Slashdot Mirror
California Software Maker's Fortunes Track Dispute With Chinese Gov't
concealment writes "For three years, a group of hackers from China waged a relentless campaign of cyber harassment against Solid Oak Software Inc., Milburn's family-owned, eight-person firm in Santa Barbara, California. The attack began less than two weeks after Milburn publicly accused China of appropriating his company's parental filtering software, CYBERsitter, for a national Internet censoring project. And it ended shortly after he settled a $2.2 billion lawsuit against the Chinese government and a string of computer companies last April."
Let's face it, China has their own version of reality, and it's one in which they're going to do whatever they want, however they want to.
South China sea, Tiananmen Square, human rights, their vision of how trade works, Tibet and the Dalai Lama -- if you read press releases which come out of China, it's clear that either their grip on reality is a little off, or they just bravely put forth whatever their official lie is and expect everyone else to take it at face value like their citizens do.
It's all rhtetoric and bullshit when they make a public statement.
I'm not in the least bit surprised that this kind of attack may have happened if someone pointed out that China was stealing from them. They're generally pretty aggressive about such things. And they're entirely indifferent about IP rights of anybody outside of their country.
An Internet security company that gets hacked by opening an email attachment .. I don't believe it !
Lines of code, what lines of code, opening webcams, black tape, is this some kind slashdot joke?
AccountKiller
The Dalai Lama walks into a pizza joint and says, "Can you make me one with everything?"
(+1 Funny)
No sig today...
From TFA:
"It looked like a routine message from Milburn, so DiPasquale clicked on the attachment, realizing only later that the e-mail address was a couple of letters off. Solid Oak employees received more bogus e-mails over the next few days, setting off alarm bells."
There is no advanced hackery here. Just the head of the company's daughter clicking on an email attachment by mistake, then chaos ensuijng. Thats when i stopped reading.
Every big country wants to be top dog, or a superpower.
China has wanted this for some time.
They fought a number of proxy wars against the USA, including the Korean War and the Vietnam War. In the former, Chinese troops met American troops in combat. In the latter, China provided weapons, equipment, aid and advisors to the North Vietnamese communist armies.
China is now building F-22 clones for its airforce, has a new carrier for its Navy, is waging constant and active cyber warfare against the US, and is expanding its trade strategy to dominate the US.
The war is cold now, but eventually it will be hot. Hold onto your hats.
Mainly because the USSR collapsed from within at the end of that time period. China has privatized, thus is not likely to the type of collapse that afflicted the USSR.
China has privatized, thus is not likely to the type of collapse that afflicted the USSR.
Why not? There are many, many signs of social tension within China. Its non-democratic government, the big gap between rich and poor people (and rich and poor areas), issues like Tibet, supression of dissidents, etc, etc. Much like the things going on in the former USSR.
Nor do I see much signs of these social tensions getting any less. More likely (IMHO), increasing. The information age we live in might give a push here, citizens wising up & refusing to take things any longer. So is it hard to imagine that at some point, China (as a single nation) would collapse, and turn into a number of smaller countries, like what happened with the former USSR? Maybe yes, maybe not, I wouldn't bet my money either way. China != USSR, and Chinese citizens might behave very different in the same conditions as former USSR citizens, but there's no denying there are many similarities here.
If that would happen, of course it wouldn't (immediately) make China go away as a superpower. But if there was one agenda for achieving particular goals, that would turn into many different agenda's trying to achieve many different things. Any individual one with less power behind it than what China can manage today.
I have a lot of sympathy for Solid Oak Software, I truly do. I don't even say that, if I were in their initial situation, I would have done anything different from what they've done.
So, said all that, it is extremely important to note, from this incident, that IP is ultimately pointless. Clinging to it will torpedo the countries' economies that depend on it. Sooner or later, countries that have enough muscle (China, and to an extent, Russia) will just say "fuck it" and not care about the hissy fits from the MAFIAA. I mean, WTF is the US going to do? Not buy Russian oil and minerals? Not have their electronics made in China? We all know that there would be much grandstanding (like, for instance, with human rights issues) but nothing more will be done. This is inevitable, like osmosis.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Since all of us live here, it's incumbent upon us to avoid collapse if possible.
What kind of collapse are you thinking of? Gibbon and Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire?
Or more like Jared Diamond's Easter Island case study?
It seems Joseph Tainter's The Collapse of Complex Societies might be a good guide, but I'd prefer to hear the math or theories you're using to predict this.
This message is neither agreement nor disagreement with the propositions you have advanced.
Has everyone forgotten that they are authoritarian, sue-happy jerks already?
http://www.peacefire.org/censorware/CYBERsitter/
It seems as if these people knew their network was infected, resorted to bandaid solutions (like putting tape over webcams), and then continued to wonder why their systems were failing. You simply cannot trust a system once it's been compromised. It may have been a real hassle to rebuild all the company's servers, but ultimately less costly since business wouldn't be interrupted as much. Thankfully, they won the lawsuit so it doesn't matter any more.
You're a sad little man Mr. Alex Belits.