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Governments, IOC and UN Hit By Massive Cyber Attack
fysdt writes "IT security firm McAfee claims to have uncovered one of the largest ever series of cyber attacks. It lists 72 different organisations that were targeted over five years, including the International Olympic Committee, the UN and security firms. McAfee will not say who it thinks is responsible, but there is speculation that China may be behind the attacks. Beijing has always denied any state involvement in cyber-attacks, calling such accusations 'groundless.'"
OK, so China says the accusations are groundless. Obvious question: why were the accusations made? Is it just because of China's reputation, or is there a real reason to think that China is involved?
Palm trees and 8
but there is speculation that China may be behind the attacks
OMG ya think? Who else has the ability to put something this massive together?
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
as the old saying claims.
today it's more like "No one ever got fired for blaming China" - it may be possible (even likely to some extent), but those rumours and speculations are IMO mostly based on political bias/reasons.
When the IMF was hacked, China was blamed. Later it was found out that IMF was hacked by Lulzsec and Anonymous.
For one, why do the security companies and media insist on making this a state sponsored problem; especially when most hacks have been private organizations such as Anonymous over the last few years?
McAfee said it did not know what was happening to the stolen data, but it could be used to improve existing products or help beat a competitor, representing a major economic threat.
This is why some folks are saying it's "China". If the Chinese can't con a western company to move manufacturing into the country with their subsequent technology under the guise of "saving money on labor", maybe the Chinese, or most likely just Chinese companies, are just stealing the technology via these hacks.
Quick, arrest a bunch of English teenagers and everything will be just fine!
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
Frankly, this "news release" says nothing, links to no concrete evidence, and makes wild speculations about "China the bogeyman".
Nothing to see here at all - move along.
Let's "suppose" this IS China's hacking handy work. This is happening in conjunction with a whole host of other subtle acts that would lead one to think China is engaging in the most contemporary war this planet's ever seen (AND IT'S WORKING!!!) Really, why invade a country on foot and turn things into a blood bath when you can slowly choke everyone out (i.e., virtual occupation!) using subtle and not so subtle tactics of financial squeezes, cheap labor practices with horrendous humanitarian violations that STILL manages to draw US dependency on Chinese mfg. industry, social engineering and high tech information stealing? Got a give 'em credit, they are outsmarting everyone, and in this race, they are just fine taking on the persona of the "turtle" - unsurprisingly Zen of them - and we all know know who wins. Tell me China isn't engaging in an undeclared war with the US first and foremost as well as every other 1st world nation - who knows - maybe it's every nation! By the way, the other morning news where China reduced US credit rating from an A+ to an A...remember, "slow and steady wins the race". Rosetta Stone Chinese anyone?
The core problem with any story like this is that we have nation-states at all. What point do they serve in a globally connected economy/culture?
City-states make a lot more sense: they are tied to the local economy, ecology, and culture. Having giant nations has no redeeming quality except to protect each other from other gigantic nations.
Maybe when we move to new forms of governance, we can simultaneously break our archaic dependence on this ridiculously primitive form of social organization.
major security company with international government and defense contracts has recently detected an enormous cyber attack!
the attacks is from China, because the chinese manufacture our televisions and appliances and therefore are most identifiable in the minds
of american senators congressmen and those who sign perpetual service contracts and license agreements.
action is to be immediately taken in the form of Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Purchase Order, or your local security company
sales team immediately! for only then can you rest assured the evil attacks of cyber will abate.
additional: malfunctions in your television, home computer, blender, and dishwasher should immediately and unquestionably be attributed to
this latest cyber attack.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Assume it is China. Why is it that when transnational attacks occur on a scale this large against our nations infrastructure, financial sectors, and defense systems the politicians shrug it off or turn a blind eye, but when citizen schmoe downloads some files or leaks some dox the entire system goes full assault on their asses with ICE raids, take down notices, special committees on intellectual property, etc. etc.
If they were concerned about national security, they would denounce the culprit (they know what country they're coming from), and work on hardening security. But it is not about national security. It is about corporate security and defending the status quo. That is why the US seeks to extradite file sharers, hell, link sharers, from other countries, but when massive ddos attacks are directed at us by governments that we trade with, nothing is generally done.
Oh, and this entire rant uses the word cyber once; in this sentence.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
It was 'Al Quaida'....obviously!
Do they think China wanted to change the results of the Olympics or something?
Korma: Good
I get several emails a day alerting me to the fact that yet another IP address has been banned for brute force attacking a server I have on the internet. For a while I tried to track down where these attacks were coming from and I was amazed at both the diversity of countries of origin and also the sheer number coming from China.
Now just because the attack is coming from an IP address in China doesn't mean all that much. It would be a stretch to conclude the attacks are state sponsored. But I find it odd that for a country with such authoritarian control over 'net usage somebody somewhere in their government isn't either aware of this. I tend to think that if they're not supporting they're at least sanctioning the attacks.
I fully admit that this is anecdotal at best and would love to hear from others who have servers on the 'net that have kept more detailed records.
I also heard that Chinese people eat US-ian children for lunch!
To tell you shit after it doesn't matter and wont do anything about it anyway
I read the NYT version of the article. I seems like we need more vocabulary to define "attack" vs. "tresspass" vs. "spying" vs. "wikileaking". The UN should by all rights be FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) accessible, providing this information to everyone. For five years, someone peeked through agency files. I wouldn't expect anything I sent to the UN to remain a secret.
Gently reply
if you're going to wipe something off the internet, take out something that's just bad for the whole internet as it is: SORBS. Please obliterate them once and for all.
"We didn't do it."
It could well be the Chinese who knows.
But instead of focusing on good science, it is so much easier to troll the internet after another all-nighter playing MMO.
Nothing personal but all that pink skin might be getting to your head.
This is part of China's asymmetric warfare strategy laid out in this document over ten years ago:
Unrestricted Warfare
by Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui
http://cryptome.org/cuw01.htm
Read through the document. China is at war with the US because the Chinese Politburo knows that the only way they can hold on to power in the long run is to crush all viable alternative economic systems. The accumulation of US debt, the hacking of US and Western systems, and the ongoing Charm Offensive are all designed to put the US and the West in a position where we are forced into the Chinese model.
Most likely, politicians don't say anything because they are simply too scared. I'm sure China has dirt on many of our leaders. This is why we have not pressed China on WTO issues such as undervaluing the Chinese currency and the rare earth mineral export ban -- both of which are illegal under the treaties China signed in 2001.
Anybody care to wager how McAfee knows about intrusions into so many different networks? Anonymous/lulzsec provide proof of hacks, how do we know this isn't a hoax.
Every time I hear about the 'nefarious' and 'dangerous' cyberattacks coming from China, it always turns out that they involve sending emails probably saying 'look at nude photo - http://www.youtube.com.cn/video.exe'. If the Chinese are so dangerous, why can't they make something more technically challenging like Stuxnet? They might have the quantity, but their methods show something about the quality of their hackers - it's Chinese quality.
I wish they were both dead already so that some of the precious bandwidth could be put to productive use.
I believe the Chinese government is allowing and encouraging this. However, when I lived in China about 8 years ago I had the chance to capture packets in the wild at a Chinese University. I was just curious what was going on out there.
The overwhelming amount originated from automatic bots, on unsecured copies of windows, and never once did I see anywhere in China anti-virus software. Imagine a country where computer viruses are allowed to propagate unchecked for say 15 years?
Every computer I turned on in China had a virus. Some of them were very old. I caught a few on my thumb drive where I was teaching and dissected them. Some of the code was over 5 years old when I found it, and it was obvious it had been modified repeatedly.
Anyone that wants to know what China is up to, should read this white paper on unrestricted warefare written by two chinese colonals in 1999.
http://cryptome.org/cuw.htm
When I was working back in the day with megapops, I would see from midnight PST to 3AM PST, thousands of attacks per second on our networks coming from China, Russia and the Netherlands. Therefore, using the IPv4 network ARIN map, for some downstream providers we blocked at our edge routers every external IP network other than the US continental IP blocks. Our network traffic reduced by 90% and only two customers complained from France who wanted something. SPAM went from 95% to 1%.
Since China blocks trade exports from the US in as much as we allow China imports (Wally World) - we should reciprocate. China Blocks Google from within, we should reciprocate and block all China Internet traffic and don't worry about the workarounds. I am sure they have enough of satellite connected back hauls from within the US bouncing from satellite to satellite on some unknown carrier to evade most blocking. They might as well continue to under the table pay Level 3.
Welcome to the new world of IP address blocking lists. This is not censorship, it is our US Freedom to block unwanted peeping toms on our intellectual property.
What it comes down to is who held the last smoking gun, China got caught once or twice, didn't defend itself too well, and now everybody can just assume it's them. IMHO it probably is, they seem to have their IT down better than the rest of the world including the US, I mean they censored like 1/3 of the world's population from the internet and are seemingly keeping on top of their filters.
What China has to realize though is how long standing public image is, and how much it will mess with them in the future. They are slowly creating spite against themselves, but... they are just following in US footsteps, everybody already hates us, and non-conspiracy based 9/11 wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for our public image, and a decade later we're still at war.