China May Have Hacked International Hague Tribunal Over South China Sea Dispute (thediplomat.com)

An anonymous reader writes: In July, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague conducted a hearing on the territorial dispute in the South China Sea between the Philippines and China. On the third day of the hearing, the Court's website was suddenly knocked offline. The attack reportedly originated from China and infected the page with malware, leaving anyone interested in the landmark legal case at risk of data theft. "By infecting the computers of journalists, diplomats, lawyers, and others who are involved or interested in the case, Chinese cyber units may be able to find out the names of people who are following the case and anticipate what their response might be if the court rules against China. For example, if Vietnamese or Japanese diplomats visited the website and their computers were infected, China could have access to internal documents and understand that country’s next moves over the disputed islands."

Comments

who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, it's pretty well established that states that have the resources to create "cyber-units" are going to hack systems for intelligence purposes. The recent Chinese-American agreement on hacking even recognizes that hacking for intelligence purposes is totes legit, so why do we frequently get these silly articles on Chinese hacking? It's nothing more than the Western media stirring up a cyber Red Scare. It's boring, predictable, and actually has the opposite effect of what these kinds of articles are meant to do. Instead scaring the public about Chinese hacking, these articles only highlight how bad the Chinese suck at hacking--they keep getting caught at it.