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U.S. Calls On China To End Hacking; Start Cyberspace Dialogue
New submitter trickymyth writes "For the first time, the United States has mentioned the People's Republic of China in relation to cyber crime, officially acknowledging what has been long suspected by private security experts and the U.S. business community. The Obama Administration seeks to get the Chinese government to acknowledge the problem, to cease any state-sponsored hacker activity, and to start a dialogue on normative behavior on the internet. This announcement follows the recent 60-page report from the American cybersecurity firm Mandiant, who spent two years compiling evidence against the so-called 'Comment Crew.' They traced IP addresses, common behavior, and tools to track the group's activity, which led to a Shanghai neighborhood home to the People's Liberation Army (PLA's) Unit 61398. This tracking came at the behest of the Times, who has experienced some trouble with hacking in the past. The Chinese government rejected the report as 'unprofessional' and 'lacking technical evidence.' This announcement also comes amid a delicate leadership transition in China and numerous new reports on the vulnerability of U.S. business and government networks to attack."
I hope this ends well, but I have a feeling that either nothing will come out of this, or the Chinese will ramp up efforts since they don't have to worry about hiding their efforts.
It's ok for the US but no one else?
Guess some left hand isn't talking to the right hand.
Infuriate left and right
Silly Times, if you are scared of the Chinese hackers, you can just insert this code at the top of your site:
< h1 > tiananmen square < /h1 >
China is about to have an epic crash when their real estate bubble bursts:
60 minutes on China Real Estate Bubble
When that happens, their economy will tank... similar to what happened in U.S. in 2008. And that will bring out people demonstrating in the streets. The Chinese security apparatus will have its hands full trying to stifle online dissent and stop people from plotting against the government. Cyber attacks on external targets will fade.
yep, because there's no way sending a remote controlled robot after a team of hackers could go wrong.
Um, the "firewall" in China is mostly to keep Chinese from getting out, not others from getting in. I assure you, systems in China are hacked all the time. Mostly for things like botnet recruitment, of course.
the U.S. WILL go in and do what is in their best interest.
I don't know why I have a feeling that US'es best interest is to fix their security flaws. Otherwise... what, will you do the same when e.g. Belarus (as a country) or a group of Russian hackers (acting "in private name") decides they'd like to test US tubez?
Or is one of your kinky pleasures to pay taxes that will end into the bank accounts of the "defense industry"?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
No women! They'll destroy the purity and essence of our natural fluids!
Your political party doesn't care about your rights and only represents corporate interests.
You are not funny.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Any headline where the US is demanding that some other country stop doing something can be simply answered with "You First Sparky!".
Seems to me that this is like asking for a truce when we're losing. They've got no reason to say yes.
Fortunately, this isn't a battle we have to lose. Yeah, I think we have to admit that every grandma-box running Windows 98 is going to be a spam-spewing zombie for the foreseeable future, but the corporations that make the juiciest targets should also be capable of at least some self-defense. If thy IP block offends thee, cut it off. Social engineering is always going to trump user education, but we can at least make it an arms race.
At least it's not nukes, which are harder to walk away from. That means we also don't have Mutually Assured Destruction. They're going to do it even if they sign a treaty saying that they won't, so we're going to have to hunker down and deal. Asking them to call it a draw isn't going to get us anywhere.
Imagine it's 2003, and Slashdot has an article about the widely criticized Iraqi invasion. An American makes a post just like yours:
"But invading Kuwait was ok, huh?"
Would you have embraced that sentiment? Would the moderators have modded it up?
I imagine that poster would be flooded with indignant replies containing variations of "two wrongs don't make a right"
Now imagine again that it's 2003. We know that North Korea is close to getting nukes, and their leader is literally insane. Far away, we have a bit of unreliable intelligence from some dude that was tortured and told us Saddam had WMDs, that we know is unreliable (because the guys that tortured him and told us about it also told us that it was unreliable). We also know that even if these WMDs do exist, they are not nukes. Also, unlike North Korea, Saddam was a major asshole but was not actually literally insane (at least not more than any other asshole politician). We know that if we take Saddam's regime out, we'll have to be there for a very, very long time to prevent an even bigger asshole from taking over. Meanwhile, our friends in South Korea would be happy to take over North Korea if we took out Kim Jong-Il's regime, and unite North and South Korea, significantly helping the entire population of North Korea.
10 Years prior, your daddy (president at that time) and your current VP (Secretary of Defense at that time) had both said invading Iraq to go after Saddam would have been obviously stupid. Your current VP even explained why it would be utterly stupid in an interview with C-SPAN in 1994.
Which country do you invade?
I don't know why I have a feeling that US'es best interest is to fix their security flaws.
Fix... the flaws? But... that would be like... shipping products which were warranted to be of merchantable fitness! It would require mandatory code regression analysis and testing which might cost money and would certainly create jobs! You're asking the software industry to submit to invasive scrutiny from the same kind of Government jackboots that the food, banking and building industries now tremble under daily! And that's socialism.
The only thing that can stop a black hat with a rootkit is a white hat with a rootkit!
If you outlaw shoddy, worthless software containing a million zero-day exploits, only outlaws will be exploited!
You'll take my imperative thread-based unsafe self-modifying code from my cold dead FATAL EXCEPTION AT 00FE:4358 SYSTEM HALTED!
In conclusion, I support Mom, apple pie, and an American software developer's inalienable right to immediately patent and ship whatever string of line noise can be coerced to come out the other end of a rusty, sawn-off C++ compiler, and my esteemed opponent does not.
I know I can trust you all to vote with your hearts.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
"We are not hacking. Now go away, or I shall taunt you a second time."
(Guard 2 whispers): "Are they leaving?"
"I told them we weren't hacking." (Both snicker.)
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Okay. You're a hypocrite.
Iran has no nuclear weapons program.
So when are you going to invade Israel to dispossess them of their ~200 nuclear weapons?
U.S. and Israeli bitching about Iran is like Biff Tannen bitching that Stephen Hawking has made a retaliatory threat to run over Biff's toes with a wheelchair if Biff attacks him first.
So what incentives exactly does China have to stop hacking? Stop a cyber war? Their hackers are better than yours. Afraid after sanctions? It's unlikely enough countries would be willing to stop trading. Best thing to do imo is to upgrade US's digital infrastructure. Solve the root of the problem.