Two Chinese Schools Reportedly Tied To Online Attacks 172
squidw* writes "Online attacks on Google and other American corporations have been traced to computers at two educational institutions in China, including one with close ties to the Chinese military, say people involved in the investigation. From the NY Times: '... the attacks, aimed at stealing trade secrets and computer codes and capturing e-mail of Chinese human rights activists, may have begun as early as April, months earlier than previously believed. ... The Chinese schools involved are Shanghai Jiaotong University and the Lanxiang Vocational School, according to several people with knowledge of the investigation who asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the inquiry. Jiaotong has one of China’s top computer science programs. Just a few weeks ago its students won an international computer programming competition organized by IBM — the “Battle of the Brains” — beating out Stanford and other top-flight universities. Lanxiang, in east China’s Shandong Province, is a huge vocational school that was established with military support and trains some computer scientists for the military.'"
Hum. (Score:5, Insightful)
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They won't do nothing because China will simply tell the US that it won't be borrowing any more money unless it obeys China's wishes.
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China can still sell to Europe. It's not as big a market, but it can tide them over. But where will the US buy? I mean, who's going to sell to them if they already showed they can't pay?
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It's the government that can't pay but it's the people and economy that imports.
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Re:Hum. (Score:4, Informative)
China's already started dumping its T-bills. Strangely, this doesn't seem to be getting a lot of play in the media...I wonder why?
Times of India [indiatimes.com]
Reuters [reuters.com]
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So? Other countries will be glad to buy the T-Bills. This is a non-issue. See this post [slashdot.org] and its child posts..
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I'd assume seasoned hackers would know how to use proxies.
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Pinning it on the Chinese government in public would be claiming an attack by one government on another's citizens and infrastructure. This would be one of the scenarios that Home Land Security is preparing to defend against. It's presumed that 'terrorists' would be the attackers, but if it turns out the terrorists are Chinese it would shift the direction of momentum for such groups as Homeland Security. With the USA in a semi-permanent state of war against terror, if this is tagged as terrorism, it stands
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Who knows, maybe the government ain't responsible for it after all?
Let's be honest here, think back to your school years. I dunno about you, but I grew up with the (motion) picture of the evil Russian and the heroic US agents and spies that steal (and steal back) $secret from Russian developers, or sabotage the development of $evil_weapon. I can well imagine that the Chinese movie market pushes out the same kind of propaganda, with US for Russia and China for US.
Now, unlike us who had, at best, analog modem
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> (Although one could argue the military and government are the same thing.)
No, but it would be pretty hard to argue that the military is not a proper subset of the government.
However, in any case, since they have been exposed, the Secretary will disavow an knowledge of their actions. Good luck, Mister (Chinese equivalent of Briggs, Hand, or Phelps).
(cue Lalo Shifrin's theme)
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So they confirm where the attacks came from, where does it go from there?
The usual with anything dealing with international politics. A lot of posturing, threats, and promises, but very little in the way of action.
I somehow doubt they'll find a way to directly pin this on the Chinese government, regardless of if they did it or not.
Who's "they"? Google? Google has already tried to do that. Same with the U.S. media. John Markoff was on NPR yesterday talking about how it couldn't have just been students b
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They are anti-American... (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyone who has experienced being in a class with any large number of Chinese students (that actually came from and lived in China, just to be clear) will tell you that many of them are deeply programmed to be anti-American. I used to read "USA sucks China rules" on the desks in the library all the time at SUNY Buffalo. I don't blame the students but it's true nonetheless.
Yeah. So what? (Score:4, Insightful)
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I disagree that we are at war, because the economic-political situation is not the same. During the Euro-American versus Soviet Union Cold War, which initiated in the late 40s, there were two diametrically opposed philosophies: A free uncontrolled market (us) versus a government-controlled market (them).
However in the last few decades things have changed. The Euro-American market is still privately owned, but the government is pulling the strings more-and-more with each passing year (called socialism). H
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Most Chinese are willing to accept the current situation because they believe that things have actually been improving enough over the past decade or so. Many even have experienced first hand the improvements[1].
They have quite a fair bit of economic freedom in China. They don't have much political freedom. If you're poor, it doesn't matter how much economic freedom there is in your country - your
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The EU Parliament wants to make firing bad employees illegal, except in the most egregious circumstances (Chinese style guaranteed employment).
Just curious, where did you hear about this "Chinese style guaranteed employment"?
I didn't think such a thing was possible in a market economy.
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The most awesome vocational school in the world (Score:5, Informative)
Mod parent up (Score:1)
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this attack finally convinced me (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not easy, but if you are vigilant you can find really good deals on stuff not made in China(which is pretty much all shit quality anyway). I've noticed that clothes made in Vietnam have much better quality than those made in China, ditto for electronics and Japan. I have a camera that is made in Japan and has lasted a long time despite being repeatedly abused. It was certainly worth the extra bit of money I paid over the Chinese made piece of shit I bought before. The last pair of shoes I bought that were made in China fell apart in a couple of months, the US made ones I am wearing now are much durable. The list goes on. Boycott China.
Then boycott Apple, Dell, HP, Seagate (Score:2, Insightful)
and other american companies. Buy Nokia, Fujitsu.
Re:this attack finally convinced me (Score:4, Insightful)
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A republic is a form of government in which the head of state is not a monarch and the people (or at least a part of its people)have an impact on its government The word "republic" is derived from the Latin phrase res publica, which can be translated as "a public affair".
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it is when a puppy licks you, you lick it back, then it licks you again.
vicious
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After the various Chinese food scandals, I refuse to buy any food from that comes from China. It's obvious to me the cause of the THREE separate melamine food scandals (milk, wheat gluten and pet food) and the poisoned toothpaste scandal were a corrupt system that's setup to reward bad behavior. Essentially milk producers got more money if they had high protein levels in the milk. Adding melamine gave a high false reading for protein. Someone obviously started marketing this melamine to farmers or someo
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This is getting way off topic, but why not just ban the practice of bundling all these mortgages together into something that almost nobody fully understands? The ratings agency was supposed to take care of that problem, but I'm skeptical that trying to fix them is a good long term solution.
The other proposal that did appeal to me is making anyone wanting to sell these things keep a portion of them (I call it "eating your own dogfood"). Combine that with banning rating something that's essentially un-rata
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If you buy a ton of bricks, you can always sample them and test their strength. This is true transparency. It can be done regardless of the history of this set of bricks, ie how many companies bought and sold them prior
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So in other words, nobody learned anything and we're just as screwed as we were 2 years ago. Great. Time to start putting my money in Euros, or are is everyone else just as stupid and shortsighted as the American bankers?
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Wasn't the idea that housing is always profitable a part of the housing bubble? Too many people investing in houses leading to an oversupply and falling prices when they had mortgaged the houses on the assumption that the sale will make them enough money to pay that off?
You going to boycott the US government? (Score:3, Informative)
Cos China owns trillions of US government bonds, which your income taxes pay for.
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Depends on how you define assemble. Anyone can assemble a PC from OTS components, those components are likely made in China though. Just taking those Chinese components and sticking them into a box is enough to let you put "Made in wherever-you-are" on the box.
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As per the shoes in my example, the Chinese pair was $60, the American pair $30, the American pair lasted much longer. As per the American companies, I've bought stuff fr
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Its amazing how effective emotional manipulation and marketing is on end consumers Understand that a lot of the stuff that has "Made in X" where X is not Chine are really just assemblers that shipped a manufactured item from China. In the simplest case, they are just putting toy Y from China in colorful box Z from South Korea, and now its Made in Taiwan. I think there are rules against buying from another country putting it on a shipping pallet and saying its made here but that's as far as the rules go (
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For example Apple's hardware quality has fallen significantly after moving more and more manufacturing to China. I doubt this is a coincidence.
Concur. About 1/8 of the iMacs where I work have had hardware failures, usually motherboards, although some were HDDs. And we have a non-trivial amount of machines, but they were purchased in groups of 80-ish, so we could have just gotten a bad batch like with the Dell capacitor issue back in 2005-2006.
Jiaotong university topped the ACM (Score:3, Interesting)
"Four Chinese teams and four Russian teams dominated the top 10 rankings of the 2010 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ACM ICPC). Shanghai Jiaotong University took first place followed by Moscow State University in second place, and National Taiwan University in third place. "
From http://www.acm.org/press-room/news-releases/2010/icpc-2010 [acm.org]
No wonder why they are so good.
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No wonder why they are so good.
But we have more lawyers and can simply sue them back to the Stone Age.
What they teach there? (Score:2)
Exploiting Windows for fun and profit
Deploying trojans
Advanced botnets
Hacking NSA
Hacking Google
And the final exam consist in hacking into Independence Day's Alien mainframe
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And the final exam consist in hacking into Independence Day's Alien mainframe
You translated incorrectly. That's the entrance exam. Jolly Roger is bonus, though.
You Can't Find Me, I'm the Gingerbread Man! (Score:2)
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Yep they're going to be really hard to track down. Love it.
People with knowledge of the investigation could include just about anyone. Someone who was standing within earshot when it was being discussed is a person with knowledge of the investigation. And since they know damned well they're not supposed to talk about it, they're speaking anonymously. You're making it sound like it was people inside the investigation, which could be true, but isn't necessarily so.
Verbal diarrhea (Score:3, Interesting)
according to several people with knowledge of the investigation who asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the inquiry
WTF is wrong with people that they can't shut up?? I see stuff like this all the time, and it boggles my mind that people on the inside are willing to discuss stuff that is likely to at least partially jeopardize the investigation under way. Surely it's not a profit-motive...I can't imagine journalists can pay very much for this kind of information...so what is it?
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It's attention-whoring... like phoning the police hotline during the DC Beltway sniper attacks and dropping a hot tip, then seeing the police and media react.
Re:Verbal diarrhea (Score:4, Informative)
This is not a leak. It's a standard way of releasing information to the public without having to make an official statement/accusation. And the New York Times doesn't pay for information, period. Don't you (and your moderators) read any newspapers?!
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The New York Times ethical standards are here:
http://www.nytco.com/press/ethics.html [nytco.com]
In particular see rule 21.
Also, journalists do not reveal their sources. We didn't know the identity of 'deep throat' for close to 40 years despite intense speculation. More recently, journalists went to jail for not revealing the identity of their sources in the Valerie Plame case.
My apologies for the curt response and congratulations on your baby!
Problem with the US - Lazy trains (Score:2, Funny)
That's the problem with the US nowadays, our trains are always off hauling freight or mucking about with passengers while the Chinese trains are establishing huge vocational schools for CS students.
Shameful.
unpopular (Score:1)
....Or they're just BSing... (Score:1)
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You do realize that by those standards of treating industrial/state espionage as an act of war you should also be including countries like france, germany, israel, russia, south africa and so on? Not to mention the dozens and dozens of countries the US regularly performs hostile intelligence operations on? So you're really hoping for WWIII? Welcome to the real world, kid.
Re:Act Of War (Score:4, Insightful)
I would like to know what the U.S. contingency plan is for war with China. Look at almost any product in the U.S. today, and it is from China. If we declare war with them, do we suddenly have no more imported goods? This is not a scenario that I like to ponder.
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I would like to know what the U.S. contingency plan is for war with China. Look at almost any product in the U.S. today, and it is from China. If we declare war with them, do we suddenly have no more imported goods? This is not a scenario that I like to ponder.
Simple. You'll buy products from American corporations. Double benefit: on one hand, you rescue American companies out of the economic depression and on the other hand, you make Chinese companies lose.
Re:Act Of War (Score:5, Insightful)
Simple. You'll buy products from American corporations. Double benefit: on one hand, you rescue American companies out of the economic depression and on the other hand, you make Chinese companies lose.
Where are the factories? Where are the means of production? Where are the steel mills? The U.S. has a lot of rebuilding to do.
That isn't the question at all (Score:4, Insightful)
The question is, who do you get to buy your debts?
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Simple! Stop exporting wheat, pork, beef, chicken feet to China. They may have to worry about food again.
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Or, sweet Jesus, we can work on actually manufacturing our own crap again. Not that I think we ever would stoop that low. Yes, making our own crap would raise costs, but it also would create jobs which would mean more net money to buy crap. But then again someone would have to settle for mere millions (and the intangible of adding to the long term stability of the US) instead of billions and the joy of being able to play the fiddle while the US collapses into a third world nation.
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The scary part is that the parent is modded insightful instead of funny. There are many documented cases of the CIA, NSA, US Department of Commerce and other US entities (both governmental and non-governmental) committing industrial espionage in various forms (breaking into networks, tapping into video conferences, phone tapping, planting microphones and cameras, ...). See e.g. the list under "Published cases" in the Echelon report [europa.eu] by the European Parliament.
So please stop acting like Virgin Mary already, i
The racist 1940s (Score:3, Insightful)
>>>"Beware of the yellow peril! Be a patriotic American ...!"
+1 funny. (dark humor)
People who admire FDR always forget this part of his presidency, where he locked-up American citizens and deprived them of their rights to property, trial by jury, free speech, and so on. Why? Simply because these Americans looked like asians. - In many respects FDR was our worst president. I know that's an unpopular view, nevertheless that's what I think.
I hope IF we have another war with the Asian continent (i
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What about the German Americans? You can pin everything on racism all day long, but much of the same distrust of Japanese people were also directed towards people of the same race.
http://www.foitimes.com/internment/ [foitimes.com]
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What are you talking about? Everyone knows that whites can't be the victims of racism. Their vast majority of 1.5 billion people (out of 6.7 billion) clearly makes them responsible for all racism and racist behavior.
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>>>What about the German Americans?
You can't be serious? It's not the same. Almost my entire state consists of German American citizens (Amish, Quakers, Mennonites, et cetera), but my grandparents were not forced out of their homes and locked-up in concentration camps during the war.
The Japanese-Americans were.
And also even if the German-Americans had been rounded-up into camps, does that make it any better? FDR's decision to do that still violates the first ten amendments to the Constitution, a
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Goddamn, I'm 22 and don't know shit about history (relative to other topics), but I thought about this as I read the OP. In its own dark way, it's kinda funny...
Re:The racist 1940s (Score:5, Insightful)
Chinese immigrants to the USA are far less patriotic (to the USA) than were Japanese immigrants to the USA during WWII. In fact, somewhere between one-third and one-half of Chinese immigrants are already spying/aiding for the Chinese mainland in some way. Ask any sample of Chinese immigrants to the USA about where their loyalties lie. At the very best they are ambivalent.
In a war with China the USA would have serious problems with its internal Chinese population. The lessons of the unjust Japanese imprisonment in WWII would not apply. We would be forced to imprison the Chinese. That would not be a racist act but a reasonable and necessary one.
You have made the mistake of comparing two situations that appear to be similar but that are in fact quite different.
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>>>We would be forced to imprison the Chinese.
Which is an illegal act. We can imprison or deport Chinese citizens, but the Constitution does not allow you to do things like this to chinese-American citizens (like my coworkers and best friend and his wife). The Constitution is the Supreme Law of the land and you can not simply ignore it.
Else we would be a lawless society.
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The Constitution is the Supreme Law of the land and you can not simply ignore it.
You can if you do it in Cuba.
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You can if you can get the Supreme Court to go along.
I believe Korematsu v. United States [wikipedia.org] is still good (in the technical sense) law.
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"To consider the justices as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions is a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy."
"Our justices are as honest as other men and not more so. They have with others the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their maxim is boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem [good justice is broad jurisdiction], and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life and not resp
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In fact, somewhere between one-third and one-half of Chinese immigrants are already spying/aiding for the Chinese mainland in some way.
Care to enlighten us as to where you got these (albeit, very broad) statistics? Certainly, a carefully conducted study of this "fact" would be very newsworthy.
Re:The racist 1940s (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm ethnic Chinese and was born in Vietnam, but the difference is that I grew up in Western countries, so I never had a chance to be brainwashed and indoctrinated by an oppressive dictatorship. With even teenagers from mainland China, it's already too late, they've been through the schools, they've only known one reality and one truth: China's. They'll come to your country, and they'll help steal military/industrial/trade secrets, they'll help harass and spy on dissidents, human rights activists, Tibetans, Uighurs etc. There are some courageous exceptions (dissidents), but for the most part, this is overwhelmingly true.
This is basically what has been happening ever since Mao. The communists have destroyed a beautiful country and turned it into something truly ugly.
So yes, I'm afraid what littlewink says is true. It's almost certain that China will go to war with the USA and Taiwan within the next 5-15 years. It's as inevitable as the next big stockmarket crash and double-dip recession, aka Great Depression.
My loyalties do not lie with any one country (many would call me a traitor for saying this). I just want to do the right thing -- I'll answer to the truth, not to some arbitrary nationalistic or patriotic agenda. I'm in Australia, which is a close ally to the USA. Once war with China breaks out, I have no doubt that I'll be taunted and spat on in the streets, just like the Nisei were.
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I hope IF we have another war with the Asian continent (i.e. China) that we do a better job of obeying the Constitution instead of ignoring it.
You mean as well as the constitution is upheld in the war already being waged on the Asian continent, in respect of imprisoning people the US deem "terrorists"? Most likely we're going to see more loopholes used, akin to "if it's not on US soil, it doesn't matter to the Constitution...".
Re:The racist 1940s (Score:4, Insightful)
You're saying this like this was a bad thing. We did the same thing in Canada. As a 1st generation descendant of German/Japanese parents let me just say. Given the opportunity at the time, plenty would have been happy to follow the orders of the fatherland and/or the god-emperor to do whatever it takes to kill you from within.
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>>>plenty would have been happy to follow the orders of the fatherland and/or the god-emperor to do whatever it takes to kill you from within.
>>>
First off, I suspect your parents would be ashamed to hear you say that. I doubt they are the killers you describe them to be. - Second for those that did commit terrorist acts during WW2, you would capture these American citizens, try them in front of a jury (amendments 5 and 6), and then imprison them. You know - like we're going with that
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Actually no, feel free to assume, but you're being ignorant. See this is the funny thing about growing up in a mixed family. Even they both realize that there was something that needed to be done. My father grew up in the 1950's where pro god-emperor propaganda still existed among the common folk, and my mother grew up on the east side of the wall before the managed to escape--where on both sides despite the great purge of Nazism peo
Not the *worst* president... (Score:2)
In many respects FDR was our worst president. I know that's an unpopular view, nevertheless that's what I think.
Of course it's an unpopular view. Woodrow Wilson was just as racist and far more damaging a president that FDR ever was. FDR only screwed up our country. Wilson sowed the seeds of WWII (increasing our enemies by one Japan in the process), the war in Indochina, screwed up domestic race relations, created the Federal Reserve...
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We've had most of our dark days and loss of freedom from Wilson onward.
Every president has had a way of pissing off a percentage of the population, but from Wilson onward we lost more freedom than we gained.
Minorities and women not part of the statement, as this is just good sense and necessary to our evolution.
Over time and circumstances, its been Asians jailed, Negroes jailed, Communists jailed,Hippies jailed, Tax protesters jailed, Marijuana smokers jailed and others who just didn't fit the bill. Race is
When fear comes... (Score:2)
people do irrational things. This is how dictators come to power.
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