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China Wants Cyber Crisis Hotline
An anonymous reader writes "China should look at establishing a cyber crisis hotline with the United States, according to a Chinese newspaper seen as a window into official thinking. Discussions about a crisis hotline might seem an obvious first step in improving relations. But if it's a sign the Chinese government is beginning to think about how to coordinate a rapid, unified response to cyber emergencies, then it is an extremely important one."
Why should the US government aid the Chinese surveillance state any more than it already does? If there is hacktivism going on against China then so be it. China would do well freeing its political prisoners, such as the Nobel Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, and then it can ask for cyber help from the US.
I've said it before and I'll say it again.
Those slanted, droopy eyes, and thousands of pirated dvds conceal a secret as dark as their hair.
The Chinese are a simple but bloodthristy people, eager for control and to advance their islamofascist goals.
It's going to take a patriot like Ron Paul to finally bomb these human rats into submission.
This is not anything new. I heard about china wanting to do this about 10 years ago. Nothing to see here, move along.
And a hotline for when the U.S. is under cyber attack by China would be useful in assessing how successful the attack is going, and how it should be modified.
Of course, it is also possible it could be used for good.
...their government departments(including nominally private organizations like Huawei) and any company's assets within China all deserve to be compromised.
Of course, this won't sit well with the China apologists that will (inevitably) modbomb this - just that China gets too many passes than it really deserves.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
All the calls would be coming from the US, and China would just deny them anyway. If a global cyber attack starts affecting Chinese systems, then the PRC government just has to call down to whichever department or military unit is pulling off the attack, and tell them to cool it a bit. This is like a police department setting up a system to investigate robberies by talking with the pawn shop that happens to be the local fence. Not much is going to get done,
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
I'm glad everyone is so skeptical of this. My first thought was, "oh, so then when they hack the crap out of us and we call to say we're having a 'cyber crisis' they can deny it directly..."
"Hello. Cyber Crisis Hotline."
Hi, I need a cyber crisis pronto. More than just the usual ICMP bombing or BGP storm. Something really noticeable with physical damage.
But, I don't want to get into releasing toxic industrial chemicals or the like. That has a bad rep after Bhopal. If you could do a SCADA subversion on a high water dam and release a massive flood that'd be perfect.
"No problem, sir. We have standard rates for major seminatural disasters. That'll be 100 million in gold to our Cayman Islands bank account for a standard target. If the country has nukes or an umbrella treaty with a nuclear power, that'll be 300 million and must be disguised as an IMF loan."
China and USA are finally doing the same: protecting top 1% of their most influential citizens!
#h0tl1n3
To have a hotline set up where the US can report to China that China is hacking the US?
Wouldn't the Chinese already know this?... oh wait... the call center would be in India.
Mod me down, I shall become more off-topic than you could possibly imagine.
They'll set up a system to report and track hacking incidents. Until we discover that the Chinese have just given us the phone number of the local laundry.
It was the "no tickee, no washee" that gave it away.
Have gnu, will travel.
enemy of my enemy and all that.
Is "cyberwarfare" even technically or practically POSSIBLE? Or does it depend on the side being attacked being a total moron? I've never quite gotten my head around this : if you isolate the systems that can actually do bad things in the real world from external network access, for the most part the enemy can't do shit to you. As long as you keep those power stations and water pumps and all the other useful infrastructure, both civilian and military, on air gapped internal networks, it's going to be darn hard to sabotage them from across the globe.
Not impossible, I suppose...could fake a phone call. But cold war saboteurs could do the same thing, so nothing has changed there.
Now if you start connecting all your critical systems to the internet, and you don't use firewalls or they have security flaws, and you frequently stick thumbdrives full of possible viruses into your air gapped computers...well...I suppose you get what you deserve, then.
*RING RING*
PLA: "Hello?"
President: "Hey guys, there's some kind of poop-your-pants cyber thing going on right now, and it's kind of paralyzing us. Do you know anything about this?"
PLA: "No, sorry."
President: "Well, OK then."
*CLICK*
PLA: "It's working! Launch the missiles!"
Instead of a "cold war" can we call this a "warm war" since we exchange economic goods and technological achievements, as well as intellectual capital. Besides, "warm" can refer to the heat given off by either our respective computers, or our politicians.
Most forms of "cyber" emergency can be solved by not mandating an Ethernet port on your new rocket launcher (let alone 802.11n). I.e. If you want it to be secure, don't plug it into the f*cking internet!
But in all seriousness, I hope they (and the US) do spend breathe-taking amounts of their constituents money on another pointless endeavor; why, you ask? Because then Marines and every colorful variant thereof will have to field tech support calls from people "who think their Facebook has been hacked." I imagine after a year of that, they'll be signing up for every tour of duty that comes their way, as it's more satisfying to be shot at on the streets of Iraq and eating MREs than doing tier-1 tech support at home.
I am John Hurt.
...and your enemies closer."
Sun-tzu. Chinese general & military strategist (~400 BC)
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
There are many other possible vectors, consider:
Operating system and other software updates imply that the providers are as secure as you need to be
Zero day vulns that might be in pdf or some other file that has been scanned and is thought to be secure
Printers can be vectors for attacks
Disgruntled or careless workers who deliberately or accidentally compromise the air gap
Network hardware sourced from vendors or manufacturers that might have hidden backdoors in hardware/firmware/software
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
Its a Hot story ever.
http://www.horizontech.biz
Have you read anything about how stuxnet propagated?
It was "darned hard", as you say, and the attackers pulled it off.
"Air gap" means far less than it used to.
With every passing year, more and more "things" are dependent upon more and more CPU power.
You don't need to own your targets & control them, just denial of service would be enough. (e.g. suppose there was an exploit that could brick every cell phone made in the last 3 years? Or take power grids offline? Or... you know, it really is a long list of vulnerabilities; this interview gives a fair overview of the challenges).
The "hotline" thing seems like cheap insurance; why not go ahead with it?
Now we're doing tech support for China users?
I can call it every day and complain about all the Chinese IP's slamming the fuck out of my network. Not that it will do any good but at least I can vent some rage at someone.