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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.'"
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.
Also, what reason does China have to attack the olympics?
Well, there were all of the accusations of the Chinese gymnastics team horribly under-age(10, 11 years old). We know the soviets cheated in the Olympics (lots of steroids), and if the Chinese were cheating in gymnastics, odds are they were probably cheating in other sports as well. It's possible that they would hack into the IOC to see if there were any allegations or investigations being circulated/planned for, so that they could prepare for them (changing evidence and all that).
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
You've never spent any time with northern Han, have you? There are some seriously paranoid, screwloose individuals there. With the amount of effort they spent on the Olympics, they would feel required to monitor Olympic Committee activity for years to come.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
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?
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
OMG ya think? Who else has the ability to put something this massive together?
Me?
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
OMG ya think? Who else has the ability to put something this massive together?
Absolutely. China is the only country with more than half a dozen bored and disaffected teenagers.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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.
Man, the Time to Racism on these China related articles...
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
I wonder the same but from a different perspective.
Time and time again security firms like Sophos and McAfee make these grand claims - "MASSIVE STATE ATTACK ON US DOD" or whatever, yet do they ever release any evidence?
Of the ones I've bothered to read TFA for so far they seem to be little more than claims, we never see any evidence, just speculation or arbitrary bullshit like they follow a "profile" - the profile probably being nothing more than the attacks were carried out on the internet or something stupid like that.
If anything it seems to be more a case of security firms loving the fact that all they have to do is come up with some sensationalist wankfest and all of a sudden their firm is advertised right across every section of the media across the globe.
I'm getting tired of it. Security firms- either publish all your relevant data to prove your claims, or shut the fuck up. Otherwise I'll just assume the best your firm can do is conjure up marketing stories, because you certainly can't produce trustworthy virus scanners.
Han is a race. It's not a culture, but a genetic lineage. If you were to even refer to 'chinese' or whatever you could cover your arse by saying you are just referring to culture, but complaining about northern Han on a majority western forum is equivalent to talking about northern black americans and just as dumb.
Also, I am a 'northern Han' emigree, and whenever I go back there the people I meet are the friendliest, most open, and most level-headed people, despite the horrible chinese government, so seriously, fuck you and your 'cultural understanding'.
Labelling literally hundreds of millions of people by their genetic ethnic type, espousing a negative stereotype of 'paranoid, screwloose' from vague anecdotal armwaving and generalising to the entire group, and inserting it non-sequitir into a discussion that has absolutely no mention of ethnic Han in the north isn't an "useful cultural observation". It's racism by definition.
It's not chauvism to point out you shouldn't judge people on their race. It's not "cultural criticism" to insult someone on the basis of their racial background when you know *absolutely nothing* about the environment they are brought up in. I said I'm north Han, and so the assumptions immediately start to flow. At no point did I enquire or comment on your race or background. At no point did I even say China was superior in any way. Look outside your racial lens and judge people as individuals please. And if you can't, fuck off.
The belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, esp. so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races
Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on such a belief
The claim that 'I am talking culture' is without foundation. How is painting people living in a region the size of Europe, with vast differences from West to East (even in terms of language, Han Chinese speaking the traditional accent from NW China would scarcely be intelligible to NE Chinese), who possess little similarity beside their specifically pointed out racial subtype, a cultural observation? How is talking about 'paranoid' and 'having a screw loose' a cultural observation? Observe that stargoat's first instinct was to jump to anti-Japanese racial slurs. And then, on revelation of my ethnicity, he decided to make 'cultural criticism' of me. In what way is culture distinguished from race here? When it's inescapable through education and upbringing, applied in blanket form along strict ethnic lines, and comes with no attempt to understand the source and context of certain attitudes and behaviours your culture is merely a politically sanitised way of selling the old racism. This the sort of 'cultural criticism' that led to islamophobes to attack a fellow islamophobe because he looked arabic.