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Chinese Government Implicated in DoS on US Site
HP LoveJet writes "US maintainers of sites dedicated to falun gong, a meditation technique whose practitioners are being systematically harassed by Chinese government authorities, say that recent attacks on their servers are traceable to--guess who?--the Chinese government. Scary stuff. "
Errrrrrrrr, just who *exactly* in the US Gov't do you thing would go after China for this? Think about it. We just reaffirmed their MFN status, after all. Despite all the hordes of scandals --
* Organized illicit campaign contributions traceable w/ very high probability to PRC military intelligence.
* US-built machine tools redirected to (military-related production) sites that they *specifically denied in advance* would be the recipients.
* Mass import of arms, such as illegal shipments of SKS rifles traced to PRC arms companies with very close ties to Beijing.
* Deliberate violations of US nat'l security through leakage of information regarding rocket launches, through Hughes (and, IIRC, maybe Lockheed).
* Theft of nuclear secrets, through suborning of PRC sympathizers with access to classified data.
* Repeated harrassment, threats and refusal to recognize reality regarding Taiwan/ROC.
And... we're trying to be all buddy-buddy to them, partly out of alleged guilt for nailing their Embassy. Frankly, I'd rather bail out our ex-foes based in Moscow, and ostracize Beijing. But no... This is a nation which has repeatedly voiced the threat that it could hit LA with a nuclear-armed ICBM. It is *not* like this Gov't will stand up to them.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Considering that this is happening at the same time as mass arrests, a warrent for the group's leader, and confiscation of literature, it's not too surprising that the party would want the web sites torn down as well.
The Chinese government considers this group to be the biggest threat to it's rule ever.
Their level of paranoia is so high for 3 reasons: 1. the group has 10 million more members than the communist party. 2. Since it is based on traditional Chinese ideas, it cannot denounce it as western contamination. 3. The last two dynasties in China fell shortly after the formation of similar groups.
It doesn't matter if point 3 is superstition or not. The communist party knows that many people will believe that the group's existance means they will soon fall.
Desperation makes people do stupid things.
Mmmmm....okay, China is a large, homogeneous culture, unlike the West. I'm with you there. And we should try to understand political differences in terms of cultural differences. So far, so good. Where I must disagree with you however, is where you suggest:
Accepting differences is just a matter of acknowledging a reality one could do little about.
and:
While I personally believe that the future belongs to diversity and multicultural cooperation, I also see that the Chinese don't necessarily agree. As long as they stay in their corner and don't mess with any of us, it doesn't have to get ugly.
The problem I have is that you have essentially denied the universality of human rights. We believe that tolerance of others is okay for us, but because the Chinese have a different culture, they don't really have to tolerate differences--in fact, they are totally within their rights to crush these people, or any other domestic group or individual, on a whim.
As soon as we allow that a different cultural background is an an acceptable reason for a government to harass, imprison, torture, and murder its citizens, well, then we basically set sail off into a sea of moral relativism wherein NOTHING is ever really bad or wrong.
Don't get me wrong--we can and should try to understand and appreciate cultural differences. But, there is a difference between understanding something and accepting that thing. We should not accept this notion that somehow human rights are this peculiar thing that can only be enjoyed by westerners.
I don't accept that the Chinese government's actions are somehow okay because they're, y'know, CHINESE. It is enlightening to see how crappy this argument is (it was gospel for my anthro. profs, BTW) when you use the same logic to try to suggest that lynchings by the Klan are really okay, because, after all, they're an inevitable part of the culture of the Southern/Midwestern United States, and that we should all learn to understand, appreciate, and accept them.
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
When conducting a syn flood, you need to use forged addresses. The way a syn flood works is by filling the machine's connection queue with connection requests. After the attacker sends a connection request (a syn packet) with a bogus address, the victim will send an acknowledgement (a syn and an ack for the picky) to the bogus address. The victim will wait a certain amount of time for your acknowledgement. Since you are using bogus, nonexistent ip's, no acknowledgement will ever be received. After the (generally) operating system specific timeout, the incomplete connection will be removed from the queue. The goal is to create the connection requests faster than they can be deleted.
An interesting aside, when NT 4 was originally released, it waited an extremely long time before removing connection requests, this made it very sensitive to syn floods.
I work for the Asian Broadcasting Union, a coalition of many asian news broadcasters. One included is CCTV, which is the major Chinese broadcaster in China (it also operates under the government). All of a sudden, last week, the Chinese government banned the religious sect of Falun Gong, without much of a reason at all. Ever since then, this whole week, I have seen transmissions of propaganda items depicting ex-Falun Gong members 'giving up their beliefs for the good of China'. This just shows that when the government of China wants something gone, they do their best to have it _Gone_. Also, I doubt this has anything to do with overzealous free-tibet script kiddies, because it's not big news, and from the script kiddies I know, they can't even spell Falun Gong ;)
That is all.
I'm not a coward, but what the heck, I don't have time to create a new account right now. I just want to say that:
1) I am a Chinese in America;
2) I think China would be better as a democracy;
3) I support bans on Falun Gong.
I've noticed that much of the publicity in America surrounding China's ban on the sect fails to mention the disturbing details about the group:
1. The group was founded just seven years ago by a man with high school education. He now lives in a spacious estate in (I believe) New Jersey.
2. The man claims he needs no medication and suffers no ailments.
3. He claimed Earth is in a volatile state and might explode in 1997 or 98. He now says he can delay the end of world for as long as 30 years.
4. His methods of meditation can lift a practitioner above water. Yet, when his followers surrounded ZhongNanHai (where Chinese leaders live) they failed to surround the fourth side -- a lake.
>
> The address McWee said was left behind is registered with the
> Asia Pacific Network Information Centre, a public registry service
> for Internet addressees. According to the service, there are two
> phone numbers in Beijing listed with that address.
>
> When The Associated Press called the numbers, a person who
> answered the phone identified them as belonging to the Public
> Security Ministry. A telephone operator at the ministry said they
> belonged to its Internet Monitoring Bureau.
Silly question for y'all... as much as I'd like to believe that the Chinese Government is involved in DOSing "subversive" sites around the world, I remember reading something to the effect that all IP connectivity from China to the rest of the world goes through some sort of monitoring/firewall/gateway thingy.
If, for WWW access, this takes the form of some sort of proxy, perhaps it's only natural that the IP addresses of Chinese surfers appear to all be coming from a netblock controlled by the "Internet Monitoring Bureau"? Maybe it's the Chinese Government, maybe it's a Chinese script kiddie.
Maybe the Internet Monitoring Bureau, as they presumably have control over what domains get registered, happens to be the default telephone contact for domains in .cn, whether or not all traffic goes through a proxy server.
Does anyone have any hard information on how "Internet access" works in China?
My gut says it's still the Chinese government. But my brain's telling me not to jump to conclusions, especially when the most sensational "evidence" is based a phone call from an Associated Press reporter from a WHOIS lookup on APNIC.
(After all, when was the last time you saw an AP reporter who even knew what a WHOIS lookup was, let alone one who would consider that the concept of "contact information" for domains in a country like China might be completely different from that in the States.)
So - like I said - anyone know how IP connectivity in China really works and that this isn't just a red herring?