China's Cyberwar Against India

An anonymous reader writes "China's cyber warfare army is marching on, and India is suffering silently. Over the past one and a half years, officials said, China has mounted almost daily attacks on Indian computer networks, both government and private, showing its intent and capability."

Of all the countries..

[AltGrendel]

Of all the countries that could get attacked, you think that India could defend itself. I'm not being a troll here. They've done really well in the IT sector and they've got some pretty smart people there, so say the least.

BOTS? Get a CLUE!

[4D6963]

According to sources in the government, Chinese hackers are acknowledged experts in setting up BOTS. A BOT is a parasite program embedded in a network, which hijacks the network and makes other computers act according to its wishes, which, in turn, are controlled by "external" forces.

BOTS? Really? As in BOTnets? Shows how much of a CLUE the journalist who wrote this has.

Re:Of all the countries..

[metlin]

Yes, but they also have a lot of bureaucracy and a system that is not necessarily geared to encourage the brightest.

Secondly, the best and the brightest do not stay behind and come to the US or go to other western countries instead, often because of an educational system that is so heavily biased through reservations [wikipedia.org] (similar to affirmative action).

Finally, those that do stay behind are better off in the private sector, rather than the extremely corrupt public sector where bribes and nepotism are the order of the day. Or perhaps academia.

So, no, doing well in the IT sector has been a function of being in the right place at the right time (and speaking the right language and having a currency that is a fraction of the US dollar). This is not to say that there isn't technology talent in India -- but rather that like the rest of the world, there is good, bad and ugly. Only, given that there are a billion people, lots of people in each category.

the chinese govt is autocratic

[circletimessquare]

not communist

north korea is officially called "Democratic People's Republic of Korea". north korea is also just about the least democratic country in the world. meaning: you shouldn't trust official names

at one time, yes, china was a communist country that practiced communist ideology. that was a long time ago. it is more exact today to say the china is perhaps the most capitalist country in the world, rivalling the gilded ages of victorian times in the usa, when capitalism ran amok with very few legal constraints. such that you had monopolies, child labor, pinkerton gangs hobbling the kneecaps of unionists, etc back then in the usa. now in china you have pretty much the same thing. in china now there are multibillionaires and starving peasants on a scale of ultrarich cities versus grueling impoverished countryside like nowhere else except perhaps the rich gulf arab oil states

china is not a worker's paradise anymore, it is a capitalist's paradise, because there are no pesky democratic impulses in the political sphere to interfere with the pure unadulterated pursuit of the almighty buck. its pure autocracy, technocracy, pure capitalism. china is one giant corporation now

that the country is officially run by something called the "Communist Party of China" is just sort of a cosmic ironic joke at this point

Re:BOTS? Get a CLUE!

[beadfulthings]

BOTS? Really? As in BOTnets? Shows how much of a CLUE the journalist who wrote this has.

With respect, the journalist is trying to write for a general, non-technical audience of newspaper readers. If we had a few journalists here who were willing to try to explain technical issues at a basic level, we might have fewer computers ending up compromised.

My Question Exactly!

[camperdave]

If this were an operation mounted by the Chinese government, surely it would be done in secret. After all, you wouldn't want the winds political will to blow against you, especially when you're going to be hosting the Olympics, let alone the possible trade embargos and such. In fact, if it were a government op, then wouldn't the attack seem to come from anywhere BUT china (or, mostly from outside, with a few deniable inside sources)?

Re:Of all the countries..

[Lally Singh]

Yeah but the smarties probably have better jobs than government work :-)

China will do as it pleases

[thetoadwarrior]

They know full well they're on their way to being the next super power and everyone relies on them for pretty much everything. So I don't think the government really cares what others think about their activities.

Re:the chinese govt is autocratic

[vertinox]

china is not a worker's paradise anymore, it is a capitalist's paradise, because there are no pesky democratic impulses in the political sphere to interfere with the pure unadulterated pursuit of the almighty buck. its pure autocracy, technocracy, pure capitalism. china is one giant corporation now

I remember an article while back comparing modern day China to what Fascist Italy would have been like had the Axis won the war.

Ah here it is... http://www.benadorassociates.com/pf.php?id=31 [benadorassociates.com]

Thus, classical fascism should be the starting-point for our efforts to understand the People's Republic. Imagine Italy 50 years after the Fascist revolution, Mussolini dead and buried, the corporate state intact, the party still firmly in control, the nation governed by professional politicians and a corrupt elite rather than the true believers. No longer a system based on charisma, but on political repression, cynical not idealistic, and formulaic appeals to the grandeur of the "great Italian people," endlessly summoned to emulate the greatness of its ancestors.

That is China today. It may be with us quite a while.

That pretty much sums this up. They wave Red Flags and Sell Red Books, but no one is a real communist anymore in government.

I call BS

[Anonymous Coward]

I work in Computer Lab in a German University, and we get multiple brute force attacks a day from Chinese hosts. Does that mean that China is secretly mapping the network infrastructure of the German education system? I think not. IMO TFA is rather due to a deeply entrenched fear of spies and espionage in the Indian society, also the collective trauma of being hated by all neighbouring countries.

Re:the chinese govt is autocratic

[ScentCone]

china is perhaps the most capitalist country in the world

Not really, though. Capitalism only works when there's rule of law, and free communication. To the extent that China echoes any of the late 19th century stuff you mentioned (killer gangs taking out the competition, etc), that's not capitalism. More like fuedalism. China's oppressive central government is anything but the lubricant of capitalism - it's the protector of a condition in which there is abundant cheap labor. That is the engine of that country's house-of-cards economic growth. If the factory workers there started actually operating at a middle-class level, the growth would grind to a halt for the lack of cheap workers to keep making the stuff they're selling to the rest of the world at a handsome profit. After much turbulence, they're going to end up looking just like Europe or North America... fishing around for cheap labor from countries that are still a few steps behind, with their competitive edge diminishing. Next stop, Myanmar, where thousands living in primitive conditions just died in a storm. Countries like that will - for a while - become the source of cheap labor, until THEY get their act together.

China's reliving the entire history of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries as experienced by the western world, but over the course of a couple of decades. And with an enormous population. It's going to be an economic, ecological, and cultural train wreck. But for now, we can sure get some cheap motherboards, teak garden furniture, and t-shirts!

Re:not as such

[siufish]

Imagine your Chinese friend asking for chopsticks to eat spaghetti in an Italian restaurant, or sweet and sour sauce for chicken nuggets in a McDonald's. I think you'll say 'you can't do that' too. It is surprising you go to another country and complain about local customs. I suggest you try to be more open and less prejudiced while you're in other countries, and life will be much more enjoyable.

Re:Of all the countries..

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, first off, India has lots of coders, but most is in application space and damn little of it in security or OSs. The reason is that they are targeting most jobs in America, which are also in application space. Secondly, they are quietly setting up defenses. In fact, look closely at their military and space program. They have numerous nukes and will build some more over the next few years. They are surrounded by enemies and are always concerned. Pakistan, China, and Bangladesh are all issues to them. While their current biggest issue is Pakistan, they worry greatly about China. China's big rivers will be out of water over the next 20-40 years. These provide power as well as farming, and drinking. China will have to obtain it from somewhere. They will most likely want more of the Himalayas and then divert the water to China. And as China has shown repeatidly, they have no issues with laying claim to something that was not theirs in over a millennium. Just in 62, they attacked northern India to grab the high grounds. They claimed it was theirs. They got away with it because India was geared up for war with Pakistan and could not devote themselves to it. In addition, China has massive influence in north-east India.

Language abuse in general...

[argent]

If I drive my car down the road like an asshole it doesn't make me a vehicular terrorist.

Are you the bleeding vehicular terrorist who tried to sideswipe me coming up to the tollbooth on the beltway last week?

OK, all joking aside... I agree that terms like "terrorist" are being abused, though really it's the word "war" that's the problem. The US government declares a "war on" something vague and undefiniable, and all of a sudden the constitution is tossed out of the window. Whether the opponents are labeled "terrorists" or "drug lords" the result is the same.

On the other hand, when a country engages in aggression within the borders of another country during peacetime. Didn't that used to be called an act of war? What do you do about it short of declaring war? Does it matter which of the two countries is more pro-USA?

The result is that we are in a "state of war" all the time, but the President doesn't have to go cap-in-hand to Congress for each piddling little not-really-an-invasion. I don't see that as a good thing, and it's a much bigger problem than one of the particular abuses of language that are being used to justify it.

I'm tempted to say they're raping the language but of course that's just more of the same kind of verbal warfare that... hmmm... there I go again...

On the gripping hand, I'm not the CiC of the US armed forces.

Re:Im no racist

[Thanshin]

additionally im spiritualist, kinda a neo hippie. but chinese are annoying me with all kinds of aggression they are practicing.

Ok, you say you're not racist.

Then you seem to present the facts of being spiritualist and neo-hippie as a way of proving you have no prejudices against Chinese people. Do you consider Chinese people to be spiritualist and neo-hippie?

You also assign the behavior of a government to all the people that only share the geographical location of their birth. Are you saying that all Chinese people are committing acts of aggression?

If I were you, I'd seriously consider my thinking patterns.

Re:Maybe the nazis wrre right?

[Phil-14]

Well, it seems that the american bourgeois are just as stupid, by buying stuff from communist, the very political class that's dedicaced to eradicate them...

The Chinese stopped being communists in everything but name twenty years ago. Heck, they don't even have a social saftey net worth talking about. That is why everyone in china puts so much pressure on their kids to succeed. In China, your kid's job is your pension. America is more "communist" than China.

Well, except for the part where most businesses are either owned by the government, the party, or by relatives of the top party officials.

Just because it's not being done for the _good_ of the workers doesn't mean it can't be socialist/communist.

I don't know why it doesn't bug any of y'all that anytime someone starts a communist country it invariably degenerates into something all the leftists say looks like fascism. Maybe it's the logical end-state of communism?

Re:not as such

[Kierthos]

Well, it's one thing if the Italian restaurant doesn't have chopsticks at all. But if the Chinese restaurant has Dish A with lemon, and Dish B without lemon, and you order Dish B but ask them to add lemon, and they say "we can't do that", it's a bit more odd.

Re:Of all the countries..

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are born to the right family, you will do well -- or, rather, have all the best opportunities -- regardless of your skill, effort, or education, though you will receive a better education than most others (if they receive an education at all).

If you are born to the lower caste families, you will never achieve in Indian society, regardless of how much skill and effort. It is these individuals who are much better off moving to another country that is willing to recognize them based on skill as opposed to family heritage.

Such as? Your description of Indian society would apply just as well to any society if you swap the names around a bit. Do you seriously believe that the children of America's super-rich do not receive the best education followed by the best opportunities? Look at American boardrooms, and observe what proportion of people there came from low-income families. It is a very small number. It is, I grant, certainly higher than in India -- but I doubt the gap is anything like as wide as America's propogandists would like you to believe, for all their fairy tales about the "American dream".

Re:Indirect attack on the US

[Haeleth]

Newsflash to USA: the world does not revolve around you.

China has many pressing reasons to be interested in India that have nothing whatsoever to do with the USA: thousands of miles of disputed borders, for one, and rivalry in the race for economic and political influence as both nations develop. The fact that a handful of US-based companies may be storing information in Indian databases probably doesn't even make it into the top 50 reasons why China might want to conduct cyberwaar in India, let alone the top 10...

Re:Maybe the nazis wrre right?

[Abcd1234]

Just because it's not being done for the _good_ of the workers doesn't mean it can't be socialist/communist.

Well, given that, in communism, the workers are the ones running things, it does make it exceedingly unlikely.

Maybe it's the logical end-state of communism?

Or maybe it just proves that communism, as a pure idiology, doesn't work in the real world (kinda like pure, free-market capitalism), devolving into *other* forms of government, such as fascism or totalitarianism. But that doesn't change the fact that China is *not* a communist state, based on the definition of the term "communism".

Re:My Question Exactly!

[RiotingPacifist]

But say you had some sort of huge filtering mechanism, for arguments sake lets call it a "great firewall", wouldn't it be easy to stop outgoing attacks?

Re:Of all the countries..

[metlin]

Actually, these days it is the exact opposite.

Reservations are based for people belonging to the "lower castes" to supposedly make up for discriminations in the past. As a result, if you are born into one of the "upper castes", it becomes harder for you to compete for a limited number of positions (educational institutions, government jobs etc).

Worse yet, this reservation is not based on financial status, so while you may be a poor Brahmin, you will still be treated as an upper caste and fight the quota. On the other hand, you could be a rich Dalit and yet breeze through the quota system. For instance, in some states, as much as 70% of all college admissions are exclusively for lower caste people, while only 30% of seats are available for the upper castes -- immaterial of percentages. This is made worse by the fact that immaterial of how educated or how financially well off you are, a lower caste person can score lesser than an upper caste person and yet get through the system (I am not even making this up -- a regular pass percentage may be 45% for everyone else, while 35% for a lower caste person, immaterial of their status, giving an unfair advantage).

If anything, it is a system where the upper caste is being systematically disadvantaged.

If you are born to the lower caste families, you will never achieve in Indian society, regardless of how much skill and effort.

It is surprising how many people seem to believe this -- if anything, today it is the exact opposite [bbc.co.uk].

Now, perhaps discrimination did happen a long, long time ago - these days, while communities are more particular about preserving their culture and beliefs, there is no particular discrimination per se. It may happen in some lone village by some lone group of idiots, but hey, that happens just about everywhere.

If anything, the governmental policy is almost geared to be a "revenge" against the upper caste for their supposed actions in the past. A very enlightened act by a government whose citizens are supposedly created equal.

Which is why I laugh every time someone says that India is a democracy that will one day challenge the US, the west etc. It is making good progress, no doubt, but internally, that country is a mess. And it is made worse by illiteracy, corruption, greed and mean-mindedness of communities who cannot think past their prejudices.

Worse yet, the politicians are seeking to impose this system of quota and affirmative action to the private sector, as well. If anything, the Indian politicians have perfected the subtle science and exact art of racial and ethnic discrimination.

The upper castes of yesteryears are at the receiving end today, and they are being made to pay for faults of their ancestors.

Re:Maybe the nazis wrre right?

[macbeth66]

::sigh:

China was never a communist state. It has always been and still is an oligarchical dictatorship built on the backs of a massive slave class.