Google Attackers Identified as Chinese Government 651
forand writes Researchers, examining the attacks on Google and over 20 other companies in December, have determined 'the source IPs and drop server of the attack correspond to a single foreign entity consisting either of agents of the Chinese state or proxies thereof.'"
Re:can't say i'm surprised (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Finally above ground (Score:1, Informative)
Those of us who manage network security for large and/or interesting companies have been dealing with Chinese originating probes for many years - they have been the majority for a long time. The only difference here is a major company went public, instead of telling us security guys to keep it to ourselves...
Been complaining about this for years (Score:5, Informative)
Working for a Defense contractor, one of our systems was compromised. Fortunately, the idiot who gained access screwed up SSH which alerted us to what was going on, and prevented them from erasing their tracks. All SSH connections were from computers in China. They've been doing this for years, and no one has really called them on it until now. It takes Google to make a big enough splash before anyone really pays attention to it.
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Re:No, Seriously... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Write Google (Score:3, Informative)
Re:No, Seriously... (Score:3, Informative)
And of all of the debt they own it is only 23% of the total foreign debt, and IIRC foreign dept is just under half of the total US dept.
Re:Why would China do this? (Score:4, Informative)
The premise is that China hacked Google to access the accounts of these Chinese Human rights activists. Given that Google already complies with Chinese law, why did China not openly contact Google over this?
Because the attack's targets go beyond the authority of their laws: a coordinated effort to target specific human rights advocates not just in China but around the world [arstechnica.com] .
Re:Overloards (Score:5, Informative)
The government/culture of The People's Republic of China has only been in existence for about 70 years. Before that, it was the nationalistic Republic of China for about 35 years. And before that, it was an hereditary monarchy or thousands of year.
Maybe you should pick up a history book some time.
Re:No, Seriously... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:No, Seriously... (Score:1, Informative)
China holds less than a quarter of the US debt held by foreign entities, which is itself about a quarter of the total US government debt. So, China holds roughly an eighth of the US debt. (Japan holds slightly less -- about 5% of the total.)
That's not even a majority, much less a "vast" majority.
Re:But... (Score:5, Informative)
Hacking Google does not help China develop its industries.
Yes it does. At least according to the Wall Street Journal, the compromise goes far beyond a Gmail compromise of a few accounts belong to some human rights activists. Google is claiming that they've suffered an intellectual property loss due to a server compromise. Any time that China steals research from someone else, they've improved their industry without having to invest in the R&D. Beyond Google, the official count is up to 34 companies far that have suffered severe breaches.
We are in an era where China is being more and more restrictive on foreign companies. China was open when it was beneficial to them. They were open when it brought foreign expertise into their country. They welcomed foreign companies with open arms because they stood to benefit from the knowledge those companies have. Now that the Chinese have the knowledge, they are becoming more nationalistic (as if that were possible). They are heavily favoring national companies. A recently passed government procurement process contained a provision that government agencies must find local suppliers for IT systems and software. The Chinese have stolen enough technical know how from HP and Dell and IBM and Cisco and the rest that they can produce hardware that is good enough for their needs. China is now the largest automobile market on the planet, and they're building cars based on designs and with processes stolen from American and Japanese manufacturing firms. I read a story last year where Ford or GM was suing a Chinese company for selling a car that was more or less based entirely on a design and manufacturing process that was stolen whole sale from (Ford/GM).
The Chinese are smart. Our year 2010 is the Chinese year 4707. They have an ANCIENT culture. All of the games that people play have been played, observed and pondered in China for A LONG TIME. For the past couple of decades they have been benefiting from American processes and technologies. Americans have benefited from a Chinese willingness to use our processes to provide us with affordable goods. At the same time, they have developed the knowledge to create goods for their own growing "middle class". One of their goals is to increase domestic consumption. As the years continue to go by, more and more of the world's resources are going to be going to China, for the good of the Chinese. There is a reason that the Chinese are playing such an active role in Africa.
Re:World War III - The Cyber War (Score:1, Informative)
Re:No, Seriously... (Score:1, Informative)
Informative except the part about a quarter of a quarter being an eighth.
Re:No, Seriously... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:No, Seriously... (Score:5, Informative)
Secondly, china selling it's bonds would not lead to hyper-inflation. The only thing that causes that is a rapid increase in the supply of currency. So for that to happen, the treasury would need to make more capital available (such as we saw during the insane bail-outs that have been happening). But, as is now known from the bailouts, even dumping 2 trillion on the market will not cause significant inflation (and China has less than 800 billion).
What's the difference between Zimbabwe and the US? The problem in Zimbabwe is that the government was trying to overcome an actual shortage in resources by printing currency. Since printing currency in no way counteracted their actual food shortages prices rose endlessly as they printed more money. But, since there are no shortages in actual supply in the US, things didn't happen that way here. Banks were showing huge paper losses, so the government bailed them out to meet investor expectations. Basically, the shortage was only really numbers on paper, and raising those numbers counteracted the shortage.
Don't get me wrong, there are real problems in the US. But those are problems of expectations, not supply. People expect to be able to retire, but we soon won't have the workforce to let them. So either the government will force younger generations to work harder for less benefit (there are various ways of doing this) or they will let wall-street shrink retirement accounts and scale back social security. Right now it looks like they prefer the former, but I'd say the latter is the safer option. The real danger is that when the government takes these steps (and they will have to) it may cause social unrest.
Re:No, Seriously... (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not sure I agree with several of your premises. They're the popular views, but I'm not sure if they're actually true.
The first supposition is that China owns a large portion of our debt - this one I can factually dispute based on numbers from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt [wikipedia.org]
Foreign and international own approximately 28% of our debt, and China owns 24% of the international debt. This means China only holds about 7% of our total debt.
Second, and this is just my own supposition, I don't think China cares if they get repaid. As long as their economy flourishes they are happy to allow us to pay cents on the dollar for their items by undervaluing their currency and buying our debt. Think of it as China's "stimulus package" for their economy. Sure in the future they might try to call the debt as a strategic move to affect our economy, but monetarily I don't think it's an issue for them.
If the second item is true then all they need to do is keep us stimulating their economy while ours declines. At the point where they are selling to enough other countries that the loss of our business isn't fatal to their economy they can choose to make any move they wish that harms our economy. If you're playing the long game you only need your enemy to support you until you're strong enough to kill them without doing too much damage to yourself.
I wouldn't be surprised if China is the United States of the next century, in the same way that superpowers like England and Spain were overshadowed by the US.
Re:No, Seriously... (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, foreign debt is about 25% - so that makes the Chinese total portion about 5%...
Re:blatant Chevrolet copy (Score:3, Informative)
This is what I love about Slashdot. The collective intelligence here is superb. Despite the frequent complaints about /. being behind the times when it comes to news, I find that topics are discussed here often months before traditional media sources pick them up. Reading the Wall Street Journal these last two days has been like a rehash of months old conversations, so much so that I was looking for the "dupe" tag to scrawl across the story in the paper.
Re:No, Seriously... (Score:5, Informative)
Sure in the future they might try to call the debt
This seems to be a common misunderstanding. Holders of treasury bonds cannot "call the debt."
When China buys US debt, they buy treasury bonds (or one of the half-dozen other names the same basic instrument sells under). A treasury bond is a promise to pay a stated sum of money on a given date.
So, today I might buy a $100 treasury bond with a maturity of 2040. In 2040 I can turn in that bond for $100 in US dollars (cash or whatever) from the US government. In 2039 it can't be turned in for a dime. Now, in 2039 you could almost certainly sell it to somebody else for very close to $100. The way China makes money is that the $100 bond might have only cost them $20-30 or whatever to buy today. Bonds may also pay interest as well.
The only thing China can do is stop buying new bonds and cash in their existing ones as they mature. The US never promised to give them money before the maturity date, so they are under no obligation to do so.
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