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Security Australia China

Australia Concludes China Was Behind Hack on Parliament, Political Parties (reuters.com) 53

Australian intelligence determined China was responsible for a cyber-attack on its national parliament and three largest political parties before the general election in May, Reuters reports. From the report: Australia's cyber intelligence agency -- the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) -- concluded in March that China's Ministry of State Security was responsible for the attack, the five people with direct knowledge of the findings of the investigation told Reuters. The report, which also included input from the Department of Foreign Affairs, recommended keeping the findings secret in order to avoid disrupting trade relations with Beijing, two of the people said. The Australian government has not disclosed who it believes was behind the attack or any details of the report.
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Australia Concludes China Was Behind Hack on Parliament, Political Parties

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  • I'm sure every major country is up in every other major country's political business. I'm not sure if the US tries to change anything in our allies political systems, but I'd bet a paycheck they at least do read-only snooping of allies. In fact, US has been caught before. [psmag.com]

    • And your point???? I'd say, even if the US is snooping on Australia, its intentions are considerably more modest than China's.

      • And your point???? I'd say, even if the US is snooping on Australia, its intentions are considerably more modest than China's.

        More to the point, the US isn't going to invade Australia. With a population on the entire continent less than the state of Florida,If China ever perceives that the US is unwilling to use nukes in a fight, China will eventually decide that the giant island is just too tempting a prize and will grab it. They don't have the amphibious naval resources to do so yet, but they'll build them eventually. One day, China will have grown enough in power and wealth to reach the IDGAF stage and just grab it. And if the

      • I wouldn't be so sure, Trump's been beefing with Australia since the get-go.
    • Snooping is spycraft -- to be expected by other nation-states (even allies), and not in and of itself harmful to the process being spied upon, if indeed they do stay "read only" and not attempt to influence events. Of course, given the CIA's tendency to stir up shit for bad reasons or none at all, I can't assume they weren't meddling.

      But when some outside force IS meddling, that's no longer spycraft. That's drifting into ratfucking [wikipedia.org], and needs to be called out every time because representative government can

    • How much is China paying you to be one of its moral equivalency agents?
  • by Anonymous Coward

    The Chinese are at war with everyone. [news.com.au].

    Hopefully this is a wake up call?

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • by youngone ( 975102 ) on Monday September 16, 2019 @04:23PM (#59200850)
        I am not sure about the Australian power grid, but in New Zealand, the main opposition party has a Chinese spy as one of their MP's: Jian Yang is his name. [wikipedia.org]
        Recently the leader of the opposition visited China, along with Mr. Yang and had a meeting with the head of China's secret police.
        We are supposed to pretend this is no problem, and our media ask no questions, because China is our biggest trade partner. Australia has the same problem, and with the current American regime being so untrustworthy it is a real problem for both countries.
    • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Link: "Authorities are investigating after fake Chinese police cars were seen cropping up in major Australian cities amid pro-Hong Kong demonstrations across the nation over the weekend."

      Now that's a really odd propaganda trick (assuming the Chinese gov't is behind it). Is it intended to intimidate protesters? Seems to me it's more likely to inflame than intimidate. Their propagandists don't seem to understand western culture. What works against their citizens often won't against open democracies. Mr. Xi,

      • I think they are trying to scary Chinese that are in Australia, not the Australians. It's saying, you may live abroad but you are still ours.

        • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

          Are there enough there who care about the HK issue to justify doing car makeovers? It seems there are better ways to spend propaganda resources.

  • by KlomDark ( 6370 ) on Monday September 16, 2019 @03:12PM (#59200574) Homepage Journal

    Every country in the world has it's best long term interests in ceasing to do business with China.

    It will hurt, but the pain will be temporary. When it's done, everything will be much better.

    China has nobody's interests but it's own super-power world-dictatorship surveillance society plans in mind.

    Time to move away from them immediately before the time comes when no one can escape.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      I have heard that argument before, change China for USA.

      As someone very wise once said about geopolitics: Countries don't have permanent friends, only permanent interests.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      China has nobody's interests but it's own super-power world-dictatorship surveillance society plans in mind.

      If you lock them out of general world society, they will become more like N. Korea and do nothing except make more and bigger weapons all day and wreak havoc via hacking and terrorism. The less you have the more risks you take. It's why the poor commit more crimes, not because they are born criminals.

      Relatively speaking, China avoids big conflict and prefers stability. If they want to dominate the wor

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • The global community ostracizing China is a bit like the Prisoner's Dilemma in game theory. The ideal outcome might actually be if everyone cooperated against them, but there is a big incentive for each player to ignore the others and pursue their own selfish agenda to the detriment of the others. China is not some small player in the world's economic ecosystem that is easily ignored like North Korea. They are a very sizable portion of the whole with a lot of manufacturing capacity and consumers. If 80%

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by Agripa ( 139780 )

      Every country in the world has it's best long term interests in ceasing to do business with China.

      It was in their best long term interest to cease doing business with Muslim countries in the Middle East but that sure never happened.

  • 2020 will be a year in which Russia, China, Saudi, and Pakistan all hack US and Canadian elections.

    The only correct answer is to stop buying fossil fuels and switch to Renewable Energy on a war footing, as in WW II level.

    And stop providing their resource extraction and sales with free protection for shipping and goods transhipment via ground or air.

    • The only correct answer is to stop buying fossil fuels and switch to Renewable Energy on a war footing, as in WW II level.

      I'm a great fan of it. But: Why specifically "renewable" energy?

      (Thanks to Trump the US is already self-sufficient in both energy overall, and in fossil fuels. So much so, in fact, that when (Possibly the Iranians or their proxies) recently took out half of Saudi's oil production with a drone attack, the price of oil only jumped $5/bbl in the first day - and the US trade deficit took

      • Because, during wartime, you make yourself less vulnerable to attack - which since they are fossil fuel regimes for the most part, means moving off easily interdicted supplies like fossil fuels, which also crashes their markets as they can't sell theirs for as much, since demand is down.

        The market is still distorted by massive fossil fuel tax incentives, depreciation, deductions, and exclusions. Removing those false signals allows the markets to crush our enemies without us firing a shot.

        • The market is still distorted by massive fossil fuel tax incentives, depreciation, deductions, and exclusions. Removing those false signals allows the markets to crush our enemies without us firing a shot.

          I'm all for that, too.

          But those aren't subject to just-administration action (short of "I have a pen and a phone" overreach.) They would require action by Congress, which is both currently gridlocked and has a number of members - including some on the D side of the aisle - beholden to those who have a str

          • No, states can do most of that.

            Today.

            • No, states can do most of that.

              Since when can states override federal tax rules?

              • Since when can states override federal tax rules?

                States have their own state taxes and tax codes, n00b

                Are you sure you live here?

                • Since when can states override federal tax rules?

                  States have their own state taxes and tax codes

                  You mentioned "fossil fuel tax incentives, depreciation, deductions, and exclusions". Those are all federal issues.

                  State tax codes CAN add a layer onto them. But they generally ride the federal definitions of the gross and net income, perhaps adding a tweak or two to if they decide to tax something the fed doesn't or vice-versa.

                  Meanwhile the bulk of the tax goes to the fed and the state tax (even in New York an

                  • No, they're not. Not in Colorado, not in Washington, not in Oregon, not in Texas, not in California, not in Nevada, not in New Mexico.

                    State taxes exist, as do subsidies, exemptions, depreciation, deductions and exclusions.

                    I've paid corporate and personal and LLC taxes in all but one of those states, so don't tell me where the sun shines.

                    • I've paid corporate and personal and LLC taxes in all but one of those states, so don't tell me where the sun shines.

                      Was your LLC in the oil industry? If so, I'll defer to your personal experience.

                      (I may do that anyhow. Of that list I've only had personal experience with Californal personal taxes.)

                    • No, but I have directly owned shares and bonds in oil and been a market maker in them.

                      (stares at apologist who doesn't get how America works)

  • by Ungrounded Lightning ( 62228 ) on Monday September 16, 2019 @04:55PM (#59200958) Journal

    We have documented instances of (major) nation-level actors trying to sway other countries' elections by propaganda.

    We have documented instances of (major) nation-level actors engaging in cyber attacks on other countries' infrastructure, for intelligence gathering, blackmail, and sabotage.

    We have a number of (IMHO hairbrained) attempts at putting elections online.

    Should that happen,what is YOUR estimate of the odds of nation-level actors attacking and subverting the elections directly?

    (I'd rate them as the only thing I've seen that comes closer to P=1.0 than "What are the odds a customer will find that bug?")

  • by whoever is setting up this new Cold War
  • Little relevance.

    This countries university places, premium property, visas, citizenship, jobs have all been on sale to China for the past 2 decades (particularly ramping up the last decade)

    Doesn't mean squat anymore, the government are literal traitors to the current inhabitants of the country, you need only watch them *deliberately* prop housing prices up high and continue to sell to overseas buyers to know they couldn't give a damn about the next generation, at all.

  • As far as I'm concerned, this is an act of war.
    Too bad my own government is completely corrupted by chinese "political donations"

    There will be no consequences, in fact, we're likely to just let them dick us over repeatedly because the Australian govt is just a puppet govt to foreign corporate and political interests. The worst of it has been the last 20 years but truth is this shit started with The Dismissal.

    (Look it up, there's evidence out there that the US and the UK worked together to have one of o
    • Forgot to add, our country allows the importation of workers for even roles like managing fast food. They're deliberately dicking over our own population for people who don't even live here, and not letting anybody but the worst of the sycophants for this cancer upon our politics move into positions of power or management, even in a fucking fast food franchise. They're trying to get rid of us, 2000 people committed suicide, mostly Gen Y, when they started issuing fraudulently calculated welfare debts, they

"I shall expect a chemical cure for psychopathic behavior by 10 A.M. tomorrow, or I'll have your guts for spaghetti." -- a comic panel by Cotham

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