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Feds: Chinese spies orchestrated hack that stole aviation secrets

arstechnica.com

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Re: Feds: Chinese spies orchestrated hack that stole aviation secrets

#81

Post by cwkoss »

kodablah wrote: post #66
exnorrtel wrote: post #59

I used to work at Nortel Networks along with 130,000 other people. Nortel went bankrupt and now everyone who used to work there is fighting for their pensions. Apparently a major contributor to their downfall was all of the IP being stolen and sensitive information about deals going down otherwise exfiltrated by Huawei[1] People need to get serious about protecting the privacy of their communications and data. Nobody…

> Apparently a major contributor to their downfall was all of the IP being stolen If a company is heavily dependent upon existing IP then having it all stolen will be a major contributor to their downfall. But so is that dependence. Hard to make suggestions without appearing to victim blame, but companies need to be able to survive even without secrets.

A company who "goes out of business because their IP was stolen" was already going out of business before it was stolen.

Re: Feds: Chinese spies orchestrated hack that stole aviation secrets

#82

Post by Haydos585x2 »

codedokode wrote: post #71

> ....a hacking group calling itself the Syrian Electronic Army hacked an Australian domain registrar > In early December 2013, prosecutors said, members of the conspiracy used the same tactic to hack the Australian registrar again, this time to hijack domain names of one of the targeted technology companies. What's with that registrar, don't they learn from their own mistakes?

It's Melbourne IT. A terrible company that somehow still gets large contracts despite ripping clients off at every step. I'm sure their entire staff is underpaid 457s.

Re: Feds: Chinese spies orchestrated hack that stole aviation secrets

#83

Post by DataWorker »

kodablah wrote: post #78
oh_sigh wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? If you follow that standard, you are basically saying that no R&D should ever be done, because you may just get it stolen and lose any kind of benefit you would derive from doing the R&D in the first place.

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying don't build an overly large dependence on past R&D where resting on those laurels threatens the whole company if theft occurs.

Couldn’t the new R&D be stolen as well? It sounds like you don’t like Coca Cola classic.

Re: Feds: Chinese spies orchestrated hack that stole aviation secrets

#84

Post by thrower123 »

Turnabout is fair game, to some extent. Look at the history of European porcelain, or tea. There's a fascinating documentary on CuriosityStream about Robert Fortune, who essentially committed industrial espionage for the East India Company and obtained samples and processes to kickstart tea production outside of China.

https://curiositystream.com/video/1746/tea-war-the-adventure...

Re: Feds: Chinese spies orchestrated hack that stole aviation secrets

#85

Post by plugger »

Haydos585x2 wrote: post #82
codedokode wrote: post #71

> ....a hacking group calling itself the Syrian Electronic Army hacked an Australian domain registrar > In early December 2013, prosecutors said, members of the conspiracy used the same tactic to hack the Australian registrar again, this time to hijack domain names of one of the targeted technology companies. What's with that registrar, don't they learn from their own mistakes?

It's Melbourne IT. A terrible company that somehow still gets large contracts despite ripping clients off at every step. I'm sure their entire staff is underpaid 457s.

I used to be an underpaid 457 for nearly a decade until I got PR. Just because someone is an immigrant on a work visa doesn't mean they're incompetent. And organisational culture is a top down process, not a bottom up one. So blaming the workers seems misplaced when it is most likely a management issue (who probably aren't 457 holders). That would probably be more accurate.

Re: Feds: Chinese spies orchestrated hack that stole aviation secrets

#86

Post by thereare5lights »

paulie_a wrote: post #48
thereare5lights wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Stealing secrets from companies for commercial gain is just pathetic. Can't innovate, just hack it and steal it. Learn your history. Everyone does it. Europeans and Americans did it. Now the Chinese are doing. The only reason we're bitching is because now we're the targets instead of the thieves.

Do you have any links about about industrial scale hacking for commercial profit by those regions?

Industrial espionage is older than the digital age and is not confined to hacking. It has been happening for centuries and many civilizations have undertaken efforts to take knowledge that was legally protected.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smuggling_of_silkworm_eggs_int...

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/porcelain-corporate-es...

Harris, John (1998). Industrial Espionage and Technology Transfer: Britain and France in the Eighteenth Century. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited. p. 680. ISBN 0-7546-0367-9.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-industrial-esp...

https://theintercept.com/2014/09/05/us-governments-plans-use...

https://www.the-american-interest.com/2014/12/10/the-new-ind...

https://searchinginhistory.blogspot.com/2015/02/francis-cabo...

https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-02-18/us-complains-other-na...

https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=3729

The fact that we don't hear much about our own examples of stealing other civilization's secrets is just a matter of the fact that we are now ahead. If the tables were turned just like they were in the past, we'd go right back to stealing other people's tech. To say that other people shouldn't do things that we have and would do makes little sense. That isn't to say that we shouldn't protect ourselves, it's just to say that people need to stop the damn moralizing as if we were any better.

Re: Feds: Chinese spies orchestrated hack that stole aviation secrets

#87

Post by thereare5lights »

mulmen wrote: post #55
thereare5lights wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you must also be aware that a very large amount of people are not aware of or don't care about the difference. The race blind card exists as well.

The headline is not "racist" it just doesn't explicitly differentiate between the people of the country and the government of that country. Calling it racism changes the topic of the conversation without starting a substantive conversation about racism or the relationship between citizens and their government.

> The headline is not "racist"

The consequence remains the same with the people I mention that don't care about or are aware of the difference between:

> it just doesn't explicitly differentiate between the people of the country and the government of that country.

> Calling it racism changes the topic of the conversation without starting a substantive conversation about racism or the relationship between citizens and their government.

Ignoring the fact that we have a very, very large amount of shitty people that will start using this to do racist things is just as problematic.

Re: Feds: Chinese spies orchestrated hack that stole aviation secrets

#88

Post by NicoJuicy »

justicezyx wrote: post #18

As an ethical Chinese myself, I'd like to reiterate that this type event is government-backed. And I am confident that HNers respect the boundary between Chinese people and the government. I do want to point out that general Chinese people in mainland China view these type of activities negatively as well. It should not be thought as the general people endorse such activities, they were mostly made unaware of these,…

I don't think most do, I don't.

But, I don't think China is somewhere I would want to live and it has nothing to do with the people. Then again for the same reason ok wouldn't want to live in the US right now

Re: Feds: Chinese spies orchestrated hack that stole aviation secrets

#89

Post by everybodyknows »

zip1234 wrote: post #60
nradov wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing has shifted. Spies without diplomatic immunity have always been criminally prosecuted. Often they're held in prison for a while, then quietly repatriated in return for one of our spies or some other political concession.

China doesn't do that: https://www.businessinsider.com/how-china-found-cia-spies-le...

Those spies were apparently Chinese nationals, so Beijing would have considered them traitors. In the West that draws a long prison sentence. China and Russia are less gentle.

Re: Feds: Chinese spies orchestrated hack that stole aviation secrets

#90

Post by dingaling »

stevenjohns wrote: post #72
dllu wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China also couldn't make a ballpoint pen until last year [1]. I imagine making a modern jet engine is somewhat more challenging than making a ballpoint pen (both endeavours involve making high precision metal parts). [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/01/18...

"Couldn't" is a bit unfair. The article seems to imply that it wasn't from a lack of trying, but a lack of interest, and a company only took on the challenge after the issue became considered an issue of national pride and came to light. The numbers given suggested that it cost just over $17 million to import the pen tips to manufacture 38 billion pens. Which puts the cost per tip at $0.00045/piece. It's not hard to…

Indeed, a aviation company ( Miles Aircraft ) in my home town took a license from Bic in the late 1940s to start manufacture of their roller-ball Biro pen.

I have a hard time believing that China couldn't replicate that technology for 70 years.

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