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| Science & Technology |
| Chinese Hackers Have 733t 5k1llz |
| 2010-02-07 |
| It's not often you have an article on the internet that is so dumb it is actually fiskable, but then this is AP... Disclosure: My lovely bride is Chinese and she tells me the Chinese government versus Google kerfuffle is due in large part to an ongoing anti on-line pr0n campaign by the Chinese government. Google has been warned to rein in online pr0n. Google's accusation that its e-mail accounts were hacked from China landed like a bombshell because it cast light on a problem few companies will discuss: the pervasive threat from China-based cyberattacks. The Chinese government has repeatedly denied the government is the source of the attack. The hacking that angered Google Inc. and hit dozens of other businesses adds to growing concern that China is a center for a global explosion of Internet crimes, part of a rash of attacks aimed at a wide array of targets, from a British military contractor to banks and chemical companies to a California software-maker. Rantburg's last attack, guess what percentage came from China? About 11 percent. The largest percentage? The from good old USA. Internet crime is pervasive everywhere, not just on China, but everywhere. The government denies it is involved, and it reiterated that last week. Speaking in Paris, China's foreign minister, Yang Jiechi, said China itself "is the victim of pirate attacks" and the international community must fight the phenomenon together. I believe the Chinese government. But experts say the highly skilled attacks suggest the Chinese military, a leader in cyberwarfare research, or other government agencies might be breaking into computers to steal technology and trade secrets to help state companies. They probably are doing it, just like every other government on earth. It's called espionage. "Chinese hacking activity is significant in quantity and quality," said Sami Saydjari, president of the consulting firm Cyber Defense Agency and a former U.S. National Security Agency official. Officials in the U.S., Germany and Britain say hackers linked to China's military have broken into government and defense systems. But attacks on commercial systems receive less attention because victims rarely come forward, possibly for fear it might erode trust in their businesses. A dirty little Internet security secret. There is very little you can do to prevent a break-in. You can only hope to detect and manage the aftermath. Google was the exception when it announced Jan. 12 that attacks hit it and at least 20 other companies. Google says it has "conclusive evidence" the attacks came from China but declined to say whether the government was involved. Google declined to say because the Chinese government probably wasn't involved. Google cited the attacks and attempts to snoop on dissidents in announcing that it would stop censoring results on its China-based search engine and leave the country if the government does not loosen restrictions. Only two other companies have disclosed they were targets in that attack -- software-maker Adobe Systems Inc. and Rackspace Inc., a Web hosting service. Racksoace probably hosts a fair amoiunt of hacked computers which are abandoned. Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at Finnish security software-maker F-Secure Corp., said his company has detected about two dozen attacks originating from China each month since 2005. "There must be much more that go completely undetected," he said. If there are more than are detected, you're already pwned. Hypponen said a large British military contractor with which his company worked discovered last year that information had leaked for 18 months from one of its computers to an Internet address in the Chinese territory of Hong Kong. He said similar attacks on military contractors were found in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Finland. Decided to read the outbound http requests didja? Saydjari said other researchers have told him of dozens of U.S. companies that have been attacked from China but said he could not disclose their names or other details. A key source of the skills required might be the military. China's army supports hacker hobby clubs with as many as 100,000 members to develop a pool of possible recruits, according to Saydjari. |
| Posted by:badanov |
| #4 Rantburg's last attack, guess what percentage came from China? About 11 percent. If you are wrangling a bot net, the attacks are going to come from someplace with a lot of computers, like the U.S. That says nothing about who is controlling it. I believe the Chinese government. I don't. |
| Posted by: SteveS 2010-02-07 23:13 |
| #3 logi_cal, I am usually not on the Burg late in the day so I'm not sure what happened in this case. However, if you submitted these articles close to midnight Eastern (Fred's) time, it's possible they weren't noticed. Submissions that come in after late evening are usually reset to publish when the Burg rolls over at midnight. That reset has to be done manually by a mod. If your articles came in after the mods queued up the ones for the new day they might not have been noticed / reset. In that case they would end up in limbo, I think. Just one possibility .... Note also that not every submission is published. Sometimes we get duplicates. Sometimes articles are judged to be not quite a good fit here. But that's the exception, not the common event. I'm guessing yours fell through the cracks due to the late hour at which you submitted them. |
| Posted by: lotp 2010-02-07 22:35 |
| #2 Ok, mods. I have to call foul on why 3 posts I attempted late (Friday?) night were never added. I had interspersed my posts with highlighted commentary, appropriately placed, and chose to label them 'opinion'. All 3 never showed up. 2 of the 3 were pretty darned important to politics and awareness and were in no way 'fluff' articles. In fact, they were important, little-exposed public documents published by our government. Losing faith, I am. (at least Bama has another loss...Colts) If mods want my email, I'll happily provide it. Show me how w/o posting it publicly. |
| Posted by: logi_cal 2010-02-07 22:25 |
| #1 chinese hackers continually attack our computor infrastructure, have for years. |
| Posted by: 746 2010-02-07 19:52 |