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."

Comments

Re:headline?

[peragrin]

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.

Re:headline?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm very surprised Julian Assange is still alive.

He is smart enough not to leak Russian secrets.

Re:Just because the American government says it

[MoonBuggy]

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.

Re:Attention wh0re?

[grcumb]

I don't take issue with him being in the lime light... but he purposefully stretches it out.

I think this tactic is known as 'running cover'. Assange knows that someone has to be the focal point for the ogranisation, to make contact with media reps and various others in order to ensure the responsible dissemination of the data. Doing so allows a great many others to work quietly, undisturbed in the background. Say what you like about his motivation, he's chosen that role. I'd argue that, as someone who believes more in daylight than shadows, he's using the spotlight to keep himself out of harm's way.

he announces the release ahead of time so he can create a sensation

Sure. This actually is one of the largest leaks of information in modern history. It's sensational in its very essence. Given that wikileaks' reason for being is to disseminate leaked information as effectively as possible, advance press is perfectly understandable.

If they were really concerned about access to the information and not publicity the would "soft release" to trusted groups on BitTorrent a few days/weeks before they announced it.

Great idea. How about sharing it quietly with a number of the most reputable media organisations in the Western world? How about giving them months of prep time, so they could conduct analysis. How about -shocking, I know- even telling the affected agencies what was about to be released and offering them the opportunity to assist in the redaction process? That's exactly what they did.

Now, there's no way a government could be seen to be negotiating with them, so this might be seen as grandstanding, but who knows what contacts might have been made behind the scenes? (Well, wikileaks, of course, but... you get what I'm saying.)

That way the data is well seeded and a DDoS would be very difficult. That's why I'm accusing them of attention wh0ring... there are very easy ways of preventing this DDoS and they are smart enough to know that.

Indeed they are. And indeed they have.

You can characterise what they do as attention-whoring if you like. The fact is that their job is to get as much attention as possible on the data they're releasing. If you suffer from this process, you won't be glad about it. I can accept that.

I have friends who were directly affected by information divulged to wikileaks some years ago. While I'm still angry at those who so cynically used wikileaks to release context-free data that wrongly created some very nasty implications, I don't blame wikileaks for releasing the information. That's just what they do.

In fact, I'd rather see wikileaks do it than others. While they're occasionally guilty of editorialising about their data, at least they release all of it, providing others with the opportunity to draw their own conclusions. Most media organisations do not do this. They run with what they think will lead, and leave the rest by the roadside.

I don't always like the results of what wikileaks does, but at least they are exactly what the claim to be.