Foreign Hackers Attack Canadian Government 208
An anonymous reader writes " According to the CBC: 'An unprecedented cyberattack on the Canadian government from China has given foreign hackers access to highly classified federal information, and forced at least two key departments off the internet, CBC News has learned. The attack, first detected in early January, left Canadian counter-espionage agents scrambling to determine how much sensitive government information may have been stolen and by whom.' It should be noted that the Auditor-General warned of this months ago and was ignored by everyone as she usually is. It should also be noted that public sentiment towards China is getting very, very testy."
Re:China Ain't Too Bright (Score:4, Interesting)
Executive spear-phising (Score:4, Interesting)
How it was done
In the world of cybercops, it is called "executive spear-phishing."
This is what you get if the executives you have are fishes, no matter (or even easier) if they look/behave like sharks.
Re:How far is too far? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What? Why!! (Score:4, Interesting)
This is probably a true story though. Chinese hackers have been very aggressive in the last couple of years. One suggestion I've heard was that China wants to test its limits, find vulnerable infrastructure, and so on.
Re:What? Why!! (Score:5, Interesting)
Well the first part is by and far true. We don't make enemies, hell we're the first ones the world runs to when they want mediators. Probably that whole, slow to anger, stubborn, type of thing. However, unlike in the US where shit hit the fan several times, over several things. And Americans went WTF, HOLY SHIT, CHINA...what the hell are you doing?
Canadians went...eh...okay. Dead? Nope. Carry on, government to do a better job. People as a whole here don't get angry quickly, over anything. And it takes a lot to push the general public over the edge on something. Either it has to have dire ramifications and is so fucked up for everyone(UBB is a fine example), or a lot of people have to die because of government stupidity(air india). People are getting pissed off at China here, it's taken a lot of really hard work to get people here angry. And that's saying something.
Re:China Ain't Too Bright (Score:2, Interesting)
It's actually a lot more complicated than this. China buys a TON of natural resources from Canada(and info on said resources is probably one of the most likely targets). Canada is probably in even more of a bind vis a vis China then the United States is. While Canada's government isn't nearly as indebted to the Chinese as the Americans are, the Canadian economy depends much more on selling to China than the US economy does. Of course on the flip side if you eliminate access to Canadian resources all of a sudden Chinese manufacturing becomes much more uncompetitive.
Well, Canada could always sell these resources to India instead. The two countries are currently in free trade talks:
http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2010/11/12/canada-india-free-trade.html
One interesting fact about China is that its current average age is 40, so in twenty years it will be 60. India has an average age of about 20 currently.
China is probably approaching the height of its economic power before its population becomes silver, and so they're racing to become rich before they get old.
Re:How far is too far? (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that the Chinese government isn't doing it - they are simply giving others license to do it, with assurances of government protection and payment.
Sound familiar? It is - it's called privateering. It used to be done with ships on the sea; now it's done with computers on the internet. While China may not be at war with us, their use of privateers is proof that they do NOT mean us well.
So how do we combat it? Article I, Section 8, paragraph 11 of the U.S. Constitution authorizes Congress to "grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water." Imagine if the US Congress granted Google the authority to go after China - can you imagine how much havoc that would wreak if Google employees focused 20% of their time on fucking with China?
Re:China Ain't Too Bright (Score:4, Interesting)
The Communist Party is China is the Han race is the Communist Party.
They are a racist authoritarian theocratic (their religion is the Communist Party) regime with a lot of support from a lot of their citizens.
There are exceptions, but most of them either left china, have been imprisoned/killed or say nothing out of fear.