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China's 'Great Cannon' -- a Cyber-weapon to Accompany the Great Firewall

Posted by Soulskill on from the speak-softly-and-carry-a-bunch-of-packets dept.

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.

3 of 81 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Can we stop pretending this isn't low level war by Morpf · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Okay, I suppose you don't mind we also stop pretending the Five Eyes (especially the USA) and Israel at not in a low level war with any other country? Right?

  2. Re:Can we stop pretending this isn't low level war by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  3. Re:Can we stop pretending this isn't low level war by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I will just say this: The above post is a lie. I can name plenty of examples to show China's aggression.

    If people remember a few years back, US solar companies getting breached, or breach attempts in large numbers, all from China. Six months later, China started shipping panels that mysteriously had the same IP as the US PV makers... but for costs well under what even the rare earths went for. This destroyed the US PV industry, and it nearly destroyed Europe's until they enacted a tariff to level the playing field (China will give you deep discounts on rare earths... provided their companies do the manufacturing... companies that you have to give all trade secrets to.)

    So, China isn't an angel in any sense of the word. They have been having a lot of border skirmishes with neighbors. They only have MFN because most US companies can't see past next quarter's earnings.

    A DDoS makes sense. Same way someone getting their face decorated with a black eye the first time they hit the prison yard... it sends a message.