
Building China's Comac C919 airplane involved a lot of hacking, report says - jweir
https://www.zdnet.com/article/building-chinas-comac-c919-airplane-involved-a-lot-of-hacking-report-says/
======
erentz
Unfortunately all Chinese citizens must comply under Chinese law with spying
requests whenever their intelligence agencies come asking. That makes every
Chinese citizen in your company a potential spy.

This is shitty on so many levels, and what is the appropriate response? Should
Chinese citizens have lower access in US companies? At universities? Etc. That
would be a terrible outcome.

We do need some kind of clear asylum option for any Chinese citizen who gets
pressured into this. But that only goes so far when the state back home can
punish your family members etc.

~~~
notwumao
Chinese citizen here but not a legal expert. I am not aware of any Chinese law
requiring compliance with intelligence agencies' request. Can you please give
a source?

~~~
ddeck
It's part of the 2017 National Intelligence Law.

Although there is debate regarding the circumstances under which assistance
can be compelled, it appears quite broad:

 _The Intelligence Law, by contrast, repeatedly obliges individuals,
organizations, and institutions to assist Public Security and State Security
officials in carrying out a wide array of “intelligence” work. Article Seven
stipulates that “any organization or citizen shall support, assist, and
cooperate with state intelligence work according to law.” Article 14, in turn,
grants intelligence agencies authority to insist on this support: “state
intelligence work organs, when legally carrying forth intelligence work, may
demand that concerned organs, organizations, or citizens provide needed
support, assistance, and cooperation.” Organizations and citizens must also
protect the secrecy of “any state intelligence work secrets of which they are
aware.”_

[https://www.lawfareblog.com/beijings-new-national-
intelligen...](https://www.lawfareblog.com/beijings-new-national-intelligence-
law-defense-offense)

------
9nGQluzmnq3M
Ah yes, the Comac C919, 8 years late and counting, and brought to you by the
company whose sole previous model still has trouble landing on wet runways:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comac_ARJ21](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comac_ARJ21)

~~~
ucha
China managed to quite quickly absorb the technology transfer from
Alstom/Siemens to build high-speed trains. Now their trains are better than
anyone else's and they have more high-speed rails than any other country. They
even managed to beat competitors and export their trains to Turkey and
Argentina...

I have no doubt their airplane will ultimately be successful.

~~~
wolco
But will China be able to make the next leap on their own? It's one thing to
copy but another to come up with the design on the first place.

~~~
sithadmin
The Swiss watchmaking industry was once largely focused on producing cheap
copies of English and French watches. Today Swiss watchmakers are renowned for
quality and innovation.

~~~
azernik
And going even farther back, the British industrial revolution was built on
producing cheap copies of Indian textiles.

~~~
cat199
... using machines that british people invented.

get the overall point, but not sure this is a good example.

~~~
fsloth
US copied british factories by industrial espionage to bootstrap their own
industry and eventually became the bigger industrial producer...

~~~
JackFr
"On December 20, 1790, water-powered machinery for spinning and carding cotton
was set in motion in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Based on the designs of English
inventor Richard Arkwright, a mill was built by Samuel Slater on the
Blackstone River. The Slater mill was the first American factory to
successfully produce cotton yarn with water-powered machines. Slater was a
recent English immigrant who apprenticed Arkwright's partner, Jebediah Strutt.

 _Samuel Slater had evaded British law against emigration of textile workers
in order to seek his fortune in America._ Considered the father of the United
States textile industry, he eventually built several successful cotton mills
in New England and established the town of Slatersville, Rhode Island."

[https://www.thoughtco.com/richard-arkwright-water-
frame-1991...](https://www.thoughtco.com/richard-arkwright-water-
frame-1991693)

------
marshf
The full report can be found here in pdf form:

[https://www.crowdstrike.com/resources/wp-
content/brochures/r...](https://www.crowdstrike.com/resources/wp-
content/brochures/reports/huge-fan-of-your-work-intelligence-report.pdf)

~~~
knolax
"Forward" lmao.

~~~
TurkishPoptart
Yeah, with all the effort CrowdStrike took to divide and preface each section
of the doc, mark footnotes, and all the formatting junk....it's a very
visually "noisy" document, and I really don't want to read it. Whatever
happened to double-spacing? Simply godawful UX.

~~~
monocasa
They're padding the document heavily is why. That's also why they have a whole
section on "we spent time tracking down the Jiangsu Bureau of the MSS's
buildings", with the conclusion that they're the buildings with "Jiangsu
Bureau of the MSS" written in big letters on the side.

~~~
TurkishPoptart
Hah! And to think, their client could have paid $50k for this report that I
and a few undergrads could hammer out in a Thursday evening after some yerba
mate.

~~~
monocasa
Lol, well to be fair I know I do some of my best work on Thursday evenings
with a good mate buzz going. : P

------
president
> In the rare occasions when the hacking team couldn't find a way inside a
> target, a second MSS JSSD officer would intervene and recruit a Chinese
> national working for the target company, and use him to plant Sakula on the
> victim's network, usually via USB drives.

I'm not sure how the US is going to deal with things like this given that we
have so many Chinese nationals working in most major corporations across so
many industries.

~~~
Aperocky
Moles are not unique to China, it just happens that China currently happens to
be the enemy. Most people whether immigrant or not just want to get the work
done and go home.

~~~
president
The situation is a bit more unique with Chinese working/studying abroad. Since
most of their families, friends, and relatives are still in China, they can be
coerced by the CCP to engage in espionage out of fear of hurting their
families.

~~~
z2
I'm confused by your main point. Do you mean, as opposed to other foreign
workers and students on temporary work/student visas, who can somehow migrate
their friends and family over and therefore be subject to less coercion?

~~~
president
No, I was pointing out that China is unique in that they would have no moral
qualms in coercing their citizens abroad using violence. I'm sure my coworkers
from the EU probably don't ever have to worry about being in a situation where
they would have to choose between spying or hurting their family.

~~~
TkTech
I agree with you (Someone from France doesn't have to worry about the modern
version of China's 9 generation purge[1]), but as a Canadian it's very common
to see the Chinese students here wildly supportive of the CCP, including
harassing and attacking Hong Kong protesters. I imagine the ones that are
outspoken against the CCP have a much harder time going abroad in the first
place.

With a billion and a half citizens it's unlikely they lack for fanatics to
exploit.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_familial_exterminations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_familial_exterminations)

~~~
ekianjo
> I imagine the ones that are outspoken against the CCP have a much harder
> time going abroad in the first place.

Resistance against the CCP is a very tiny minority since there is a heavy
brainwashing about how great everything CCP does since kids go to school at a
young age - and they never get any other version of reality.

~~~
cocoggu
Disclaimer: I'm french and I'm living in China since my wife is Chinese.

It's not only about brainwashing.

40 years ago 85% of the chinese population was below the poverty line. Today
it's between 10% and 15%. Under the party governance, almost everyone saw
their life standards go up substantially. A lot of the people studying abroad
saw their family starting from the bottom and they can now afford to study in
western universities. They think the Chinese system works because economically
it is working very well so far.

Just another example: We have some friends who bought a very expensive new
apartment in Beijing (around 4.5M US$). This is a brand new residence founded
by Wang Jianlin, the founder of Wanda Group (the most powerful estate
developer in China). The government allowed him to run this project under one
condition: to build 3 apartment blocks on the same field (sharing the same
park) which will be _given_ to families under the poverty line. A lot of the
wealthy people complained a lot about this, 1/3 of them got a refund and the
price of the apartments dropped.

So to get back to my point, this is not only brainwashing. The party is giving
its people a new life, and these people will be thankful and loyal for at
least decades.

I'm curious about how a long term economic recession could change people minds
though.

~~~
JackFr
And yet it is brainwashing that they believe the CCP is responsible for the
bulk of the poverty reduction, rather than simply opening China to
international trade. When one compares the postwar growth of Japan, Hong Kong
and Taiwan to that of China it might be more correct to say that rather than
making them rich, the CCP stopped empoverishing the people.

------
luba02
As expected. But from reading the article I think the current plane probably
had very little IP theft in the final design. Just your usual clusterfuck of
inexperience and poor management.

What they’re after ultimately is the ability to replace foreign components in
future planes. Software, Hardware, the whole lot. Along with stealing all the
management processes for systems integration.

So in this sense, the hacking might have shaved a few years off their efforts.

------
starpilot
With everyone hacking each other, maybe countries should just openly share IP
and avoid the expense/troubles of cyber espionage. The end result is the same.

~~~
fsloth
40% of US company export revenues come from IP. Not gonna happen.

[https://www.uschamber.com/series/above-the-fold/the-state-
am...](https://www.uschamber.com/series/above-the-fold/the-state-american-
intellectual-property-protecting-american-jobs)

~~~
fsloth
These are the statistics that would be referred to by IP proponents should
this discussion ever reach a legislative stage. Don't shoot the messenger.
Think about counter arguments.

------
pinkfoot
I don't have a horse in this fight, but if I was on COMAC's risk committee I
would also make sure that no foreign president could ever cut my company - and
its enormous investment - off from critical supplies with no more than a
stroke of a pen.

Especially since that is what just happened to another Chinese company with
Western suppliers.

Its not a moral problem.

------
zeristor
Did they steal MCAS from Boeing?

------
ggm
Personally, I think we'd have all been better served by the IPR being
available on some RAND basis. There is a reason Buran looked like the Shuttle,
which goes beyond spying.

~~~
fsloth
Often problem constraints shape form, but Buran is maybe not such a great
example of this. Buran looked like shuttle because the program was told to
copy the US program to my knowledge.

------
tzfld
No wonder the US doesn't want the Chinese to be involved in large scale
international tech projects like the ISS.

------
known
A better comparison is with China’s state-led expansion abroad. While it lacks
the EIC’s habit of violence, modern China shares both its strategic ambition
and its commercial veneer. Asia is still grappling with that awkward mix, four
centuries after the EIC’s motley crew sailed from the foggy Thames

[https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2019/10/10/the-
asto...](https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2019/10/10/the-astonishing-
and-violent-rise-of-the-east-india-company)

------
choonway
I wonder how much of their hacking efforts have yielded information that is
'salted'. Misinformation that will set them back years.

~~~
jay_kyburz
I wonder how salting your own data could set an organisation back. A risky
strategy I would say.

~~~
choonway
Not your own data - you know there is a spy, and NSA helps you to isolate him
and feed him salted info.

------
john_minsk
Just for the sake of the argument: would US allow China to buy a controlling
stake in Boeing?

~~~
xxpor
Absolutely not. Regardless of the commercial side, Boeing makes too many
military jets for that to happen.

~~~
john_minsk
I mean, for all fairness, one side is using non-market arguments to disallow
acquisition, another side uses non-market ways to get access to this
technology. Am I allowed to make such statement?

------
leric
maybe this is connected to the shutdown of wooyun.org

------
nicoburns
I would like to challenge anyone who's immediate response to this is "China
are always stealing our intellectual property" to stop, and really consider
whether IP laws are providing a net benefit here.

Sure they provide an incentive to innovate, but they also actively prevent
others from innovating. This technology will now be available to many more
people, and can now be built on and developed.

It's a very capitalistic view to think that the only motivation to innovate is
the profit motive. And it surprises me little that an economy which functions
on very different principles also takes a very different attitude to knowledge
sharing. Even if we don't wish to emulate this way of doing things entirely,
perhaps we all have something to learn from this difference in perspective.

~~~
stupidcar
By "different principles", you presumably mean totally in the service of an
autocratic, hegemonistic nation bent on the brutal oppression its own citizens
and its rise to become an unchallengeable global power able to curtail the
social, political and human rights of anybody, anywhere on Earth, who it deems
an enemy?

~~~
DiogenesKynikos
These sorts of comments are what make most online discussions about China seem
so out of touch.

If I told you that most people in China generally support the government and
don't feel oppressed by it, how would that affect your worldview? Most people
in China are primarily concerned with improving their standard of living. For
hundreds of millions of people, that standard has improved more than you can
probably imagine in the last 30 or so years. That's what they care about.

Sure, they get upset when they hear about governmental corruption, or when
wages aren't paid, and young people even care about internet censorship
(though they all have VPNs). But if you were to go to them and propose
overthrowing the government, most people would be horrified. They don't want
chaos. They think that would put the enormous gains in social welfare they've
achieved at risk. They want a competent government that delivers economic
growth, and maybe some day in the future slowly - gradually - opens up
political life.

~~~
khuey
For fairly obvious reasons, "look the other way at the government's
indiscretions in exchange for raising per-capita GDP to ~10k USD" isn't an
appealing bargain for anyone in the developed world.

~~~
DiogenesKynikos
We're not talking about the developed world. We're talking about a country
whose GDP/capita was $300 just 30 years ago. For citizens of that country,
increasing GDP/capita to $10k (a factor of 30) and looking the other way on
various political issues is an appealing bargain. It doesn't take that much
imagination to empathize with that view, which in my experience is shared by
many (I'd say most) Chinese people.

It continually amazes me how little effort people make in Western online
discussions to put themselves in the shoes of someone who's seen their country
go from utter poverty to relative wealth in one generation. That person might
want to gain more political freedoms eventually, but they mainly don't want to
destroy everything by plunging the country into chaos.

Keep in mind that the catastrophic experience of the Cultural Revolution
soured many Chinese people to politics, and convinced them that stability and
steady improvement of living standards are the most important things. Many
people who remember those times are allergic to any sort of fanaticism.

Also keep in mind that although many things are restricted in China, the
country has opened up a huge amount. In contrast to how things were not so
long ago, Chinese people are now able to travel around the world, and largely
live their lives without experiencing much government interference. The limits
on political activism are clear, but most people just focus on improving their
own situation and enjoying the modest luxuries they can now finally afford.

~~~
yupolerist
In a way, it’s a type of “first world privilege.”

It’s often inconceivable for them to understand because their life experiences
are just so different. Ask anyone from a poor nation about China, and while
they may dislike the government, they also talk with admiration at how many
people were lifted out of poverty.

------
mensetmanusman
China is powerful.

