Vast Electronic Spying Operation Discovered 303
homesalad writes "Researchers in Toronto have discovered a huge international electronic spying operation that they are calling 'GhostNet.' So far it has infiltrated government and corporate offices in 103 countries, including the office of the Dalai Lama (who originally went to the researchers for help analyzing a suspected infiltration). The operation appears to be based in China, and the information gained has been used to interfere with the actions of the Dalai Lama and to thwart individuals seeking to help Tibetan exiles. The researchers found no evidence of infiltration of US government computers, although machines at the Indian embassy were compromised. Here is the researchers' summary; a full report, 'Tracking "GhostNet": Investigating a Cyber Espionage Network' will be issued this weekend." A separate academic group in the UK that helped with the research is issuing its own report, expected to be available on March 29. Here is the abstract. They seem to be putting more stress on the "social malware" nature of the attack and ways to mitigate such techniques.
Really? (Score:2, Insightful)
The U.S. and other governments have been doing things like this for years...
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
This doesn't sound like Echelon or Carnivore, but more like spyware being installed on computers.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Does that make it good, just, or laudable?
Evil is evil, no matter who does it.
Is anyone's computer 100% secured? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
This might earn me a "whoosh" but I trust those Debian guys to check the code before they build it into securely signed binary packages for me and other joes to consume. Before it reaches me the software has already had "many eyes" looking at it.
For which I am extremely grateful!
Re:Is anyone's computer 100% secured? (Score:5, Insightful)
The funny thing is that even when 'many eyes' fail (for example, the recent Debian SSL debacle), people still assume that the process works, including the bad guys.
I wrote more about this issue in an article titled 'Trust Works All Ways [imagicity.com]'.
I'm no security professional, so I could be wrong here, but I've seen no indication that there was any systematic exploitation of that gaping security hole during the 18 months it was present. Yes, the reason is laxity, and that's a flaw in the process. But the fascinating part is that it appears everyone - white hat to black - has faith in the process.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
ssh? Sorry. Maybe it should have been ssl.
Target operating system? (Score:5, Interesting)
Unless I missed it, I don't see Windows mentioned...but I'm going to go out on a limb here and figure the targeted OS is Windows.
Transporter_ii
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know. It surprised me that the Dalai Lama even used computers. But if he did, they'd probably are Macs. He just seems like that kind of guy
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It surprised me that the Dalai Lama even used computers.
Dude - the Dali Llama is on Twitter [twitter.com]. He's also one of the most wired religious leaders in the world, and appears to have a Blackberry (if his Twitter updates and anecdotal reports of emails are to be believed).
Re:Target operating system? (Score:5, Funny)
Macs? I'd think he'd be a Linux type of guy.
Mac, for sure. If someone knows the sound of one mouse button clicking, the DL is it!
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Macs? I'd think he'd be a Linux type of guy.
And I suppose you are thinking of the Enlightenment window manager?
Re: (Score:2)
Unless I missed it, I don't see Windows mentioned...but I'm going to go out on a limb here and figure the targeted OS is Windows.
If it's a targeted attack you'd target whatever the target is using. Even if what you said was true, it's not proof of anything except that the Dalai Lama doesn't use Mac or Linux.
Target the OS with the back door? (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder how much Microsoft's Malicious Software reporting tool would be to help in targeting specific systems?
See: http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/04/29/Microsoft-botnet-hunting-tool-helps-bust-hackers_1.html [infoworld.com]
Someone care to expand on the above??? I've googled some but came up with nothing so far.
Re: (Score:2)
The Mac OS and Linux/BSD are much harder malware targets, for many reasons. Lack of an easy way to insert and run an executable file being one.
This has been discussed on this site MANY MANY times.
SB
Re: (Score:2)
There's Ballmer saying that Linux is Communism, when it turns out that in fact Windows is Communism (actually Socialism with Chinese characteristics).
On Monday, tell your boss that if you don't switch to Linux ASAP then the pseudo-communists have won.
Commenters ? (Score:4, Interesting)
Im wondering how many posts here are submitted on behalf of the Chinese Government?
They can join and influence our conversations but we can never join theirs..
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I'm not afraid of the Chinese Government. I just got mod points.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
And yet, you burned them posting in the very thread they'll be needed most. You fool. You damn crazy fool.
Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
Slashdot may need to give out more mod points.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Look at the comments under any YouTube video on Chinese suppression of Tibet and you'll see the Chinese government in action: especially lies about Tibet always having been part of China. The funny thing is, the Chinese aren't physically adapted to living under diminished oxygen conditions, so they can only stay there for a few years and then have to be replaced by other Chinese. In the long run they can't win.
Re: (Score:2)
Look at the comments under any YouTube video on Chinese suppression of Tibet and you'll see the Chinese government in action: especially lies about Tibet always having been part of China. The funny thing is, the Chinese aren't physically adapted to living under diminished oxygen conditions, so they can only stay there for a few years and then have to be replaced by other Chinese. In the long run they can't win.
If I got sent to Tibet for some reason I would want to go home eventually too, but it wouldn't be because of the altitude.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Yeah, that's what I think when I look at China -- "they are going to run out of people sometime soon".
Re: (Score:2)
Look at the comments under any YouTube video...
My eyes! The goggles, they do nothing!
Russian Crooks are already there (Score:5, Interesting)
I would guess that the Russian crooks are doing it today with very targeted attacks. We just have not discovered it, or if discovered the financial institutions attacked have covered it up.
Infrastructure (Score:2)
Is infrastructure in place to punish those responsible for such invasions?
What could the affected countries do against China to discourage them from doing this again? I don't think its act-of-war level but I think its at least sue-for-billions-and-billions-and-billions worthy.
Re: (Score:2)
are you kidding me? the only "punishment" that might occur is through military action.
and that would be a bad idea.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
laws allowing to retaliate against China would, I think, be unfair in the same laws do not apply vs other governements including our own... warantless illegal wiretapping anyone ?
China is simply following on the US's footsteps.
Obi-Wan steps in... (Score:2)
"GhostNet" What a wacky idea.
ALL HAIL THE HYPNOTOAD!
In other news: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The Pope has a whole country.
Skype Monitoring (Score:5, Interesting)
um, or he got sold out? (Score:5, Insightful)
The only Burmese contact he had at the time was Skyping with his ex-girlfriend, a student at a nearby liberal arts school who organized protests of greater scope on her campus
Did it occur to you that maybe, just maybe, your roommate was sold out by his "burmese contact"? Skype sniffers can't tell the Burmese government that the other person was the ex-girlfriend of a...I don't know what the fuck is going on in that set of connections, but dude, it's far more likely the guy in Burma is on the take...or someone in his apartment is.
Or maybe you all wildly misinterpreted his mother's "don't make waves" urgings.
We Need Chuck Bartowski (Score:2)
In case they try to compromise the Intersect.
Why is IT so messed up? (Score:2, Flamebait)
Why is it that companies allow the bad guys to p0wn their computers? Sure windows is a pile of horse-crap but it's possible to implement good firewalls and application proxies and to run the proper applications on proper OS's.
Perhaps if we get rid of all the 'professional manager' types and fake idiots types in IT things will improve.
Hmmm... I smell... (Score:2)
Whatever.
Re: (Score:2)
there are a few things we don't yet know.
It might be us who ran that spy net. It could also be the chinese, the russians or even the pakistanis.
Let the Chinese compromise it (Score:2)
Then set up another more secure network, but keep using the compromised version to disseminate false notices, making the Chinese Gov't respond to false information...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You can't bitch slap China. China owns the USA to a large extent. They could bankrupt the USA.
Re: (Score:2)
China owns the USA to a large extent.
I would like to see how they intend to come over here and get it.
Re: (Score:2)
To completely and utterly destroy the US economy, all they need to do is not buy NEW government bonds. How do you think the US deficit is financed, exactly?
Re: (Score:2)
To completely and utterly destroy the US economy, all they need to do is not buy NEW government bonds.
If they aren't buying new government bonds, what are they going to do with all the dollars we pay them for their exports? Without exports, China's economy becomes just as destroyed as the US's. It's economic Mutually Assured Destruction.
Re:Bankrupt them (Score:4, Insightful)
You are right about MAD at some level, but not for the reason you think.
The reason why the Chinese have to be careful is that, by wiping out the US economy, they would pretty much ensure that their biggest market collapses, so their own economic growth would be severely affected.
By comparison, spending excess money is easy. They could invest it in other economies, or just ramp up their own R&D or military development, thus boosting their own job market & economy.
The Chinese economy is not self-sustaining at the moment - they are very much dependent on an export market (primarily the US, but also Europe to some degree). However, they are taking huge steps towards economic independence, and in a decade or two, the situation will have changed drastically. That is the day the US should dread.
Re:Bankrupt them (Score:4, Insightful)
China does not have to get anything it owns to pwn you. They just have to stop buying your treasury bonds and you'll go down in a blink.
If China stops buying our treasury bonds, they won't be able to support their export economy. Sure, they could destroy us economically, but they would fare no better. It's economic MAD.
Re:Bankrupt them (Score:5, Insightful)
With their 3 million troops, 860 warships [...]
So they're going to pile ~3,500 troops per warship, cross the entire Pacific Ocean, and launch some kind of amphibious assault against the continental US? We had a hard enough time crossing the English Channel.
[...] 60 submarines, 400 nuclear missiles and 1400 fighter aircraft.
A submarine isn't capable of taking territory. Fighter jets can't make the 10,000 mile round trip. And nuclear missiles are a death sentence for us both.
Re:Bankrupt them (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Disclaimer: I know the movie is a fantasy, but if you're an American and don't connect with those kids at least a little you're probably a commie yourself.
Re:Bankrupt them (Score:5, Insightful)
It would destroy their economy to do so... Reminds me of a quote about the definition of allies being two nations with hands so deep in each other's pockets that they cannot fight.
Re: (Score:2)
John Maynard Keynes quipped:
"If I owe the bank 100 pounds, I have a problem. If I owe the bank, 100,000 pounds, the bank has a problem."
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Reminds me of a quote about the definition of allies being two nations with hands so deep in each other's pants that they cannot fight.
Fixed that fer ya ;)
SB
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It would destroy their economy to do so... Reminds me of a quote about the definition of allies being two nations with hands so deep in each other's pockets that they cannot fight.
Ah ... when, exactly, did China become an ally??? We are beholden to a hostile wannabe superpower who most definitely is not an "ally". Unless some dramatic changes to their governmental system occur (as in, a revolution) they never will be either.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Sanctions overdue (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, it's definitely the government and big business. It couldn't possibly be hundreds of millions of Americans spending hundreds of billions of dollars, demanding cheap products made in China.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That is only happening because america's excessively strong intellectual "property" dogmatic bullshit prevents real manufacturing taking place on american soil (because you get immediately sued into the ground by vampiric lawyers). The best way to compete with china is to break the WIPO propaganda machine (the chinese sure as hell aren't stupid enough to pay more than lip service to western intellecutal monopoly laws), and reestablish independent american manufacturing - which you do by weakening patent r
Re: (Score:2)
and reestablish independent american manufacturing - which you do by weakening patent recognition
I'm not from the U.S. but, hey, competition is good.
But how exactly do you plan to offer competitively priced products?
Re:Sanctions overdue (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Okay, so you believe supply and demand is the sole determining factor. Then please explain the "war on drugs", the bailouts, the DMCA, and the PATRIOT act. It clearly isn't the people that decide.
Re: (Score:2)
I didn't say it was the sole determining factor. I'm just saying it's not entirely the fault of government and big business.
No, it IS the people who decide. The majority of people voted for, and continue to vote for politicians who support those things. Politicians and big businesses are whores. They suppor
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Consumers have always demanded cheap products. I've never met anyone who willingly pays more than necessary unless there is a huge gap in product quality between the cheaper and the more expensive.
So-called 'free trade' is the reason American manufacturing has moved overseas. American government knowingly colluded with multinational corporations to lower trade barriers that formerly protected American workers from having to compete with slave labor in the third world.
Knowing that Americans would catch on
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I am with you mostly but have you tried looking for this Chinease goods demanding consumer in um China? I susupect given how nationalistic that societ is you will find them there at least.
Re:Sanctions overdue (Score:5, Insightful)
Sanctions against China are way overdue. Our gov't and big businesses are just feeding that monster.
That won't happen until (and if) we get our own manufacturing base back on track and can wean ourselves off the Chinese tit of cheap imports. That, or grow some balls and raise the tariff structure to prevent the destruction of our remaining domestic industries. I don't see that happening in the near future: the Feds are too corrupt at this point and don't really care about our future (or even, I'm convinced, understand why a dependent cannot ever be a truly free nation.)
Right now, any noises we make towards sanctions are just that: noise. All they have to do is threaten to send fifty or sixty million "refugees" here and that's that.
Re: (Score:2)
Why should Americans, or the citizens of any modernized educated enlightened society, perform repetitive labor?
That's a job for robots... and a teething phase for wanna-be-modern societies.
Tariffs opearte by raising the final costs to the consumer.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That's not typically how imporovements in technology work, though. The jobs don't go away or become fully automatic, they just become less labor intensive.
Take ditch digging, for example. 200 years ago digging a 100 meter long ditch, a meter deep could probably take a few dozen men with shovels a few days. Now, one guy with an excavator can dig the same ditch in a day or two all by himself.
There will always be a need for humans to decide what gets done. Technology helps with actually doing it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Even the Cylons had their slave class ;-)
SB
Re:Sanctions overdue (Score:5, Insightful)
And keeping that work in China signals to all Americans that "you will not be able to earn a living doing mindless work".
Presently, a lot of Americans are laboring under the delusion that they should somehow get a house, car, TV, medicine, and internet in exchange for installing wingnuts all day on an assembly line.
High-sounding but irrelevant verbiage having no bearing on the facts. I mean, how grandiose you are in dismissing one simple fact: working our manufacturing economy was how Americans managed to have a standard of living envied by most of the world. How do you think wealth is created? By magic? Hardly: it's by building and selling things to other countries, it's called trade. The fact is, we've been doing a lousy job of that for the past thirty-odd years and that's why our standard of living is dropping and unemployment is increasing. Suppose we took your idea to its logical conclusion, and ended up with an entirely automated production system with no need for people at all. We'd all be unemployed at that point. No thanks. Fact is, there are millions upon millions of people that are perfectly happy installing wingnuts for a living, and there's not a goddamn thing wrong with that. Sure, in your idealized world we'd all live up to our "full potential" (whatever that is) but the reality is, most people are all they're ever going to be.
Open your eyes, and dispense with the notion, nay, the fiction, that a nation can be an industrial superpower without the industry. People with blinders on call that a "service economy" but it's really a synonym for "third world hellhole." Now, it may be that you're willing to live in some socioeconomic armpit (my girlfriend came from one: I could let her tell you what that means) but I'm not. Let me tell you, I've spent thirty years as an engineer working in our industrial sector, and we need it.
China may be willing to accept pollution (for now) but that doesn't mean that you must accept pollution in order to have an industrial base. We cleaned up our act and still managed to become a superpower. So can they, and eventually the cost of Chinese-made products will increase to reflect that. So the question is: will we still be around, or will we be just another third-world country ripe for the plucking?
You decide. But at this point in history, there's only one way to create wealth, and you don't do it by not working. Robots may be more efficient at manufacturing some products than human beings, but keep firmly in mind that civilization does not solely revolve around manufacturing trade goods efficiently. People have to figure in there somewhere. That's China's biggest problem right now: their people are little better than organic robots. In any event, if you look at efficiency as the only reason for industry, then you're no better than the typical American CEO slimeball that sold his own people down the river for a quick buck.
Re: (Score:2)
Fact is, there are millions upon millions of people that are perfectly happy installing wingnuts for a living, and there's not a goddamn thing wrong with that.
There's nothing wrong with that. But, I don't understand why it's my responsibility to subsidize those millions of Americans who dream of becoming wingnut installers.
My lifelong dream is to play in the NBA. Who do I have to slap a tariff on to make my dreams come true?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Both of these things could break down. In fact, looking at the population issue, it
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Sanctions overdue (Score:5, Informative)
How do you think wealth is created? By magic? Hardly: it's by building and selling things to other countries, it's called trade.
This is categorically incorrect. You can create wealth without ever trading with another country on the entire planet. The idea that wealth only comes from a positive current account is a discredited idea that dates back to mercantilism.
You know how you really create wealth? By growing your GDP faster than your population, resulting in a growth in disposable income per capita. It doesn't matter if we're digging holes and filling them again, as long as at least one party in the economy finds this valuable to them.
Let's say I write a book and sell it to you for $10. Then let's say I pocket $2 of that as profit, then turn around and pay someone else $8 to print the book. That person turns around and pays someone else $6 for paper and ink. Etc., etc.
In exchange for your $10, you've made a whole series of people $2 richer, and you now own a book presumably worth $10 to you. That $10 just became $20 of national wealth, by the "magic" of economics. And no other countries were involved, no mining of gold or printing of money, just an input of domestic labor, capital, and resources to provide a product you value.
Economics is ultimately about everyone providing goods and services to everyone else. Money is just a mechanism for keeping score of who owes who what.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The post reminds me of the parable of the broken window [wikipedia.org]. $20 of wealth is not created. If one book is created and sold for $10 then $10 value is created. The various items purchased along the way merely effects distribution of that $10 value, in the form of currency. To put it another way, you add the value of the book to the $10 currency spent, but forget to subtract that $10 currency which already existed.
It's an easy mistake, evidenced by the need for the parable. But I'll labour the point since it's som
Re: (Score:2)
"You decide. But at this point in history, there's only one way to create wealth, and you don't do it by not working. Robots may be more efficient at manufacturing some products than human beings, but keep firmly in mind that civilization does not solely revolve around manufacturing trade goods efficiently."
You're ignoring the fact that machines have created an enormous amounts of unnecessary jobs just to keep people employed, the whole point of technological advancement is doing more with less.
Lets not for
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Suppose we took your idea to its logical conclusion, and ended up with an entirely automated production system with no need for people at all. We'd all be unemployed at that point.
This is the logical conclusion of all modern societies. Imagine a world where every menial task is performed by a robot... robot farmers, robot chefs, robot maintenance men. Would all men in this world be required to starve to death 'cause there was no "honest work" for them to do? To flip this around; why should a man be required to do something that is easily achieved by a machine? Shouldn't there be a greater task for a man's mind than its direct application to menial, repetitive labour?
A perpetual, sust
Re:Sanctions overdue (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, not to mention the risk of provoking a war with China; and if you think that's going to be an easy fight, I have more bad news for you.
Right, which is why I said, "I don't see that happening in the near future."
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
But apart from that you're happy with wiping out your country's economy and permanenty damaging its economic prospects? Look, protectionism on the face of it seems like a good idea. In practice it's the worst idea possible.
No. I see you're one of those people who sees protectionism in black and white: free trade good!, protectionism bad! As always, it's not that simple and I think you probably know that. There is a difference between a limited degree of protectionism whose only purpose is to keep domestic manufacturing from disappearing entirely, and punitive tariffs.
Suppose we have a foreign nation who is deliberately subsidizing their manufacturing in order to sell goods at below our domestic manufacturer's costs. In add
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The simple reality is that we have to start increasing the price of imported goods to reflects the realities of producing goods in this country. That is, of course, if you'd like to keep some manufacturing in the country.
Note that it's not labor costs that make up most of the difference, but rather pollution countermeasures. For example, China dumps water untreated back into rivers. Here it needs to be filtered and cleaned. That costs a lot more money than whatever the labor difference is.
If this thought pr
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You won't see any buggy whips either.
The solution is not to raise tariffs because that has all kinds of long term problems for us. The solution is to raise the standard of living in china because that has all kinds of long term benefits for us.
Maybe ... but it's the short term consequences that are the current problem. It's all fine and dandy for you to talk about how wonderful the U.S. will be once China deals with it's own pollution and wealth-disparity issues (which, by the way, they show no sign of doing.) And perhaps you'll be proven right. History is not on your side, though ... quite the opposite. Your belief (for that's all it is) is driven by the same sort of pained hopefulness that typifies those who believe that a "service economy" is
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
and c) everybody who imports your goods and services retaliates with tariffs.
I recall when Bush applied import tariffs to steel in 2002 [wikipedia.org]. The EU responded with tariffs designed to be equal in value, but applied them to a selection of goods very carefully picked to do him as much political damage as possible.
that's some craptastic propaganda there (Score:2)
i especially like the reference to the cuban mariel boatlift at the end there. emphasis: CUBAN. china's going to send 60 million refugees to the usa? really? on what? airplanes? rafts? pffffffffft
all the indignation about "buy american" and chinese labor conditions is exactly that: empty indignation. when it comes down to actually buying the crap you need, you go to walmart, and buy the cheapest stuff. end of story
oh sure, there's people with enough disposable income and reams of time to actually go out of
What, the USA holds some sort of patent (Score:2)
on spying on the rest of the world? Does "ECHELON" [wikipedia.org] ring a bell?
Re: feeding the monster (Score:2)
You're not the least bit worried about the monster closer to home, thrashing around in your own back yard? I'd say "sanctions" against our own monster(s) is way overdue....
hilarious (Score:4, Insightful)
i just love the way people poopoo american foreign policy and big business
as they gas up their SUVs
and go shop at walmart
the problem is not big business
the problem is not the american government
nothing but empty cruft compared to the real problem: the behavior of the american consumer
you convince them to spend $10 a gallon on gas, you convince them to buiy their crap at 2x the price. go for it
stop blaming esoteric entities when the real problem is sitting right there, in front your computer, reading this post
YOU AND YOUR OWN BEHAVIOR
Re: (Score:2)
Haha... The *US* impose sanctions against *China*? I think the other way around is more likely. We're going to have to start jumping to their tune, or they might impose sanctions against us. We're the biggest debtor nation in the history of the world and who do you think our banker is? They could destroy us in a second by simply deciding not buy any more of our government bonds. Say so long to the dollar. They have positioning themselves to take over as the economic center of the world for decades, and thos
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
There is no "call in debt" (Score:2, Informative)
That isn't how treasury bonds work. There is no "call in debt" they are Bonds that are not instantly redeemable. Ten Year Bonds gets paid off in Ten years etc.
All they can do is attempt to sell all their bonds on the open market and destroy their value. In that case they cut off their onw nose to spite themselves.
US Debt... (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps, next time, you might not want to impose sanctions on the government that holds by far the largest share of the US debt:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Foreign_Holders_of_United_States_Treasury_Securities-percent_share.gif [wikipedia.org]
You impose sanctions, they call in that debt. And who else do you really think is going to loan you the money to pay that back?
The US/China relationship is not as much of a black-and-white situation as nationalistic extremists both in the USA and China would like it to be. If the Chinese 'call in' all of that debt at once in some way, shape or form, there is no way the USA could pay up. Effectively the US would have to default, i.e. welch on the debt. That would wipe out an awful lot of hard earned Chinese wealth. Some of the noises coming out of Beijing lately only confirm that the Chinese are getting nervous even at the mere suggestion of the possibility of a US default. Another thing to consider is that the Chinese are very dependent on exports to the USA and it's NATO allies who are likely to eventually follow the USA's lead, however grudgingly, in any major conflict of any kind with China. If the Chinese were to 'call in' this debt it would be self defeating exercise, as likely to harm the Chinese them selves as much as it would harm the USA. The economies of these countries are very intertwined.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Defaulting on the Chinese debt would put all of the rest of the U.S. debt into question; this could make if difficult to receive oil in exchange for paper (at the very least, Saudi Arabia and other petroleum funded societies would want to continue to trade with the U.S., but they almost certainly wouldn't do it in dollars anymore).
Re:From TFA (Score:5, Interesting)
the abstract mentions that the attack was done using malwares. Firstly, I expected Chinese hackers (read govt.) smarter than this.
Considering how effective it was, why use a different technique? I mean if they get something really super-hot, they would save it for more critical times. Until every copy of Windows is patched, firewalled, run thru Tor, buried in peat and recycled as firelighters, why bother?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:From TFA (Score:5, Informative)
Windows is much more prevalent and the low hanging fruit. I don't think Mac and Linux will be totally ignored, but the bulk of the effort will go where the bulk of the target are, and in a normal office environment that means Microsoft Windows, Office and Internet Explorer.
Re:From TFA (Score:5, Interesting)
The most secure US government network I've seen (datacenter for a Three Letter Agency) used a mix of NetWare servers and a mainframe. While client machines can be compromised, I suspect someone was thinking along these lines when it came to the servers. Linux and Mac aren't particularly obscure or uncommon, but the US governemtn probably has the address of every programmer who ever worked on the NetWare kernel. I don't know what OS the mainframe was running, but there are several where, like NetWare, the total number of humans worldwide with kernel hacking knowledge is "dozens".
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Because it's exponentially more difficult to infect non-Windows computers?
After all, Macs are what, 5% of the computing world at this point? And yet, not 0.005% of the virus infections are on Macs.
The old saw of Macs or Linux or whatever not being worth targeting doesn't sing.
Re:Canadian Version (Score:4, Funny)
That one was such a stretch that it would give Dhalsim a leg cramp.
Re:From TFA (Score:4, Informative)
the abstract mentions that the attack was done using malwares. Firstly, I expected Chinese hackers (read govt.) smarter than this.
The bulk of Chinese intel is heavily distributed. The world's largest families don't need to rely on 007 agents; they can aggregate huge quantities of data by getting observant volunteers from the chinese diaspora to send bits of info back home through regular channels, like aunt Ping or even uncle James. It's so distributed it doesn't look like spying, and it isn't really, in the traditional sense.
This has driven counterintelligence agencies in 'western' democracies and republics to distraction. There are hardly any spooks to catch, mainly just a giant global gossamer net of informers, and enormous compiling and analysis operations in China. The 'agents', who are barely agents if at all, have strong deniability and can always fall back on complaints of harassment due to ethnic targeting. (Google the issue, it's amusing.)
I think it's brilliant, even if wholly dependent on the chinese sense of family ties. A malware attack is a similar approach: it doesn't look like the work of spies, at first, and it's broadly distributed. So, it's plausible that it could be a chinese intel operation, just from the M.O.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If Chinese people do it, it's spying. If westerners do it (such as via twitter, or even wikileaks) it's just social media.
Nah, it's more than twitter; GP made it sound like the "informers" are more innocent than they actually are. It sounds like he's talking about cases like that of Chi Mak [csmonitor.com] (which is sort of an archetypal case). Yes, he wasn't particularly professional, but he did know damn well that he was passing along secrets he wasn't supposed to:
At one point, Chiu said to her husband that the "things" his brother was asking him to take "are certainly against the law," states an FBI affidavit.
Re: (Score:2)
"You lack the will of the warrior! A Ha! Ha Ha!" - Master Thnog