

China paper warns Google may pay price for hacking claims - tokenadult
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/06/us-google-china-idUSTRE7550CV20110606

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awakeasleep
This is something I wonder about a lot.

It seems like it would be SO easy to carry out a false flag attack with
computers. What stops a random malicious person from popping a few boxes in
Country X and using them to base his attack? And if Country X was engaged in
bad behavior, why wouldn't they take a similar step?

Now, if it's true that the attacks focused on human rights workers that gave
China trouble, the claim is a bit more substantial, although it's not hard to
imagine tacking those names onto your list to disguise what was really
important in your unrelated attack.

However, attributing attacks to Anonymous really makes my head spin. By
definition, Anonymous doesn't even exist as a group, it literally means
anonymous in most contexts, yet the media report as if they're saying
something other than 'unknown'.

Craziness, and as far as I see, details about the foundation of these claims
are never released. How the hell does Google know the Chinese attackers
weren't proxy boxes?!

~~~
fauigerzigerk
I think we should keep in mind that the damage done to Google's business
interests as a result of this conflict is massive. That's why I tend to think
that the data they see leaves little room for other interpretations.

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Volpe
Interesting to see Chinese government (assuming this piece went through the
usual vetting process of the propaganda dept) respond publicly to a companies
blog.

I often wonder why Baidu does not receive as much press, as it has experienced
astronomical growth, and is clearly a strong(er?) contender in terms of users.

~~~
personalcompute
I'm sure it does in China. There are other foreign mega-corps like this that
you probably don't hear much about in the US, specially, Tencent comes to
mind.

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StuffMaster
The Chinese government responds to all insults like a hurt child. I don't
think truth matters as much in asia as does perception, or "face".

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fleitz
If it's just a perception of the west why not tell the Chinese people about
Tienanmen square? Perhaps then the Chinese people would have similar
'perceptions'

~~~
Volpe
Most of the chinese people I have spoken with know most of the facts around
Tienanmen square. It is the constant pro-communist propaganda that shapes
their views. Just as constant pro-west propaganda shapes ours.

~~~
jrockway
Tell me about some of this "pro-west propaganda".

~~~
Volpe
News constantly portraying non-western countries as 3rd world, or axis of
evil? Or terrorists? For no better reason than their interests do not align
with various western countries.

Watch much of Fox News? Even if you don't, a lot of people do.

More obvious case: The reasons for going to war in Iraq were entirely agg-
prop, that was later _proved_ to be false.

We "the west" don't have an explicit "Propaganda department" like communist
countries generally do. But our media, and government still use propaganda to
control peoples opinions.

~~~
daeken
> We "the west" don't have an explicit "Propaganda department" like communist
> countries generally do. But our media, and government still use propaganda
> to control peoples opinions.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Strategic_Influence>

~~~
Volpe
Wow, I stand corrected.

Not quite the same as China's Propaganda Department, which vetts all media
(great firewall is under it's control).

Wow.

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RyanKearney
Perhaps the Chinese government would like to explain why 99.9% of SSH attacks
on my server (which has password auth disabled) come from China.

~~~
yaix
If you ever had a look at PCs in China, you would know why. You get copied
Windows CDs for a few cents everywhere, no doubt pre-loaded with all sorts of
virii and trojans. The botnets in China must be massive.

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shareme
I guess I can disclose this now...

I got a Google warning of my gmail being access from the Jinan province back
in January with also a break-in of twitter account. Since my security changes
no break-ins.

Despite China's denials the threat is real.

~~~
Volpe
The Peoples daily article didn't deny the threat, it objected with the obvious
implication google were making about the hacks originating from within the
government.

Why did google choose to publicise the event at all? surely that only tells
the attackers to find a new attack vector (rather than thinking there existing
vector is still okay).

~~~
murz
From the horses mouth: "we believe that being open about these security issues
helps users better protect their information online."

The attacks relied on the victim's naivety and lack of knowledge. If you read
the blog post [1], I think it's pretty clear that the purpose was to educate
users on how to improve their security when using Google products.

[1] [http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/ensuring-your-
informa...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/ensuring-your-information-
is-safe.html)

~~~
Volpe
You can educate, without expressing specific details of the attackers.

The usual practice is to warn of potential issues, not publicise a specific
attack, and then say "beware!" -- In fact the article didn't even give the
common advice of 'check url, https, etc' to avoid phishing.

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jvi
Why so defensive, China?

