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

Ummm... Not Gonna RTFA

[retroworks]

At least until it's sterilized

Re:Ummm... Not Gonna RTFA

[khasim]

Trust me, you're not missing anything from TFA's. Here's one quote:

The Philippines (and its U.S. allies) should accordingly start preparing now for a massive digital tantrum by Chinese patriot hackers if the ruling, expected by the end of the year, goes against the Middle Kingdom.

They blame "China" for the "attack" but then refer to "patriot hackers".

There's a huge difference between a government operation and some kids doing it.

And I have not been able to find any reference to the nature of the "malware" installed. I'm betting it wasn't a 0-day exploit.

Re:Ummm... Not Gonna RTFA

[MightyMartian]

In China, I doubt there is. I imagine most hacking by Chinese nationals is, if not outright overseen by the Chinese government, is most certainly approved of.

Re:Yes but it could have been *any* reflected Stat

[daveschroeder]

This post only demonstrates your misunderstanding of things (by talking about "home routers", for example, in this context). And yes, attribution in cyber is hard -- that's one of the most-discussed, fundamental problems of cyber.

You can also go down the Princess Bride-esque rabbit hole of saying that China knows that some people -- like yourself -- will make arguments that "it could be the US or UK making it look like it's China", and thus conduct an attack, or that we know that they know that we know that, and therefore the US did it, etc.

At some point, you have to apply Occam's Razor and ask: who benefits? And the most obvious, direct, and clear beneficiary of this kind of interference is China. Not the US, not the UK, not some imagined Western Illuminati cabal with China being innocent victims; no: China.

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.

Island gap!

[mschaffer]

So, why has the US allowed China to get ahead in the man-made island race?

Re:Island gap!

[MiniMike]

Not to worry, the warranty on these 'Made in China' island expires in three months, after which the islands will collapse back into the sea.

How is that even happening?

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

I mean, yeah okay let's say they get access to the server and they can upload new files or modify existing ones. How can a server infect a godamn computer via a stupid Web browser? Are we talking about yet another Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash or Microsoft Silverlight exploit here? Are computers running Linux, BSD and OS X safe from this shit?

Fight for your bitcoins!

Lies and misdirection!

[MiniMike]

Inevitable Chinese government response:

This webserver is in Chinese territory and always has been! There is no virus on our webserver! This 'Hague' organization has no claim to this webserver! The virus was put on the webserver as a warning to browsers from other counties to stay at least 12 links away! We advise the 'Hague'. side to think twice before action, not to conduct any rash action, and not to create trouble out of nothing!