The FBI investigating hacking of Covid research by “PRC-affiliated cyber actors” • Hacker News Board

Re: The FBI investigating hacking of Covid research by “PRC-affiliated cyber actors”

#251

Post by cscurmudgeon » Wed, May 27, 2020, 3:50 PM UTC

dheera wrote: post #229

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it is unethical to hide research when it could save lives Why are you assuming the US is hiding research? Are you aware that there are protocols in medical research against premature release of information as it will taint the results (placebo effects etc)? There are blackout periods etc. just to make sure that the analysis is valid and not tainted. Also a lot of research has lag time. Experiments can take…

> There are blackout periods etc. just to make sure that the analysis is valid and not tainted. This is an interesting potential debate. In some sense we are sacrificing lives for scientific validity, because it is potentially possible that we could deploy early, ignore blackouts, and have probabilistically fewer deaths + tainted data. But the world is apparently wanting to choose probabilistically more deaths + clea…

> In some sense we are sacrificing lives for scientific validity, because it is potentially possible that we could deploy early, ignore blackouts, and have probabilistically fewer deaths + tainted data

This is spurious logic.

How are you saying that tainted science + bad data will result in fewer deaths long term?

You may end up with probabilistically more deaths + tainted data.

Why is that not a possibility?

Re: The FBI investigating hacking of Covid research by “PRC-affiliated cyber actors”

#252

Post by dheera » Wed, May 27, 2020, 4:05 PM UTC

croon wrote: post #232

mensetmanusman wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone should profit for figuring out how to stop COVID because otherwise there is little incentive beyond the government, and they don’t typically work nights and weekends. If China succeeds in stealing the solution, that will harm mankind because it will reduce future incentive to stop these things quickly.

I understand any extra data gives you an advantage, but I think I'm missing a step where they can steal a solution while simultaneously keeping that solution for themselves (assuming stealing means copying/sneaking out information others have already gathered). Maybe a slight headstart if they throw extra research money on it.

It's not okay to keep solutions for only their citizens, but it would still be in your best interest to share what you know with their citizens so that you have a lower priority of getting infected by their citizens who may travel to your place.

Humans are humans. The virus doesn't care for the politics, it will spread without regard to human-invented political borders, so the preventative measures shouldn't stop at political borders, either. That would be contradictory to the apolitical nature of the virus.

(In any case, if you shared something with them and it is actually useful, there's a good chance you're pretty close to the solution yourself, anyway.)

Re: The FBI investigating hacking of Covid research by “PRC-affiliated cyber actors”

#253

Post by thejynxed » Wed, May 27, 2020, 4:38 PM UTC

free_rms wrote: post #68

jorblumesea wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the difference is that the West is engaging in surveillance and not sabotage. If the CCP was found to contaminate or corrupt data, that is a far step above Western norms. Also, the West mostly focuses on international relations and national security concerns, whereas the CCP also participates in economic sabotage and IP transfer. For example, it would be big news for the US to have been caught hacking Huawei,…

First off, the west's covert activities are not limited to benign surveillance. Second off.. aside from the total lack of evidence, why would the Chinese be interested in sabotage here? American discovery of a vaccine means they can rip it off, they're definitely not gonna be paying anyone for it. If we're selling it at exorbitant prices while they give it away practically for free to African countries, that's a huge…

Sabotaging the effort of others would actually be something that fit into Chinese political philosophy in this particular case, seeing as how much appearances mean to their long-tail strategy of global dominance and promenance. China being first with a working vaccine doesn't seem important to us, but to them? Fantastic PR for their next round of buying up desriable parts of Africa.

Re: The FBI investigating hacking of Covid research by “PRC-affiliated cyber actors”

#254

Post by nineparts » Wed, May 27, 2020, 6:54 PM UTC

andarleen wrote: post #240

onefortyone wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I come from an ex-communist country. So this is probably (hopefully) the only moment my talent of spotting this kind of shit is useful. The thing is that whatever bad behavior the USA committed in the past, and then anxiously analyzed and mulled over for decades... the Chinese are doing day by day, routinely, without ANY remorse or second thought. With the Russians it was different. Sorry to say this, but compared to…

I cant tell wether the statement that Russia had “soul” is because of the stockholm syndrome or something else, but how can you say that considering millions of people have been deported to gulags in the early days of communism, and hundreds of millions are still suffering today because of communist regimes Russia imposed on their countries? Do I get a sense of someone decrying the collapse of the SU? The political e…

I get what you are saying but those countries were more like colonies than a part of Russia. My opinion is that they should have been left alone, like every country should, especially in that time when technology wasn't so hazardous and so widespread.

The fact that you managed to understand that I decry the collapse of the Soviet Union when my post said the exact opposite, namely that I can't see how in China an event like that could take place -- and this was the foundation on which I based my affirmation of Russians having a soul -- tells me that your agenda stands firmly on the side of the CCP, in detriment of everybody else. Quite sad, really.

Re: The FBI investigating hacking of Covid research by “PRC-affiliated cyber actors”

#255

Post by salawat » Wed, May 27, 2020, 7:28 PM UTC

gnufx wrote: post #132

salawat wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like cryptocurrency miner install is going to end up being the new cover story anytime someone doesn't want to tip their hand on capabilities.

Yes, but if you were serious about espionage, say, you wouldn't draw attention to the compromise by running one.

Unless you're testing a zero day, and staging an alternate route of infiltration to hide your installation of threat persistence.

I believe it's referred to as the "limited hangout" in spycraft jargon. You maintain the target's sense of security and ability to detect intrusion while you maintain the capability to reintrude at will.

Re: The FBI investigating hacking of Covid research by “PRC-affiliated cyber actors”

#256

Post by dang » Wed, May 27, 2020, 11:07 PM UTC

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #160

dheera wrote: post #96

Given today's anti-free-thinker HN climate I'm probably going to get downvoted to oblivion for saying this, but I feel I need to say it. I don't think COVID-19 research should be secretive, I think it should be a global effort, and I'm perfectly happy with the idea of any nation having open access to all COVID-19 research, vaccines, results, and (anonymized) data. There should NOT be a concept of intellectual propert…

> Given today's anti-free-thinker HN climate You should champion China to be more transparent about the origins of the virus. Even if it did not originate in a lab, shining more light on its origins will help prevent future outbreaks. China also actively prevented Taiwan from joining the WHO. This would have resulted in more free flow of information. Curiously, I was a labelled a racist for making this statement. > P…

Please stop taking HN threads further into nationalistic flamewar. We've had to ask you about this before.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: The FBI investigating hacking of Covid research by “PRC-affiliated cyber actors”

#257

Post by dang » Wed, May 27, 2020, 11:12 PM UTC

tree3 wrote: post #54

elliekelly wrote: post #3

I appreciate that there’s probably a lot I don’t know or understand about the national security aspects of this but it seems wrong to not share as much information as possible with as many researchers as possible in order to help as many as people as possible. Protecting security interests is one thing but this press release specifically mentions protecting intellectual property and that seems kind of tone deaf. I al…

Anytime the CCP does something bad, there's always someone like you to downplay it in the comments...

Personal attacks are not ok here, and neither is nationalistic flamewar or other flamewar. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when commenting.

Re: The FBI investigating hacking of Covid research by “PRC-affiliated cyber actors”

#258

Post by cscurmudgeon » Thu, May 28, 2020, 12:30 AM UTC

dang wrote: post #256

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Given today's anti-free-thinker HN climate You should champion China to be more transparent about the origins of the virus. Even if it did not originate in a lab, shining more light on its origins will help prevent future outbreaks. China also actively prevented Taiwan from joining the WHO. This would have resulted in more free flow of information. Curiously, I was a labelled a racist for making this statement. > P…

Please stop taking HN threads further into nationalistic flamewar. We've had to ask you about this before. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I have to decided to just stopping commenting on these kinds of threads.

No matter how objective I am it is going to piss violate some unknown law of the land here. Being logically correct in these threads usually ends up being politically incorrect.

Thanks for all your hard work moderating.

Re: The FBI investigating hacking of Covid research by “PRC-affiliated cyber actors”

#259

Post by natechols » Thu, May 28, 2020, 11:39 PM UTC

morsch wrote: post #238

natechols wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think Apple simply "took something off the shelf" and sold us iPhones at huge markups, you clearly know even less about R&D than I assumed. Cherry-picking examples like the Internet doesn't really prove your point: try comparing the amount of taxpayer-funded R&D that went into the early (pre-1994) Internet with the amount of private investment since then. (I have no idea what the actual numbers are but I'd gue…

I don't disagree, but research money spent may be a poor proxy for technical progress if it's spent to research ever better ways of showing ads to consumers. I mean, it'd make sense if the government research spending aligned with public interest more closely than private investment did, the government is spending the public's money after all.

Totally valid points - but this is why oversimplifying the entire issue into "Private sector bad! Public sector good!" (or vice-versa) is a terrible idea. However, oversimplifying what big companies like Apple do as pushing ads is just as bad. Think about the supply chains involved in building an iPhone, and how the individual components are manufactured - it's decades beyond the roots in government (and remember, projects like the Internet still depended on private companies to actually build most of the hardware).

Re: The FBI investigating hacking of Covid research by “PRC-affiliated cyber actors”

#260

Post by natechols » Thu, May 28, 2020, 11:43 PM UTC

request_id wrote: post #214

natechols wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most useful technology is created by state-funded research over decades. The private sector just monopolizes the results. This is another gross oversimplification at best, and I have yet to hear anyone who has spent significant amounts of time in either public or private sector R&D make such a claim. Real life, and product development in particular, is not so easily reduced to catchy political slogans.

Off top of head, the recent Ebola vaccine was created almost exclusively from gov. research. Merck bought a company who was supposed to commercialize it but they did a really poor job . There are people who would not be dead if the vaccine had been available, sooner

That's an anecdote, not data. The last article I read about this calculated that around 20% of new drug approvals came directly from government/academic research - and that's usually repurposed older drugs (which is actually a good place to focus, since it's cheaper and big pharma isn't really interested in resurrecting off-patent molecules).