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China Government Security The Internet The Military United States

China Calls US Culprit In Global 'Internet War' 114

Posted by Soulskill from the cyberwar-of-aggression dept.
On Wednesday we discussed news of Google's accusation that sources originating in China were interfering with Gmail using malware and phishing techniques, targeting Chinese political activists, US government officials, military personnel, and others. In response to the accusations, a Chinese official denied government involvement in the attacks, while the US government indicated they would investigate the matter. The attacks were more sophisticated than a typical phishing attempt, they involved Yahoo and Hotmail as well, and they have likely been going on for months. Now, according to a CBS report, "The Chinese military accused the US on Friday of launching a global 'Internet war' to bring down Arab and other governments, redirecting the spotlight away from allegations of major online attacks on Western targets originating in China."
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China Calls US Culprit In Global 'Internet War' More

China Calls US Culprit In Global 'Internet War'

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  • Hilarious (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gubers33 ( 1302099 ) on Friday June 03, 2011 @04:44PM (#36333854)
    China got caught with their hand in the cookie jar and immediately creates a story about the US playing foul on the internet whether it is true or not, the only reason it was released by them is to avoid attention. China is not going to be able to avoid this they have been in the midst of internet controversy for the past few years from Green Dam software (Great Firewall of China) being created from stolen source code, to hacking Google and other countries to this newest event. They need to figure out if you start poking around in someone's backyard who has more advanced systems they are going to find out soon or later.

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday June 03, 2011 @04:46PM (#36333868)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • The Chinese government is also very adept at showmanship. Wait till the next time that the US and Taiwan agree to another arms sale. The PRC only does stuff dead quiet (like the J-20 stealth fighter) or really loudly.

    • What do we call this new Cold War? The Even Colder War? The Cyburr War? The Big Chill ... no, that's taken. The China Sindrome? Too obscure?

    • This is not the first time China got caught conducting espionage of this sort. But US has no means to deter China from continuing. At best the States Department will complain about it, and a war of words ensues until the story dies down.

      No one outside China takes the Chinese media's views seriously as the media outlets are clearly controlled, or at least tightly watched over, by the government. It does not matter though. Their intended audiences are the Chinese citizens who listen to them daily. Only a v

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        The US basically advertised the fact they were creating an cyber warfare unit whose purpose was attacking other countries infrastructure not defence. The government of China pointing this out is hardly revelatory.

        The easiest way to deal with this, is to treat incoming data as a product export from the country of origin. If the exported data contains malicious content, the costs caused by that malicious content simply need to be calculated and a fine applied to the country of origin, upon the event and it

    • Funniest part is that the Chinese government is so fascist that they don't recognize that claiming American involvement in the overthrow of dictators is actually pro-American.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Actually I think it is you guys who don't realise that meddling in another country's affairs is anti-American. The Arab Spring started with the people in those countries, not with America invading or enforcing sanctions etc. Okay, Facebook and Twitter played their part, but the revolution came from the people.

        Even if the country you invade is "evil" like Iraq under Saddam or Afghanistan under the Taliban that doesn't make America the good guys, at least not in the eyes of many in the Arab and Asian worlds (

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by jcarr ( 20735 )

        I'd love that happens in the future, but historically America has overthrown democracies in favor of dictators many times. There are a whole bunch, but here are two:

        1953 Iranian coup d'état [wikipedia.org]
        1973 Chilean coup d'état [wikipedia.org]

        In fairness, the american constitution allows us to talk about this history whereas in China, maybe not so much.

  • Reroute half the internet last year?

  • China did it. (Score:3)

    by sethstorm ( 512897 ) on Friday June 03, 2011 @04:59PM (#36333944) Homepage

    Ok.

    * Various political interests that China wants to kill off are targeted.
    * The US military is targeted.
    * The US government (outside of the military) is targeted.
    * A company that left China out of concerns for it being used as an attack platform was targeted.
    * The rest of the evidence points to China's red hands being all over this.

    The only answer worth giving to the Chinese government: ä½æ''èZï¼

    • The only answer worth giving to the Chinese government: ä½æ''èZï¼

      I agree, we should punish them by making the entire internet reliant on ASCII instead of an internationally compliant Unicode system!

    • The only message worth giving in reply to the Chinese government: NÇ zhÃge piÃnzi!

      (yes, it's translated output of "You liar!", in phonetic)

  • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I've personally been noticing a lot of suspSuí zhe yídòng dào zhèl kàn dào shénme

  • Business as usual in Beijing: (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Hartree ( 191324 ) on Friday June 03, 2011 @05:13PM (#36334008)

    Google traces targeted gmail password trawling attacks to China.

    Reaction?

    The "independent" (and presumably "fair and balanced") Global Times calls Google "snotty nosed". The equally "independent" Xinhua News Agency says that the acusation that China was behind the gmail phishing was "evil intentioned".

    The Chinese military ups the ante and accuses the US of an undeclared cyber war on the whole world.

    In other news, the Reichstag still appears to be vaguely smoldering.

  • Regardless of China does or does not. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The gullibility of the american public never ceases to amaze me.

    I swear to god, the next US president should be the damn kool aid mascot.

  • You can always unplug it (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 03, 2011 @05:21PM (#36334072)

    Hey China, nobody here held a gun to your head and forced you to use the Internet. We invented it for our own use, and thought it would be a good idea for peers to connect worldwide.

    We had a saying during the Cold War: If you don't like the US, you're free to leave. This contrasted our philosophy with that of the Soviet Union, where emmigrating was very difficult.

    Likewise, if you don't like the Internet you're free to create your own local network which is partially what you're doing with your "great firewall". Trouble is, you want it both ways. Sorry. Not our problem. If you can't firewall out everything you don't like then that leaves you with a choice:

    Deal with some things you don't like, or unplug it.

  • ha (Score:5, Insightful)

    by itchythebear ( 2198688 ) on Friday June 03, 2011 @05:25PM (#36334090)
    I chuckle every time i read an article like this. Yes, I'm sure the United States is participating in electronic espionage (or whatever you want to call it), but does that surprise anyone? Seriously, is anyone surprised at this, like at all? As a United States citizen i would actually be very upset if my government wasn't doing this. The flip side to this is that I can really not be that upset at China for doing the same thing. So really this is a non story and the only one governments are fooling when they make claims like this are... no one.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mhesd ( 698429 )

      The real flip side would be that there are hundreds of US right activists political persecuted in the US, emigrated to China and now targeted by the US government or army by phishing attacks. Did you ever heard from at least one of these mysterious activists?

    • yea, the only one who should hang here is the one 'super'-hacker who got sloppy enough to let it slip into the mainstream media. I'm also pretty much convinced that stuff like this happens, or better even : happened all the time ever since organized government got invented/implemented

  • "Google gets hacked from China. Decides to close China office and servers. Operate from Hong Kong"?

    Why is this thought to be news?

    • Now that they're no longer operating in China, they can't exactly threaten to close their China office again, so the Chinese government can hack them pretty much with impunity. (Not that the Chinese government really cared the first time.)

  • They say "the Government of China did not have anything to do with the attacks".

    They do NOT say "the Chinese Army had nothing to do with the attacks".

    It's all in the details and the saving of face.

  • China's just the sucker that gets caught doing it. They're after all sorts of targets, government or otherwise. I had them ruin my. Xmas holiday when they tried unsuccessfully to send 10G DDoS attacks across the wire. Just protect your stuff, because there are a lot of people out the with a lot of motivation to either get your IP, money, are just try to shut you down. China's just one of many. If you have any sort of online presence you are a potential target.

  • Bring on the peaceful, united New World Order. One Planet, One nation.

  • I use the service from http://www.countryipblocks.net/ [countryipblocks.net] to create rules in my firewalls to just block out China, Korea, an Russia. This cuts down significantly the hacking attempts on my servers. Its time to reject buying anything "Made in China" to show them that this kind of behavior is unacceptable.

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