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PRC Targeting of Commercial Telecommunications Infrastructure

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71–80 of 157 posts

Re: PRC Targeting of Commercial Telecommunications Infrastructure

#71
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we are falling far behind in many areas, including cyber security In terms of quantity and quality of talent, I don't think the western world would fall behind China, especially with their strict control of information. Most people there will have difficulty independently learning about cybersecurity. The difference is that most talent is captured by the private sector with higher compensation or bounties. Meanwhil…

Every ordinary Chinese needs to self-learn some cybersecurity to do daily things, like to watch YouTube, or to send messages to others without worrying being censored

The ordinary people have their douyin/bilibili and fear of the party so they don't need to learn those things

Re: PRC Targeting of Commercial Telecommunications Infrastructure

#72
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Chinese state media, the US installed malware in systems in Chinese universities tied with military, e.g. Northwestern Polytechnical University

According to Chinese state media, Chinese state media is never wrong

Believe it or not, it's up to you; the same goes with FBI

Re: PRC Targeting of Commercial Telecommunications Infrastructure

#73
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A backdoor bypasses legitimate access mechanisms. Whether it is a backdoor or not depends fully on whether you believe lawful intercept is a legitimate access mechanism. And I think the law is on the side of it being not a backdoor.

We've had multiple bills proposed by multiple countries for government mandated backdoors. Multiple articles refer to how these bills would create backdoors, multiple computer security experts say the bills would create backdoors in the software. Under your definition of the word they'd all be using the word incorrectly because logically no bill could create a legal backdoor by definition. It's seems there's a semant…

These articles use the word "backdoor" for effect, for example https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2021/08/apple-adds-a-...>. The bills you refer to by multiple countries simply want their own in-house wiretapping apparatus, because they don't want to be dependent on the US. Specifically, I'm thinking of EU's "chat control". Ironically those who oppose it are unwittingly doing the bidding for a more powerful US. The internet is fully wiretapped and there is no end in sight.

Re: PRC Targeting of Commercial Telecommunications Infrastructure

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would their own targeting relate to "copying of certain information that was subject to U.S. law enforcement requests pursuant to court orders"? AFAIK, telecoms enforcement requests subject to court orders in the US mean one thing, and one thing only: lawful interception of communication.

There is no known limit to the scope of what LE can monitor, and there is no public record to access or analyze in the case of sealed documents. So it could, for all we know, be anyone and everyone. Remember, way back when, AT&T just gave the NSA full access to their network.

I'm not sure I'm following your argument in the context of this thread. Are you suggesting there were no surveillance court orders whose targets the Chinese found a d copied?

Re: PRC Targeting of Commercial Telecommunications Infrastructure

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every ordinary Chinese needs to self-learn some cybersecurity to do daily things, like to watch YouTube, or to send messages to others without worrying being censored

The ordinary people have their douyin/bilibili and fear of the party so they don't need to learn those things

Why would ordinary Chinese people fear the party? The party has been overseeing the greatest expansion of wealth in human history combined with a massive internal propaganda effort which I would assume is pitching them as the good guys and downplays all the brutal stuff they've done

If anything I'd expect ordinary people to be far too trusting that the authorities are reasonable and friendly. They must have real problems with earnest, motivated and well meaning people wandering off the approved parts of the internet into censored topics and getting confused by whatever happens next.

Re: PRC Targeting of Commercial Telecommunications Infrastructure

#76
post #59
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least you have CIA openly recruit spies on Twitter: https://x.com/CIA/status/1841468925378171381 I think only CIA and mossad have the confidence to do it this way.

That's wild. What's the situation like on the ground? I've read that the CCP sentences spies to death and that they catch a lot of them.

Yeah based on that video, it'd be easy to edit the onion address and send them to a honey pot...

Re: PRC Targeting of Commercial Telecommunications Infrastructure

#77
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ordinary people have their douyin/bilibili and fear of the party so they don't need to learn those things

Why would ordinary Chinese people fear the party? The party has been overseeing the greatest expansion of wealth in human history combined with a massive internal propaganda effort which I would assume is pitching them as the good guys and downplays all the brutal stuff they've done If anything I'd expect ordinary people to be far too trusting that the authorities are reasonable and friendly. They must have real prob…

Fear getting disappeared/jailed for doing something forbidden. You're right that they may not see it as "fear of the party" from inside. More like "why would I do something illegal". But in a system like that those things are actually equivalent.

Re: PRC Targeting of Commercial Telecommunications Infrastructure

#78
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we are falling far behind in many areas, including cyber security In terms of quantity and quality of talent, I don't think the western world would fall behind China, especially with their strict control of information. Most people there will have difficulty independently learning about cybersecurity. The difference is that most talent is captured by the private sector with higher compensation or bounties. Meanwhil…

> especially with their strict control of information. Most people there will have difficulty independently learning about cybersecurity. I'm puzzled by this assertion. I know quite a few self-taught infosec folks who grew up there. China is not North Korea. The government, by and large, doesn't monitor what you're doing day-to-day, unless you're a political activist or some other "undesirable". The Great Firewall do…

> The one thing that's true for China is that their government has far fewer qualms about hacking Western infrastructure to get dirt on dissidents, steal IP, and so on. But that's a matter of ethics and law, not tech.

As opposed to the DoD, which strictly fights for freedom, liberty, and democracy?

Re: PRC Targeting of Commercial Telecommunications Infrastructure

#79
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've probably conflated the saying "going through the backdoor" with the noun backdoor, which is an understandable mistake to make. Conflating the two is even easier when the backdoor is morally questionable i.e. When someone purposefully installs a wooden backdoor on a bankvault and says it's so that we don't need to go through the whole rigmarole of opening the main vault-door. Yes it allows them to do their job…

A backdoor bypasses legitimate access mechanisms. Whether it is a backdoor or not depends fully on whether you believe lawful intercept is a legitimate access mechanism. And I think the law is on the side of it being not a backdoor.

A backdoor in the technical sense (which is the real topic of this whole conversation) is one that bypasses the known way of entry. For an "End to end encrypted" communication channel, a backdoor allows someone to view the communication without being on either of the "ends".

The problem is not whether the backdoor was legally mandated or not, and whether legal authorities are misusing them or not, the problem is that it exists. And the existence by itself is enough to let someone ignore any legal mandates and view the comms.

Re: PRC Targeting of Commercial Telecommunications Infrastructure

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something something turnabout is fair play

As if they contributed to West even remotely as much as West contributed to them. Help getting lifted from poverty and being given a ton of tech/innovations, turnabout my ass...

Conversely, you could look at that as a mistake on the West's half for letting themselves become so addicted to a foreign power they are ideologically at-odds with. We could have learned this mistake when we sold Pakistan weapons they used to genocide people, or again when we gave Iran weapons they would turn around and use for terrorism, or yet again when we furnish weapons to Israel pitting one ugly nationalist theocracy against another.

All China ever did was exploit capitalism. And if we punished companies for exploiting capitalism then America wouldn't have modern businesses at all.

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