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Chinese hacking spree hit an ‘astronomical’ number of victims

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Re: Chinese hacking spree hit an ‘astronomical’ number of victims

#131

Post by AnimalMuppet »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #97
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The nation" in this context is the government, no matter how much you keep trying to change the definition.

It's possible you have a custom, non-standard understanding of the term. According to Merriam Webster, it has 5 meanings, and none of them refers to the government. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nation

Read the news. You see headlines like "US sends two carriers to Persian Gulf". Not "Government of the US", but "US". That is, in external affairs - military and diplomatic and espionage - it is a normal, customary usage to refer to the government of the country by the name of the country. It's used that way, whether you agree or not.

Now, the point you're making - that there is a difference between the government and the people, and we need to remember it - is a valid point, and an important one. But you're splitting the wrong hair to make that point.

Re: Chinese hacking spree hit an ‘astronomical’ number of victims

#132

Post by amelius »

yumraj wrote: post #4

We need two things, I don’t think either will happen: 1) sanctions against China 2) a Greater Firewall outside China, right on all fiber cables, blocking/filtering all traffic from China. China is a hostile nation and we need to treat it as such.

We need to make sure that companies take security seriously. Perhaps frequent pen-testing by independent companies should be mandatory.

Re: Chinese hacking spree hit an ‘astronomical’ number of victims

#133

Post by pjc50 »

baybal2 wrote: post #129
pjc50 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> US industry will be out of China by tomorrow Yeah, I think you're under estimating the interconnectedness of the supply chain there. Would definitely make the pandemic disruption look small. And you're assuming China won't retaliate. I wouldn't like to be a US national in China when that happened.

> Yeah, I think you're under estimating the interconnectedness of the supply chain there. Would definitely make the pandemic disruption look small. Pandemic disruption is small. A disruption on this scale was nothing unheard of historically. Infectious diseases were taking millions of lives in the developed world before the advent of antibiotics, and to lesser extend until the bio-technological revolution of seventie…

So .. casualty projections? How far up the escalation do you want to go?

Re: Chinese hacking spree hit an ‘astronomical’ number of victims

#134

Post by pjc50 »

AlexCoventry wrote: post #119
pjc50 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is still a massive improvement over the Cold War, though.

Aside from the small detail that we appear to be losing, this time.

It's a funny kind of losing. It looks more like "not totally dominant" to me, which may be confused with losing by people who've not experienced that.

What has the US really lost? No territory, no people; there's no stream of refugees to the "winning" Chinese side.

Re: Chinese hacking spree hit an ‘astronomical’ number of victims

#135

Post by narism »

cambalache wrote: post #113
refenestrator wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The very simple explanation is that the USA is infiltrated by communists?

[flagged]

Nothing quite so dramatic. The US political system is rife with bribery/bribery-adjacent (ex: lobbying) activity and they are saying both sides have been influenced by this. For examples, see the 1996 Clinton campaign finance investigations and donations to Jeb Bush’s Super PAC. There is likely a lot more out there that we don’t know about hidden through donations funneled through non-profits.

Re: Chinese hacking spree hit an ‘astronomical’ number of victims

#136

Post by nbardy »

kelnos wrote: post #53
refenestrator wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we're arrogant. We thought that if we go down the road we went down, they'd naturally settle into their proper place as manufactory for the West without wanting a seat at the table. Now they're a global power and, gasp, they act like one. Nobody could have seen this coming.

The US also believed that giving China an example of "the good way" via access to the US markets would cause them to open up and allow access in kind. Turned out that was a pretty naive belief.

The US never believed this, the politicians told this story so they could get richer off trade deals and cheap labor.

Anyone who was critically thinking saw this coming a long way out.

Re: Chinese hacking spree hit an ‘astronomical’ number of victims

#137

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

zepto wrote: post #123
dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible you have a custom, non-standard understanding of the term. According to Merriam Webster, it has 5 meanings, and none of them refers to the government. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nation

False. Definition 1.b. in your link includes the government explicitly. None of them exclude the government, and they can all reasonably include the government.

Of course the nation as a community of people in 1b also includes the government, but you can hardly say the nation understood in this sense is hostile. What you can say is that the government is hostile - we have proofs of that. We can also say that some minuscule percentage of the population is hostile - we can see some evidence of that. But to say that a nation is hostile is really crossing a red (no pun intended) line.

I'm discussing this apparently insignificant issue ad nauseam only because repeated conflation of government and citizens in discourse, media, and ultimately our minds are not without consequences.

Re: Chinese hacking spree hit an ‘astronomical’ number of victims

#138

Post by prophesi »

elefanten wrote: post #98
solosoyokaze wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Microsoft and the current White House are on the extreme side of untrustworthy. What has MS ever done that was trustworthy? Their entire existence has been based on abusing a monopoly. The US government is also extremely untrustworthy (c.f. the 20th century). The combination of these two entities pushing the same story is a huge red flag. Who would I trust? I’ll start with someone providing some sort of proof…

That's a fantasy burden you've constructed. What would even count as "proof"? Anything that incrementally changes the field of possibility? Or something that definitely proves what happened? Microsoft has done untrustworthy things. They've also build the most successful (esp. in the longer view) commercial computing ecosystem because it hit the right balance between stability/robustness/usability. Many elements of th…

I mean, it's no secret that Microsoft has a $10 billion contract with the US Government. And it's also no secret that attributing blame to cyber attacks is a hard problem. You can study the tools/exploits used, the files modified, the associated IP addresses, all of which can be easily obfuscated or used to scapegoat.

I don't really doubt the allegations, as the motive makes sense, but I'm hoping there will be a good postmortem.

Re: Chinese hacking spree hit an ‘astronomical’ number of victims

#139

Post by baybal2 »

pjc50 wrote: post #133
baybal2 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah, I think you're under estimating the interconnectedness of the supply chain there. Would definitely make the pandemic disruption look small. Pandemic disruption is small. A disruption on this scale was nothing unheard of historically. Infectious diseases were taking millions of lives in the developed world before the advent of antibiotics, and to lesser extend until the bio-technological revolution of seventie…

So .. casualty projections? How far up the escalation do you want to go?

> How far up the escalation do you want to go?

Nobody wins a fight without fighting it to the end. Escalate until you win.

Re: Chinese hacking spree hit an ‘astronomical’ number of victims

#140

Post by yorwba »

bushbaba wrote: post #6
mc32 wrote: post #3

Somewhat recently a head of Microsoft was asked about forgoing access to the Chinese market if it meant protecting American interests in the face of new threats. He unequivocally said, yes. He was willing to forgo their market. I'm not sure Apple and others who either sell product there or have large manufacturing there are as willing to forgo the 'promise market', but it looks more and more we will have to. More or…

The us let’s Chinese firms generally speaking full access to the us market. The CCP doesn’t allow the us companies the same. Why our government let that happen. Letting so much business leave to the CCP will be one of the greatest failings of the us government.

China, generally speaking, gives US companies full access to the Chinese market.

When that is not the case, it's usually in sectors where Chinese companies don't have full access to the Chinese market either. If Facebook or Google were Chinese companies but hosted the same content, do you think they'd be allowed inside the Great Firewall? Actually, we don't need to guess: when Qihoo 360 tried to provide censored access to Western social media, they were quickly shut down: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/12/chinese-app-that-let-users-a...

Western companies who don't operate in China aren't shut out because the government treats them differently. On the contrary, the government would treat them like Chinese companies, and some aren't willing to put up with that. Chinese companies don't get a choice.

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