Chinese Hackers Infiltrate New York Times Computers

From the article:

"After surreptitiously tracking the intruders to study their movements and help erect better defenses to block them, The Times and computer security experts have expelled the attackers and kept them from breaking back in.

"The timing of the attacks coincided with the reporting for a Times investigation, published online on Oct. 25, that found that the relatives of Wen Jiabao, China’s prime minister, had accumulated a fortune worth several billion dollars through business dealings."

As a student of the language, history, culture, current politics, and future prospects of China since 1975, I had better comment on how significant this is. The effort by operatives based in China (that much is indisputable from the computer forensics involved in this case) is deeply hostile to the press freedom that is a fundamental difference between China and the United States. Under usual principles of international law, China has the responsibility to keep actors on its territory from launching harmful attacks on the territory of another country, unless it is interested in declaring war. Prior restraint of news media is routine in China, and accounts for a great deal of the public ignorance in China that keeps the current dictatorial regime in power, but it is not at all a friendly act toward the United States. The United States government has everything to gain and essentially nothing to lose by every other government on the planet being exposed to more press coverage of national leaders and their possibly corrupt activities. In this regard, the current regime in China and any government of the United States under the Constitution have inherently differing interests.

The national interest of the common people of China, on the other hand, would be best served by freeing the news media there from the prior restraint and censorship that now exist there. If everyday people in China knew better what is really going on in the country, and what their leaders are doing, China could make greater progress in overcoming persistent poverty and enjoy more peaceful relations with countries all around the globe. Right now, the masses in China are not given the choice of knowing what's going on through uncensored mass media, nor are they given the choice of free and fair elections for choosing national leaders.

My best hope is that this effort to scare off the New York Times from honest reporting about China will fail as efforts by the Church of Scientology to frighten away investigative journalists are also increasingly failing.

http://tonyortega.org/2013/01/29/more-signs-of-scientologys-...

A lot of journalists would like nothing better than to write even more tough stories about what is really going in China, based on unfettered reporting with Chinese-speaking sources in the country. One journalist from China I met long ago in a place far away commented well in advance of the Internet age that if the Communist Party of China ceased censoring mass media that its rule would be gone "in a week." The time will come when the Party can't shut down all the channels of information flowing into China and within China, and then the Party will have to face elections or face a revolution.

AFTER EDIT: The first reply asked a fair question, which is whether or not there is a basis for thinking that the Communist Party of China losing power in China would be a good thing. My answer is yes. I lived in Taiwan both under the KMT dictatorship and under its current democratic regime (which now again has the KMT as the ruling party, after an election). I have also been to Hong Kong. Chinese people can adapt well enough to democracy. In general, all around the world, freedom and democracy have their defects, but they are generally better for the people who live with them than the alternative. Precisely because Taiwan is available for an example, I think a transition to democracy in China could be especially smooth. It is regrettable that although there are Muslim democracies, the first attempts at specifically Arab democracies so far are nascent and struggling. The democratic transition in Arab countries will be harder in the short term for lack of culturally similar examples, but I think that too will be a long term benefit to the common people of the Arab lands.

AFTER ONE MORE EDIT: Anyway, it shouldn't be the censorship and armed force of the Party that restricts the people's right to choose their national leaders.

I don't disagree with anything you've written, but remediation from these attacks almost never involves replacing any of the hardware (with the possible exception of when a laptop belongs to an executive, and it becomes easier to just set them up with a new one and swap it out).

Yes, please read the article I linked:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/15/world/15aid.html?pagewante...

  Title: US Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings

Here is another.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/06/world/africa/weapons-sent-...

  The Obama administration secretly gave its blessing to arms 
  shipments to Libyan rebels from Qatar last year, but 
  American officials later grew alarmed as evidence grew that 
  Qatar was turning some of the weapons over to Islamic 
  militants, according to United States officials and foreign 
  diplomats.

  But in the months before, the Obama administration clearly 
  was worried about the consequences of its hidden hand in 
  helping arm Libyan militants, concerns that have not 
  previously been reported. The weapons and money from Qatar    
  strengthened militant groups in Libya, allowing them to 
  become a destabilizing force since the fall of the Qaddafi 
  government.

the two evidence from NYT made a meme in Chinese Interwebs:

蓝翔 hacked Google.

they probably found the place where windows stores the passwords. All 8 character passwords under the unsalted scheme (NTLM) used by Microsoft can be cracked within minutes via use of rainbow tables. Even easier if LANMAN passwords are enabled.