China Staging a Nationwide Attack On iCloud and Microsoft Accounts

New submitter DemonOnIce writes: According to The Verge and an original report from the site that monitor's China's Great Firewall activity, China is conducting a large-scale attack on iCloud and Microsoft accounts using its government firewall software. Chinese users may be facing an unpleasant surprise as they are directed to a dummy site designed to look like an Apple login page (or a Microsoft one, as appropriate).

Comments

Popular US browsers will warm, Chinese ones won't

[Rosyna]

If you use Firefox, Safari, Chrome, or IE in China, they will all warn you that MiTM attack has occurred (if you trying going to https://icloud.com./ But the most popular browser used in China (according to Qihoo, the claim is dubious), Qihoo’s Chinese 360 "Secure Browser". will allow Man in the middle attacks to occur, by design.

Re:Why?

[gandhi_2]

It's almost like they are a... communist country.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Psychopath]

Are the Chinese officials trying to score some celebrity porn?

It's possibly related to the protests in Hong Kong and the government's desire to identify the leaders/participants.

Re: Why?

[antifoidulus]

It's only going to get worse as the chinese economy stagnates. I've been saying this for years, but people are finally starting to realize that China copied the post-war Japanese model right down to the bad loans, today's China is pretty much where Japan was in 1988, barreling towards the cliff. The difference between the 2 countries is the government though. Outside of the economy the CCP has been deeply unpopular for years. However there was little unrest since the economy was booming. However what will happen when growth slows is much more unclear. Hong Kong like protests against the government would probably be the best case. More likely is large scale riots as unemployment coupled with a large # of men being unable to find a wife is a recipe for disaster. The CCP knows they are living on borrowed time and are going to do everything in their power, including perhaps returning to the days of the cultural revolution if it finds it necessary. In the short term expect spying incidents like this to become the norm.

Re:Why?

[Jeremi]

It's almost like they are a... communist country.

Right -- only a communist country would attempt such shenanigans. Western democracies are totally above that sort of misbehavior. ;^)

Re:Why?

[Earthquake Retrofit]

The BBC reported today: "The Beijing-appointed leader of Hong Kong, Leung Chun-ying, said Monday evening that it was unacceptable to allow his successors to be chosen in open elections, in part because doing so would risk giving poorer residents a dominant voice in politics... he backed Beijing’s position that all candidates to succeed him as chief executive, the top post in the city, must be screened by a “broadly representative” nominating committee appointed by Beijing. That screening, he said, would insulate candidates from popular pressure to create a welfare state, and would allow the city government to follow more business-friendly policies to address economic inequality instead."

Whatever it is, it doesn't sound like communism to me.

Re: Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting AC. I provide IT support for a chinese company based in the US. They wanted an American firewall and anti-virus suite. One of the employees insist on using some security 360 shit that's very chatty on the network. I blocked its net-block range and shortly he complained and wanted it fixed ASAP. I strongly suspect he's a CCP mole. Fuck him, he can suffer with the software approved by corporate.

Re:Why?

[XxtraLarGe]

The BBC reported today: "The Beijing-appointed leader of Hong Kong, Leung Chun-ying, said Monday evening that it was unacceptable to allow his successors to be chosen in open elections, in part because doing so would risk giving poorer residents a dominant voice in politics... he backed Beijingâ(TM)s position that all candidates to succeed him as chief executive, the top post in the city, must be screened by a âoebroadly representativeâ nominating committee appointed by Beijing. That screening, he said, would insulate candidates from popular pressure to create a welfare state, and would allow the city government to follow more business-friendly policies to address economic inequality instead."
Whatever it is, it doesn't sound like communism to me.

It's probably better described as fascism, but there has never been a place on earth where communism in practice resembled communism in theory. It's not possible to ever implement it, because the power hungry use it as a method for personal enrichment. As Lord Acton said "Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."