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China's 'Great Cannon' -- a Cyber-weapon to Accompany the Great Firewall
An anonymous reader writes: A new report from The Citizen Lab identifies a distinct new technology entity sitting next to the Great Firewall of China. Dubbed the 'Great Cannon', the multi-process cluster revealed itself quite openly in the recent attacks on Greatfire.org and its two Github pages. The DDoS attack was so sustained that CL was able to study the new technology in depth, determining architectural similarities and unearthing many strong indications that it is a product of the Chinese authorities.
And admit that the Chinese will not even slow down until it's clear that the developed countries will be retaliate in kind. The feds need to take the kid gloves off and let American businesses do unto the Chinese as the Chinese do to them. Chinese DDoS? Let GitHub retaliate against Chinese assets involved. Chinese firms hacking and stealing assets? Authorize industrial espionage by American businesses against Chinese interests. Chinese intelligence actively attacking American business? Give the NSA a free hand to retaliate and screw with the Chinese government. They try to break into our classified networks? Set up an entire NSA team to infiltrate the Chinese military establishment and depants their national security secrets on a Wikileaks-By-Uncle-Sam level.
Told ya. It's a bad idea to download *and execute* random stuff from the 'Net.
Back then, when I was a toddler, my mom taught me to not insert every thing I find on the street into my mouth.
A similar principle applies here.
Anyone who runs a server on the Internet only needs to look at their firewall log to see break-in attempts coming from China, 24 hours a day every day. It's blatantly obvious that Someone in China did something. Still that's not conclusive proof that governments are involved.
It is simply stunningly illogical for China to behave this way against such petty targets. It makes absolutely NO sense for them to flaunt their ability and willingness to do so...
Just like it makes no sense for Americans to bomb the Bikini Atoll, or run new ships on trips around the world. The goal isn't to destroy a Pacific paradise or to wear out the engines, but rather to announce to the political world that we have a new capability, and we're ready to use it as we see fit.
The "petty targets" may be convenient places to point this "Great Cannon"... They provide a noticeable target, and apparently can be analyzed enough to provide some basic details to the rest of the world. Assuming China is behind the attack, we now know that China can run at least this level of attack, and there's no reason to expect that in a full-scale conflict, it wouldn't be turned against more serious targets. We don't know whether the attack can be made even bigger, or if it has different operational modes, or even how quickly such an operation can scale... and that's enough uncertainty to make it a deterrent weapon. It's all political posturing, and from outward appearances, it seems China is showing itself to be fairly powerful, but not yet openly aggressive.
Contrast that with North Korea, which has persistently demonstrated impotent aggression, and our main concern is that they might actually develop a real offensive capability that affects us.
...as the simple course of action the entire reset of the world would take is a simple matter of NULL routing China and going on about their daily business...
...except that a significant part of their daily business has now been null-routed. It's going to be hard to keep that great American economy moving when manufacturers can't contact their contracted suppliers. Without that continuous economic movement, we're facing yet another financial crash, which the United States government probably doesn't want to have happen just yet.
your 'war' would be over before anyone really cared.
On the contrary, an openly-hostile and traceable act (like cleanly disconnecting a major nation) would be the first strike in a bigger escalating conflict, as each side accuses the other of being the guy who really started the fight. Throw in a few false-flag operations and stage a few "exposed" false-flag operations, and it's not a very big leap to having a real war with real weapons and real death.
Frankly, I'd rather just have the political games.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
I was going to post exactly this ...
China does bully and take advantage of petty targets and nations that have no way to defend themselves, and the best example of this is their attitude in the china sea, they are building ilsands to expand their borders, and all of the nations around cant do anything about it... they are first class bullies... I fail to see how their "cyber-attitude" could be any different.