kid's Civ game from another dimension? A word of wisdom to the Chinese: hack Google all you want, just don't get too ambitious and start building a spaceship to Alpha Centauri, and doom us all to the endgame.
Didn't anyone tell you that you're only supposed to use that "blame America first" language when a Republican is in the White House? If you don't rescind your statement, I'm gonna tell all your freeper friends that you're an Obama supporter. :P
Or is the USA not as evil as everyone likes to make it out to be?
Hmm, is that the peevish whine of self-pity I hear there?
America has dispensed heavy-handed criticism out to just about everybody over the years; it is only fair that you guys get some back, I think. But it is not reasonable to say that "everybody hates America" every time a valid point of criticism is raised - in fact, I think it is the duty of a friend to tell you when you are getting things wrong. Your friends - and you have many - wish you well and expect you to do better than just scraping the bottom. In other words, have a some pride and show a bit of dignity.
Was "China" (ie somebody in China) behind the attack on Google? Perhaps; all governments at some level do this kind of things.
But I don't think this is anything like the main story to extract from this leak; which is much more about what American government and diplomats think, privately, about everybody else. Very revealing stuff, I think, which confirms what we all have had our suspicions about.
In their defence I'll say that what you think in private is often much less refined than what you end up saying or doing, so perhaps we shouldn't judge them too harshly.