CIA Warns China Might Be Planning Cyber Attack 711
malibucreek writes "The Los Angeles Times is reporting that the CIA is warning of possible cyber-terrorism against U.S. and Taiwanese computer systems by the Chinese Army. Or, China could just launch a massive denial-of-service attack by sending billions of "GET HERBAL VIAGRA" e-mails from the .cn TLD." The article has a reasonable amount of information
and is probably worth a read if you're curious about what could be a real big
deal in the future.
Re:National Firewall (Score:1, Insightful)
To heck w/ cyberwar (Score:4, Insightful)
Despair? (Score:5, Insightful)
I worry that the Internet is doomed to irrevicably loose what made it so good (for me). Popup ads, spam, trolls, lamers in the doom-like of the season, and the concept of 'cyberwar' fill me with despair over how misguided most of humanity is. I fear that what is probably the best invention of my lifetime will be tarnished by greed, selfishness, and stupidity.
Guess this is how Environmentalists feel...
My take on this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Retaliation? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:National Firewall (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you really want to give any more control over the Internet to the government?
J
Intelligence service spreads disinformation. (Score:1, Insightful)
Red Herring To Get More Govt Funding and Laws (Score:5, Insightful)
Never underestimate the extent the government will go...for example it's widely suspected the anthrax attacks last year was a government test gone awry; or perhaps more sinister, such as a way to get lots of extra funding and laws passed fast with little resistance - most everyone I've spoken with who has truly read the Patriot Act is appalled at the total disregard of the U.S. Constitution and basic human rights.
Bottom line is don't believe all you read - but then most here already know that...for the biggest threats to our security are from within...another reason the U.S. government should NOT develop mini-nukes (a misnomer to say the least!) for it's likely they will be used against us at some point...technology is a double-edged sword and thus we should not rely solely on it to solve our problems.
Ok, I really rambled on here, but anyways one must be careful what they believe...for the U.S. propaganda machine is running full-tilt these days to stuff our minds full of garbage and lies...it's happened before and is happening now!
Re:"might"? "planning"? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:My take on this? (Score:1, Insightful)
Although probably not jealous of our education system..........
Re:My take on this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry to burst your bubble - but you are not.
However, that attitude might explain why your nation is held in the regard that it is...
CIA: Damned if they do, damned if they don't (Score:5, Insightful)
A) This is lame. China cant or won't do this, and the CIA is stupid for thinking they can.
B) This is all part of some plot on the part of the CIA to get more funding and/or strip away all of our remaining freedoms.
The CIA's primary role is to examine information from a wide variety of sources and attempt to categorize and where possible act to mitigate short-term and long-term threats to the security of the United States. Given that their job is akin to predicting the future, and given that even with tremendous resources, predicting the future is exceedingly difficult, the CIA will miss a lot of things that look obvious in hindsight (Al-Quaeda was planning an attack on NYC!).So the public says "shame on you, CIA, for not spotting that obvious threat!"
But then, they often catch things that you and I aren't even aware of. They actually do this on a routine basis, and often times American foreign policy is directly influenced by information the CIA has successfully collected and/or analyzed. Of course, the CIA can't go around trumpeting these successes, because it decreases the odds of them being successful in the future.
So China may or may not be planning cyber-attacks on Taiwan and/or the United States. Do you really think that you for some reason know better than the CIA what's going on in the minds of China's rulers?
The CIA has been very wrong in the past, but more often than not, they're right. Also, remember that if China doesn't launch such attacks, it's not necessarily proof that the CIA was in error. It could be that by leaking their knowledge of Chinese plans, the CIA is betting that they'll elect not to try it.
As an American who has lived in Taiwan for most of (Score:4, Insightful)
You want to know about a spooky country--Japan. That's a scare story that has everything to do with Taiwan. Those whacky Japanese are playing scuicide with their economy and they're going to take Taiwan with them.
DOS attacks from Mainland China are not a threat, Japan's serene implosion is a major threat to the global economy. DOS attacks, not scarry, Yen at 200, very very scarry.
In other news... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why does the US always feel that it is justified in arming itself with every weapon imaginable but others aren't. Remember what happened when India and Pakistan tested their nukes?
If they are developing methods of attacking via the Internet, so are we. Yes its a good thing we know of its possibility and are going to take steps to defend ourselves incase such an attack occurs, however, it doesn't mean the Chinese are "evil terrorist hackers!"
Just my opinion anyway.
What has China ever done to the United States? (Score:1, Insightful)
Reality check: the only nation currently bent on world domination is the United States of America.
Mod me down: -1 Unpatriotic
Blame them for this, blame them for that. (Score:1, Insightful)
If you ask me, someone should be regulating them. Just cause innocent civilians were the target of an attack, what gives them the right to go out and kill? Think about it, why is it right for the US to go out and slaughter people? It's not. They've already killed innocent civilians, violence solves nothing. They're doing exactly what the al-queda (sp?) did to them. They have become terrorists.
More FUD... (Score:4, Insightful)
Furthermore, isn't leaking classified information treason? Yeah. So read it and write it off as "FUD". China simply wouldn't be able to hack into the U.S. systems - if we thought there was a threat, we could simply temporarily disconnect the overseas backbones (of which there are suprisingly few). Beyond that, the military, for some time, has used satellites to communicate; and every critical computer system is connected to a separate internal network, with no contact points to the Internet.
If China wants to drop some Spec. Ops. onto the Pentagon, that's a whole different story. But for now I'm not worried. Unless they try and DOS whitehouse.gov and kill all my RtCW ping times.
defensive vs. offensive security research (Score:5, Insightful)
The L.A. Times piece cites the CIA as saying that the People's Liberation Amry is conducting "research into offensive-minded cyber-tools" with the intent to cause damage to U.S. and Tawainese systems.
A technical contact at the Chinese Embassy in Washington counters that the research conducted by the Chinese government is purely defensive in nature.
There is no difference between offensive and defensive research except the intent, right? I mean, you could write a virus strictly for a deeper understanding of viral algorithms and how to protect against them. You could study more secure firewalls in order to circumvent them.
In short, the CIA can't prove that the research is offensive in nature unless they have intercepted Chinese plans to utilize the research in an offensive way. Similarly, it would be even harder for the Chinese to prove that it is defensive.
Therefore the news content in this article is essentially this: the CIA noticed that Chinese government studies network security.
Re:Confidential? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are chinese citizens planning on attacking the US? Sure, so are American citizens.
Has the chinese government considered the possibility of cyber-attacking the US? Sure, just like we considered the possibility of dropping nukes on half the world recently.
Is the chinese government actively planning to attack the US? Not if they have even the remotest bit of sense in the world.
The chinese economy is _heavily_ dependent on the American economy. An attack on America would effectively be an attack on their own economy. The codependence of our economies is probably the only reason all-out-war hasn't broken out between us.
Remember though, money is absolutely the most powerful influence in diplomacy and there isn't much that could come in the way of the massive amounts of money being exchanged between China and the US.
Re:My take on this? (Score:3, Insightful)
In case of the cyber terrorism, there is tonnes of e-power (censorship, morality police, etc) and also cash -- the real fire wall would dwarf the great wall of china
Re:My take on this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you really think this is why America is hated? Because they envy us? Don't you suppose the fact that most of the bombs dropped in the world have "Made in the USA" on it might have a LITTLE something to do with the hatred thing?
Re:Blame them for this, blame them for that. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, in order to do that, we'd need to build two 110-story buildings in Riyadh (there aren't any [skyscraperpage.com], natch), fill them with office workers, and blow them up.
--
Benjamin Coates
Non-problem (Score:2, Insightful)
If you want traffic from
Re:My take on this? (Score:1, Insightful)
How many people from the US want to immigrate to your country?
How many people from your country want to emigrate to the US?
Take your brainwash somewhere else.
Re:My take on this? (Score:1, Insightful)
BTW I don't want to hear you bitch when your mother gets killed from a suicide bomber while depositing her social security check.
No one wants to stop the leader of the bombers until it's their family that's dead.
I tire of this. (Score:1, Insightful)
The one comment is the "I am a white christian male who is a genius and never gets laid and people envy me". Please email me sir, for you are a large part of the same problem that put George Bush illegally into the most powerful position in the world.
As far as China attacking the United States on any level, the CIA and FBI and all those government agencies have to justify their existance. Call me Tin Foil Hat, but I believe the possibility exists that Sept. 11th was allowed. I believe the government of this country may be corrupt on so many levels, it's unthinkable. The untied states government is being innundated with greedy politicians intent on using their office to manipulate the laws to them and their white christain genius golfing buddies can make more money OFF OF US. China is not the problem. They will have their own revolution in time. Those people aren't going to stand in poverty forever.
As far as the United States goes, if you can convice the people there is a threat from the outside, they will not see the threats on the inside. The administration is quietly moving around, destroying the environment, looting the economy. In 6 years, if we are unlucky, this could be one huge back robbery.
We are not respected. We are not envied. We were. Now, we are a nation of greedy, fat consumers (yes geek, look at thou belly and man titties) who have NO CONCEPTION for the most part of what is going on in the outside world. We want Felcity and Ally, we want new cars and cheap gas. The rest of the world is eclipsing us in so many senses, morally, ethically, socially, technologically.
I am not tolling the bell, there are excellent pockets of innovation and love and life and all that (California) but then there are cancerous pockets of people who still believe in a big man up in the sky who is some kind of an aggressive puppetmaster (The Southern US and Mid East... oops, did I just compare the right to the wrong? maybe the right are wrong).
China is not the problem. Wake up sheep. Read 1984,stop watching TV, talk to people below you economic class. The biggest threat we have right now is the rights our own government is erroding. Excuse me if I have to leave now, I have to go opiate myself on a diet of fulling yet totally nutriounless fast food and have Dr. Phil tell me how to be a better consum... er... person.
Peace.
nickrussell@hotmail.com
Re:How this is different than usual (Score:3, Insightful)
> It's the CIA telling us about it. It is your duty as a Real and Patriotic
> American to take these threats seriously and to be afraid of the
> Enemies of Freedom at all times.
I know you were joking, but what you said makes a very valid point. Beyond the usual issue of whatever organization with a three letter acronym crying wolf yet again, there is the more important issue of how these "calls to panic" are in fact doing the terrorists work for them. Al Quada in particular have an easy job of it. They don't have to take the risks of actually trying an attack anymore, all they have to do is have their jailed members lie. It gets hyped by the media, and people panic nicely. If the media had half a brain, they would have realized by now that the only people in Al Quada that know about an attack before hand are Bin Laden and the guy leading it.
The duty of Americans is not to "be afraid of the Enemies of Freedom at all times". It is to be vigilant and kick their cans, if indeed they are evil. It is also the duty of Americans to stand up for our rights and the rights of others.
It is the sad results of a false patriotism that has pale pink and white rags proudly flying from yards and cars, poor filthy flags lying in the road, a capital overgrown with stinkweed politicians, and a loss of real freedom. Firewalls, strip searches, etc. aren't going to come and save us. It's the compassionate heart that saves a stranger's life in a disaster, the courageous heart that defends liberty, and the wise heart that cherishes happiness. Heart alone can conquer terror and restore peace and freedom.
America, what happened to your heart?!?
"Heart can reach where hand cannot. Climb over any wall..." Mothra (via Moll) "Mothra 3: King Ghidora Attacks"
NEEDS MORE XENOPHOBIA (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, so public support for Operation Bomb the Towelheads is declining; what's the government to do? I know! Let's make the American people xenophobic of ANOTHER socioreligious group!
What this all boils down to is a game of hide-the-sasuage that the government is playing with us. The general public is like a herd of buffalo: pretty dumb, hard to get moving, hard to turn, hard to stop when they ARE moving. Apparently support of the US' support of Israel (as Israel plays their own game of Bomb the Towelys) is waning, so the US needs another shiny object with which to distract the herd.
Hmm, I know how to distract them! Let's release a shiny press releas^H^H^H^H news item! Let's see, it's buzzword bingo time:
Hackers? CHECK
Cyber-terrorism? CHECK
Red commie Chinese? CHECK
SHINY OBJECT COMPLETED. DO YOU WISH TO DEPLOY? (Y/N)
DISTRACTION SUCCESSFUL, YOU MAY RECOMMENCE BOMBING OF THE ARAB NATION.
[/flamebait]
I'm sorry if I sound cynical, but the public seems to be infinitely stupid and the government seems to be infinitely willing to leverage this stupidity to their advantage. Just planting the meme of "Chinese Cyber-terrorists!" is bad enough. What's even worse is that the lemmings will be talking about this vaporous Chinese threat over the watercooler tomorrow morning instead of talking about how Israel murdered so many Palestinians and buried them in a mass grave.
It's a red herring planted by a cynical government which isn't afraid to use blatant misdirection to draw attention away from itself.
Re:My take on this? (Score:2, Insightful)
I have no idea what 1984 has to do with my comment, but yes, I have read it. I've read almost everything Orwell wrote; have you? The society in 1984 was based mostly on Stalinist Russia, which China largely resembles. Orwell himself spent almost his entire writing career attacking Communism, and attacking idiots that minimized Communism's crimes simply out of fashionable, dilletante dislike of the western democracies (where they all lived, of course). Sound familiar?
Re:You refute yourself (Score:3, Insightful)
If they don't even want to tell about the times they've been right in the past, it is even less of a chance that they will tell the public a truthful prediction of the future (like this alledgedly is).
What the CIA says publicly will obviously have no correlation (neither positive nor negative) with what they really think is the truth. They will simply give statements that they think have a desired effect, either on the american public or on foreign governments. How could it be otherwise? This is not because they are "evil" or whatever. It is their job.
Do you really think that you for some reason know better than the CIA what's going on in the minds of China's rulers?
This is a strawman. I certainly do not think so, neither do anyone else. The real question is: Do you really think that you know what the CIA knows about the minds of the rulers of China? What would CIA possibly have to gain by being consistently truthful in what they say to you to you (about as much as if they were consistently lying, I suppose)?
The conclusion must be that to extract any information whatsoever from the CIA, you have to analyze what they say. Do they have anything to gain by lying about this matter? (Yes, a lot - More threats = more budget). Do they have anything to gain by being truthful (Sure - If they think it is a real threat, it is only good if the servers get prepared). This analysis give no reason to believe either one or the other. In other words, the article has almost zero informational content.
Simple, no? A bit of critical thinking will get you a long way.
Re:Blame them for this, blame them for that. (Score:2, Insightful)
It is exactly this same FLAWED logic that people use to portray the Palestinians as victims. Civilians being killed by a bomb from a plane that misses its target and people flying planes into a pair of 110 story skyscrapers are not even REMOTELY equivocal.
Come see The World Trade Center site sometime when you have a chance before you make such misguided comments.
Re:To heck w/ cyberwar (Score:4, Insightful)
Hang on a second, China has not invaded anywhere I am aware of, at least not recently and it certainly has not invaded Taiwan.
There are a lot of folk who would like to reignite the cold war and are looking for an enemy to pick a fight with. Great way to justify more increases in the 'defense' budget, the US is defenseless! yesss really, the US gets absolutely nothing in return for spending more on the military than the entire rest of the world (including allies) put together.
During the cold war we in Europe were told repeatedly that if the red army invaded (and they were itching to do so) that NATO could only last 3 days before resorting to nukes. Ignore the fact that the USSR were having their ass handed to them in Afghanistan. The military simulations started from the assumption that the USSR tanks were equal to the NATO tanks, ignore the fact that 60% of the Russian tanks were relics from WWII and they only had enough fuel to train for a few days a year and their troops were unwilling conscripts etc.
If we are not careful we will be driven to the same sort of destructive and pointless standoff with China.
The China/Taiwan situation is much more complex than the US media make it appear. First Taiwan agrees that it is part of China, in fact it still lays claims to the rest of China. More importantly however the Chineese politicians are not the Maoist revolutionaries the US media would have us believe. In fact the horrors of the cultural revolution are the principal fear, that and another round of foreign domination such as the one that practically reduced China to collonial status in the late 19th century.
The Chinese leadership show every sign of understanding that the one thing they can do that would absolutely make reuinification with Taiwan impossible is to invade.
What we have to do is to make sure that China continues on its present path which is definitely heading towards a more open, more democratic society. The US is certainly not in a position to extol the virtues of democracy after the administrations recent meddling in Venezuela. Presidents who go to the supreme court to stop the votes being counted do not have much credibility with me on that score, and GOP clones aside don't have much credibility in the rest of the world either.
Everyone's a "terrorist" now (Score:2, Insightful)
Because American media and politicians find a word that sparks emotion they use it whenever they can until the word loses it's true meaning.
If you don't believe me, you don't live in the US.
Re:My take on this? (Score:1, Insightful)
Just a thought. America as a whole seems to be rather deeply engrained with "the new york fallacy"-- i.e., everyone there seems to think that the rest of the world's lives are consumed with either loving or hating america, and no one seems aware that there could be anyone anywhere in the world whose lives are just not that affected by america that much either way, and who doesn't particularly think about the whole "mcdonalds is everywhere" thing too much. Yeah, a bunch of the world either unhealthily loves or unhealthily hates america (or both). But that isn't everyone.
Its plain ol propaganda (Score:1, Insightful)
I remember a year or two back how heavily convinced they claimed to be that a huge cyber-attack from Cuba was imminent. Oh please.
Re:Maybe but why (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Blame them for this, blame them for that. (Score:2, Insightful)
mar1no, or whatever your name is, and you too Mr. Moderator, the two of you are so fundamentally unable to distinguish right from wrong that I wonder if you might be capable of heinous crimes yourself. I'm not using a figure of speech here.
I have certainly never refrained from criticizing the US for the numerous stupidities it has indulged in over the years, and God knows we have an idiot for a president now. But whether I like the guy or not, what he did as an immediate response to the 9/11 attack was exactly what had to be done.
What gives the US the right to respond to mass murder with force, you ask? You tell me, what gives law enforcement the right to use force in the apprehension of a murderer who is resisting arrest? Do you believe that murderers should go free?
I'm a strong believer in peaceful resolution of conflicts, but the awful fact is that human history occasionally produces people who simply go on murdering until somebody forcibly stops them. The existence of Hitler and bin Laden and the Nazis and Al Qaida are the awful proof of this fact. Do you think that no attempt should have been made to capture the members of Al Qaida after September 11? Tell me, what would you have done? What would you have done in the real world that we live in, with all of fanatics and fascists and mass murderers who are not interested in peace at all?
And for the love of God, where do you get this moral equivalence crap? The terrorists murdered American civilians because they are Americans, and probably because the terrorists assumed that they are all Christians. Bin Laden put it in precisely those terms. But the US has used deadly force in an attempt to catch mass murderers who are resisting with deadly force; the US has not sought not to kill anyone merely because he or she is Arab or Moslem.
The Al Qaida terrorists used airplanes full of civilians as missiles, to murder even more civilians. Tell me, when has the US put hundreds of civilians on board the missiles it has used in warfare? When has the US deliberately targeted civilians at all? Some people around the world apparently believe that this happened, but I don't where on Earth they get these ideas. Even if you don't believe that there ethical motives for the US military to try to avoid civilian deaths (and I believe they do have such motives), consider the fact that the US has nothing to gain and everything to lose when innocent bystanders die. Public revulsion at civilian casualties is probably the only thing that could make the Americans lose the war; that's what happened at Vietnam. If they want to succeed in their goals against Al Qaida, they simply have to limit civilian deaths as much as they can.
Another question: Do you believe that the United States should have joined World War II after the bombing of Pearl Harbor? After reading your post, I can't rule out that you might answer no to that question, in which case you are, to put it bluntly, so stupid that I'm wasting my time. But if you are reasonable enough to agree with most people's take on history, than consider this:
Can you enunciate a moral principle according to which the US should have joined war after Pearl Harbor, but should not have after 9/11?
As a matter of fact, there were two things that could have happened after September 11 that would have made all military action unnecessary:
Both of these were never the least bit likely, given that members of both Al Qaida and the Taliban happen to be murderous fascists. Nevertheless, this is what Al Qaida and the Taliban were morally obliged to do, just as a murderer is obliged to surrender himself to law enforcement. Of course they didn't, and only then was the US in a situation where the use of force was necessary. And for this reason, it is Al Qaida and the Taliban who are responsible for the civilian deaths in Afghanistan. By attempting to get away with mass murder, they are the ones who have placed ordinary Afghans in grave danger.
mar1no, I live over here in Europe, and I hear idiot blather like yours all the time. Are you a European, by any chance? I think people like you are arrogant and astonishly naive, living in a dream world and completely out of touch with reality. I think you are a moral midget, and above all quite simply dumb beyond my imagination. There's hardly enough I could say to express my contempt for you. You can't be trusted to come up with any serious solutions for the real problems that exist in the dangerous world we live in. And it's too bad, because the rest of the world could give GWB an earful for his mishandling of the Middle East and his stupid ideas about, God help us, the "axis of evil". But no one will listen to you, because you deserve no respect.
Re:To heck w/ cyberwar (Score:2, Insightful)
Have you never heard of Tibet? Don't tell me you believe the Chinese propaganda that Tibet has always been part of China and that the Tibetans welcomed them in 1949 with open arms.
Under-developed countries. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:My take on this? (Score:3, Insightful)
There certainly plenty of poverty in Mexico, and the US do have much more material wealth. Yet, a lot of illegal workers go there and work for seasons, to return to their hometowns and live on what they made. Or they send the money to the families they leave behind. Most of them go seeking work because they have none here, but will return as soon as they can. Mexicans are mostly proud of their roots, and like their life here except when there is no work.
So, I don't contend that the US has a higher income per capita, and more material wealth. But quality of life, that I don't think you have a lot.
Then again, I call them as I see them, but can't vouch for the perfection of my sight
Again, thanks. It is this kind of exchange that one hopes for when coming to Slashdot (but, alas, that too often is not found).