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Does China's Cyber Offense Obscure Woeful Defense?

Gunkerty Jeb writes "The official line in Washington D.C. is that there's a new Cold War brewing, with an ascendant China in the place of the old Soviet Union, and cyberspace as the new theater of war. But work done by an independent security researcher suggests that the Chinese government is woefully unprepared to fend off cyber attacks on its own infrastructure."

8 of 132 comments (clear)

  1. Re:And this is why... by h4rr4r · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What the 6% of our debt they own?
    About the same amount the Japanese own.
    Where does this "The Chinese own the US" myth come from?

  2. Re:Retaliation? by Ancantus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    TFA answers your question:

    A lot of what is running in China is developed in-house by Chinese firms. They're not using Western products or open source platforms, because they don't trust them or they're worried that someone might put a back door into them.

    So they are rebuilding from the ground up without taking advice from other people who have tried it. Eliminates back doors (unless your own coders are putting them in) but it seems the front door is wide open...

    --
    Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. -- Isaac Asimov
  3. Re:And this is why... by bsDaemon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    From the interpretation that sensationalist news services give to the words of scaremonger politicians.

  4. MicroSoft Security is US gift to the world by peter303 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Everyone copied it illegally to save a buck.

  5. Re:Retaliation? by jandersen · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I wonder why China never thought of securing their systems more tightly. Surely they must have realized that retaliation would come their way at some point, no? I mean, aside from the fact secure systems are usually preferably to ones that are not...

    Quite so. It is also worth noting that we have never actually seen anything that looks like evidence for the Chinese state organising "cyberattacks" on the US - all we have to go on is allegations spread on places like /. in the form of rumours.

    Can it really have escaped anybody's attention that it is extremely easy to spread false rumours, especially on the internet, and it is extremely easy to spoof the origins of any attack?

    And how can anybody credit a tall tale about some anonymous source "knowing" that some "Chinese secret service" is orchestrating hacker attacks? It that really all that likely - a guy sits in his parents' garage and just knows this? What happened to simple, common sense and critical thinking? I mean, with Wikileaks you have documents - mr Assange doesn't go around saying "somebody told me ...", does he?

    Until this kind of accusations are accompanied by sound references, I can't regard it as more than an attempt to poison the well.

  6. Revised story by Biff+Stu · · Score: 4, Funny

    The official line in Washington D.C. is that there's a new Cold War brewing

    The official line from Fox News is that there's a new Cold War brewing

  7. Re:And this is why... by CaptainLard · · Score: 3, Informative
    Here you go:

    http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/tic/Documents/mfh.txt

    I'd say the amount china owns is substantial. I'm against sensationalism as much as the next guy but a trillion dollars held by a foreign country is a shitload no matter how you slice it. Sure Japan has over 75% as much as china but there is a HUGE drop off after that. If we're going to say Japan owns almost as much as China to downplay foreign debt, we should also say Japan and China hold almost as much US debt as the rest of the world combined. You can't totally brush that off to a fox news ratings grab.

  8. Re:And this is why... by ObsessiveMathsFreak · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Well, they own all your factories.

    --
    May the Maths Be with you!