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Chinese hacking spree hit an ‘astronomical’ number of victims

wired.com

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

#151

Post by chrischen »

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 article is saying no evidence that this attack is state sponsored, apart from Microsoft's allegations.

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

#152

Post by vmception »

chrischen wrote: post #151
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 article is saying no evidence that this attack is state sponsored, apart from Microsoft's allegations.

protip: they never have evidence.

the next hack will be using one of these Microsoft Exchange Servers most likely at a government or contractor's facility/account, and intelligence agencies will say Putin signed off on it himself. its all the information they have, just erase the idea about their omniscience. they are doing the same traceroute's that you are doing.

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

#153

Post by arthropodSeven »

The first half of the article refers without exception to this "Chinese operation." Only in this sentence in the middle of the article do they point out that there's only circumstantial evidence to attribute it to China:

> But as with the Russian SolarWinds hackers, investigators have yet to identify who exactly the Hafnium hackers are—beyond Microsoft's assertion that they're state-sponsored and operate out of China—or to pin down the full extent of their motivations.

Obviously, countries do this kind of thing all the time. And an operation of this scale is likely to come from someone with government resources. But it continues to bother me that the requirements for attribution of these attacks never rise above the level of hearsay.

Is nobody even slightly skeptical of Microsoft? The company that eagerly collaborates with the alphabet soup agencies gets to write off an exploit in its own software, courtesy of Chinese state hackers, when we all know _for a fact_ that the NSA pays these companies to keep such exploits around for their own use.

It's one thing to acknowledge that one explanation is likely; it's another thing to give up on skepticism entirely.

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

#154

Post by remarkEon »

chrischen wrote: post #143
remarkEon wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the hardest part about discussing this issue, for sure. The rapid technological and economic expansion achieved by CCP is the most impressive in all of human history in terms of numbers. It’s brutal, for sure, but that achievement means a lot of Chinese people are willing to look past the bad things, and look forward towards goals of further technological development. The important difference between the “Wes…

I think you can argue the US government at least looks out for its own stakeholders, but one thing for sure is that the US government isn’t looking out for the interests of people of other countries. So when you stare wide-eyed wondering why some foreign nation doesn’t just do what the US says don’t be amazed.

>...looks out for its own stakeholders

Right, and increasingly those "stakeholders" don't include the actual citizens of those nations.

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

#155

Post by zepto »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #137
zepto wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)…

> but you can hardly say the nation understood in this sense is hostile

I don’t see how you can make this claim so strongly.

The government is not independent of the people even if it is authoritarian.

Any hostility enacted by the government will necessarily involve the people. Governments need people in order to do anything.

A government without people can speak hostile words, but can’t be hostile, because by definition it can’t do anything if it isn’t governing anyone.

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

#156

Post by toomuchtodo »

yostrovs wrote: post #20

Perhaps the White House needs to use something other than Zoom.

It would be cool if USDS set them up with something open source and self hosted like Jitsi, branded for the US gov. They’ve already got GovCloud for compute needs.

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

#157

Post by loceng »

jjcc wrote: post #146
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…

It's difficult to find hard proof to support or against the claims. However there are invisible human natures lead people tend to believe one or the other. Here in HN the majority belief is China is evil. The dissidents against the belief will be downvoted. But the world is much bigger than HN. A lot of contents are just not in English. Here's a community that contains minority beliefs but in English. I've pasted in…

Replace "China" with "CCP" - and yes, however it's obvious as to why that is - the control systems, the censorship systems, the confirmed genocide [by definition, cultural genocide] of Uighurs, and things like not allowing the UN to go into China to investigate claims directly are a few examples; it's not to say different administrations in the US have been part of bad/unacceptable behaviour as well, however the CCP is a different - "permanent" leadership/hierarchy that isn't voted in by the general population, so it's not comparable.

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

#158

Post by [deleted] »

codetrotter wrote: post #7
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.

Yeah that sounds like a great idea. Ensure even more that no one inside of China will have access to information about human rights. And then the Chinese government can get to use propaganda against their own citizens even more effectively. There’s no way that could backfire. And there are no ethical problems with what you are suggesting either!

[deleted]

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

#159

Post by baybal2 »

pjc50 wrote: post #142
baybal2 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How far up the escalation do you want to go? Nobody wins a fight without fighting it to the end. Escalate until you win.

.. and you emerge from your nuclear bunker and look at the glowing rubble where Taiwan used to be? The old Cold War was very clear that final victory involved civilian deaths in the millions. Be very clear: are you advocating for that?

Yes, I do!

I'm advocating for people to understand that not being ready for this will be their demise.

Tell me, what would've been a better solution for WW2.

Let Adolph, Stalin, Hirohito, or worse both of them together, have Europe, and then have their free way to use the completely overwhelming resource advantage to kill you, or go and fight to the bitter end before they have it?

The most logical action to do if you can't win, is to fight. One must be ready to fight, even if it is a completely hopeless battle.

Second, I want to make you guys understand that, for now, NATO has 100% genuine ability to do something about its adversaries. Wait just a few more years at the current pace, and it wouldn't.

Third, if you chicken out, your weakness will rile the beast(s) even more, and fire up its appetites. It's showing your back to the tiger, an invitation for disaster.

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

#160

Post by solosoyokaze »

loceng wrote: post #157
jjcc wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's difficult to find hard proof to support or against the claims. However there are invisible human natures lead people tend to believe one or the other. Here in HN the majority belief is China is evil. The dissidents against the belief will be downvoted. But the world is much bigger than HN. A lot of contents are just not in English. Here's a community that contains minority beliefs but in English. I've pasted in…

Replace "China" with "CCP" - and yes, however it's obvious as to why that is - the control systems, the censorship systems, the confirmed genocide [by definition, cultural genocide] of Uighurs, and things like not allowing the UN to go into China to investigate claims directly are a few examples; it's not to say different administrations in the US have been part of bad/unacceptable behaviour as well, however the CCP…

I don't actually think the Chinese government is trustworthy, for all the reasons you state. However, I find the US/MS less trustworthy for us. I've been the target of US propaganda far more often than Chinese propaganda, since I'm a US citizen.

Remember Bush/The New York Times falsely claiming that Iraq had WMD? A lesson we shouldn't quickly forget. Especially when the current admin has already initiated illegal military action. I'm weary of war hawks and the propaganda that supports them.

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