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How a Chinese Hacker Tried To Blackmail Me
An anonymous reader writes "Slate provides the first-person account of a CEO who received an e-mail with several business documents attached threatening to distribute them to competitors and business partners unless the CEO paid $150,000. 'Experts I consulted told me that the hacking probably came from government monitors who wanted extra cash,' writes the CEO, who successfully ended the extortion with an e-mail from the law firm from the bank of his financial partner, refusing payment and adding that the authorities had been notified. According to the article, IT providers routinely receive phone calls from their service providers if they detect any downtime on the monitors of network traffic installed by the Chinese government, similar to the alerts provided to telecom providers about VoIP fraud on their IP-PBX switches. 'Hundreds of millions of Chinese operate on the Internet without any real sense of privacy, fully aware that a massive eavesdropping apparatus tracks their every communication and move...' writes the CEO. 'With China's world and ours intersecting online, I expect we'll eventually wonder how we could have been so naive to have assumed that privacy was normal- or that breaches of it were news.'"
That's a criminal, not a hacker.
a government censor and the Chinese government should realize corruption is an inevitable result of censorship.
The inevitable result of government itself is corruption.
Arguing over minor facets is pretty pointless in the long run.
Actually... you should refine that to The inevitable result of financial incentive and/or monetary status is itself corruption.
What are we; but slaves to finances?
Hundreds of millions of Chinese operate on the Internet without any real sense of privacy, fully aware that a massive eavesdropping apparatus tracks their every communication and move..
... just like Google! And Facebook! And half the Android apps!
Go to a financial power center, find the center of crime. Well dressed, groomed, prepared, by an army specialists in PR, marketing, design, security, privacy, and secrecy. But it is laying around there, somewhere. Most surely, the evidence and main coverup is in the security, legal, and accounting divisions. Enron was never alone.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
I don't understand the summary, but riddle me this: Is there any good reason not to use end-to-end encryption?
We've had PGP since 1991 and SSL and SSH since 1995. Some of these were developed in response to plaintext sniffing attacks. That means that the fact that communication in the clear is a security risk and the fact that there are people listening to your communications in order to obtain sensitive information haven't been news, and easy ways to protect your communications against this have been available, for over 15 years.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Honestly, people should really just block all of the chinese IP ranges. I've moved the sshd ports on my servers back to port 22 simply to see how many attempts and from who I get. 80% of the attempts at password cracking are on IP space owned by china. I've reported the IP space to their providers, as well as any email addresses in the SWIP info. Honestly? Screw them. I will block their entire f'ing country, and suggest that everyone else do the same.
The inevitable result of government itself is corruption.
The inevitable result of humans living socially is corruption. Therefore, people should cease to be social animals because somewhere along the line someone will screw someone else over.
The inevitable result of money is corruption. Therefore, we should abolish all monetary systems and the systems of distribution that depend on them.
The inevitable result of monogamy is corruption. Therefore, we should embrace Brave New World sexual practices and everyone should sleep with everyone so no one will be jealous.
Do you see your fallacy now?
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
Meh, it wouldn't have been that big of a deal. Thirty years ago they were making similar jokes about Japan.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
ever heard of Fusion Centers, the TSA, the NSA , etc etc etc?
granted we dont have widespread extortion and bribery - often because those programs are supposed to be secret.
China is full of people who want to reach out to the other countries and talk with us... how can it be good to break them off?
This alleged extortion plot happened in 2007
Try getting a job at the NSA. You'll be security-screened up the wozoo, and then face 10 years in the slammer if you leak. Ask Manning.
There's also a lot of security - no USB drives, no internet (they'll have 2 computers, one of which can only access a LAN where the confidential information is kept), audits, lots of rules, etc. Manning used a CD burner. I'm betting that's going to be a bit harder to do now.
I suspect the buzzing on your phone isn't coming from your phone. It's coming from the implant in your head. Have you checked for signs of alien abduction? I suspect that you may fit nicely in another demographic.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Please take this article with a pinch of salt. I was working in Shanghai in 2008 and spent a few years out there. We had a server room, leased lines, an ICP license. Yes, the internet there was filtered and monitored, but that was all done at the ISP level or beyond. I've never heard of any situation where the government installed a monitoring device attached to a server. I really doubt that's what happened, and it sounds like the person quoted in the article doesn't work in IT. Most likely they had a managed leased line and the telecoms provider was being proactive about the service. That's not uncommon.
I heard a lot of speculation and fears from colleagues who came over. I had our HR manager tell me how she knew her blackberry was getting monitored because she could hear it getting tapped. Seriously, your mobile doesn't get routed through an analogue exchange with a tape recorder attached. There's a lot of misunderstanding and mistruths that get spread around. That's not to say censorship doesn't happen. A number of people I know had blog posts removed because of sensitive keywords - that actually seemed to be regarded as pretty normal, and they weren't worried about being dragged away for a 'cup of tea' with the authorities. The reality is generally a lot more normal that you'd imagine though.
In terms of what happened to the CEO's mail account, I think it's much more likely that their machine was compromised with malware. Malware is rife in China, mostly as there's still a huge amount of software piracy. I've seen plenty of download sites in China with files riddled with trojans. Given that their personal email was also broken into, it does sound like their machine was compromised rather than line monitoring. The device attached to the server? I don't buy it...
Uh... the part where someone tried to extort six figures for stolen business information?
In what universe is that not a story?
What else did he know? What else was there to know? Who was doing this? Why? What did other people already know? Was there anything about me they didn’t know, or couldn’t misconstrue to their advantage?
Have you ever heard of encryption?
It should be standard on every e-mail app, just like it's standard on every router. I would love to encrypt all of my e-mail, but my friends are either too lazy, or too technically illiterate, to install and use it. If it was part of setting up your e-mail, well, the world would be a better place. Tell ya what, though: If I were doing business in a place China, (or Russia, or Cuba, etc.), I would insist upon it. But, who knows what servers your e-mail gets bounced around on as it is?
Totally agree. Yonks ago it was said that an email is about as private as a postcard. Sending private or business-sensitive information over the email is just foolish.
And don't start the 'yes but encryption can be hacked' chain. Replace "Uncle Bill" with [company name] and "Plums" with [financial amount] and the sentence "Uncle Bill wants the plums by Friday for the pie he's making" is meaningless to anyone without the key. Cryptography's been around since before Caesar.
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill