Chinese Hackers Infiltrate New York Times Computers • Hacker News Board

Re: Chinese Hackers Infiltrate New York Times Computers

#101

Post by javajosh » Thu, Jan 31, 2013, 5:45 AM UTC

temphn wrote: post #19

I think it's important to understand the Chinese perspective on this issue, if only to see why they do these things. Start with this: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/15/world/15aid.html?pagewante... U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings Even as the United States poured billions of dollars into foreign military programs and anti-terrorism campaigns, a small core of American government-financed organizations were pr…

As much as I'm tempted to accept the self-loathing implicit in your analysis, temphn, I must strenuously object. Talking to people should never be denied or (in this case) punished. I don't care if it's government sponsored propaganda, the NYT, or the KFC marketing department: there is no justification for censorship.

If, as you say, "the Chinese government feels that it is under attack by the United States" then perhaps they should ask themselves why they are so afraid of information. Why are they not able to influence their own population on their home turf more effectively than these American interlopers? If they can't do that, then perhaps the foundations of their government are too weak to support the dreams and aspirations of almost 2Bn human beings.

Re: Chinese Hackers Infiltrate New York Times Computers

#102

Post by Jack000 » Thu, Jan 31, 2013, 5:50 AM UTC

ced wrote: post #74

lennydizzy wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Chinese, I would say the Chinese government is worried about 'Arab Spring', but that's not why they attacked NYT this time. The 'Great firewall' was built to prevent any uprising similar to 'Arab spring' from being started.

How likely do you think a Chinese spring would be? It's unfortunate that we don't get more foreign perspective on HN and Reddit - I hope you comment more.

not op but I would say almost nil. The "Arab Spring" occurred in already unstable regimes, which China is not. There is also a massive difference in scale with regard to the amount of power that must change hands for something even close to occur - a much higher activation energy.

I think the best hope for China is a gradual transition to democratic reform as the old guard passes on. It's likely though that nepotism will bridge the generation gap.

Re: Chinese Hackers Infiltrate New York Times Computers

#103

Post by btilly » Thu, Jan 31, 2013, 5:52 AM UTC

m0nastic wrote: post #97

btilly wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your reply has a lot of very specific information about the attack, attacker, and state of the compromise that I find rather dubious and cannot find in the article. Do you have a source that you would care to share? Furthermore in this case we've been told that the attacker managed to achieve a rather thorough compromise of the network. And managed to persist through multiple attempts to remove them. Even if the atta…

You aren't assuming, you are looking on all machines for IOC's (specifically machines that have been compromised before), and hopefully making use of all that fancy network security monitoring technology you paid entirely too much money for. And you're monitoring outbound connections to any of the places which are known to be "bad neighborhoods", as well as any other suspicious traffic. In the gmail example you used,…

I was trying to figure out how you think you know all of this when I clicked on your profile. Then the thought suddenly hit me that publicly disclosing details about how we think they work, and what we actually look for in cleaning up, might not be the best thing to do on a forum that is world accessible.

Also if you're right, I'm depressed that they don't in practice use ideas that have been publicly known for decades.

One final thought. The gmail approach would leave fingerprints in Google's system. The actor in question could easily have some paranoia about doing that, even though Google would be unlikely to notice.

Re: Chinese Hackers Infiltrate New York Times Computers

#104

Post by javajosh » Thu, Jan 31, 2013, 5:52 AM UTC

toomim wrote: post #78

duaneb wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is why the Chinese government feels that it is under attack by the United States, and it does not see a line between NGOs, the NYT/WSJ, and the US government, Ironically, you are assuming the same thing about China.

Because that's actually how it IS in China. China is a giant corrupt honeycomb. There are blurred lines between corporation/government. Corporations are often a face for government interests. It's totally corrupt, and everybody knows that the face of an organization is not the actual motives behind the organization. A single Chinese clan will control multiple branches of government and multiple corporations. They all…

In point of fact I think this kind of hacking attempt is a kind of ham-handed attempt to control what cannot be controlled. The Chinese are pissed, and so someone put some money and time toward attacking the NYT. And not doing a very good job, either.

The US, by contrast, has more direct ways to express its displeasure.

Re: Chinese Hackers Infiltrate New York Times Computers

#105

Post by larrys » Thu, Jan 31, 2013, 5:52 AM UTC

sc00ter wrote: post #59

beagle3 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone has poor understanding of how computers work, but it isn't necessarily the NY Times. Once a computer is compromised, you can't trust anything about it. You may believe reinstalling the OS is enough, but it is possible that some remote control tool is still lurking in a main BIOS reflashed while compromised, or in the GPU firmware, or tens of other places. While it should potentially be possible to reflash eve…

You may believe reinstalling the OS is enough I made no such claim, but verifying bios and firmware signatures (and indeed detecting changes when they happen), and reinstalling them at scale is not a major challenge with a well managed IT infrastructure. I can accept however that the Times may well have been running 10 year old PCs, with manual IT management processes, and outdated security software, and that replace…

"replacement may have been overdue and economically more viable"

Adding to that the fact that the replacement may have been covered by computer crime insurance that they possibly had.

Re: Chinese Hackers Infiltrate New York Times Computers

#106

Post by Volpe » Thu, Jan 31, 2013, 5:54 AM UTC

untog wrote: post #94

Volpe wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found that's the case with any hack... for all we know it could be a competing newspaper routing through China. But nationalism/xenophobia trumps reason.

What Chinese newspaper competes with the New York Times, in any meaningful sense? Given that media inside China is heavily censored, and Chinese newspapers publish in a language the vast majority of the US cannot read?

I was implying it could be an American newspaper... As it stands if I 'hacked' HN and routed through china, I reckon the news would be: "HN hacked by Chinese Government!"

Re: Chinese Hackers Infiltrate New York Times Computers

#107

Post by Volpe » Thu, Jan 31, 2013, 5:55 AM UTC

untog wrote: post #93

Volpe wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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." Is that a good thing? Would it's replacement be better? Arab spring has kind of taught us that things aren't as simple as: "Break status quo and things get better".

Arab spring has kind of taught us that things aren't as simple as: "Break status quo and things get better". I don't think that anyone needed to be taught that. I doubt that we will be able to judge whether the Arab Spring was a success for another ten or twenty years- the immediate aftermath of revolution is always deeply messy. Not to mention that 'better' is entirely subjective anyway, of course. There are plenty…

That was my point.

If it takes 20 years to see a 'benefit' is it that bad now, that they should go through that kind of mess?

Re: Chinese Hackers Infiltrate New York Times Computers

#108

Post by wololo » Thu, Jan 31, 2013, 5:59 AM UTC

temphn wrote: post #77

wololo wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not obvious that they are wrong in that assessment. Any entity with the reach of the United States is naturally going to have connections with all kinds of actors. While the idea of Americans/Zionists/Illuminati/Nibiru pulling the strings behind every major event is no doubt very exciting for conspiracy theorists (eg. I'm getting 2.28 million google hits for ["dalai lama * a cia agent"]), and simpler (ignoring…

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

Occam's Razor says some office working for the Chinese government is looking for who snitched on Wen Jiabao's problematic enormous wealth.

> Perhaps then you believe it is only Americans that never conspire.

seriously?

Just look at the flailing US response day by day in the Egyptian revolution as they tried to get ahead of how it would turn out for an example of how the Obama administration was just as blindsided by the Arab Spring as everyone else.

For US intervention in the Libyan revolution, after the 1994 Rwandan genocide, Rice said "I swore to myself that if I ever faced such a crisis again, I would come down on the side of dramatic action, going down in flames if that was required."

More generally, a bunch of unconnected dots about supporting democracy or human rights in China, like any other interesting subject, is normal.

> Yet the NYT itself admits: "Diplomatic cables report how American officials frequently assured skeptical [Arab] governments that the training was aimed at reform, not promoting revolutions."

From the same article (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/15/world/15aid.html?pagewante...): "No one doubts that the Arab uprisings are home grown, rather than resulting from “foreign influence,” as alleged by some Middle Eastern leaders."

Re: Chinese Hackers Infiltrate New York Times Computers

#109

Post by gbog » Thu, Jan 31, 2013, 6:00 AM UTC

ced wrote: post #74

lennydizzy wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Chinese, I would say the Chinese government is worried about 'Arab Spring', but that's not why they attacked NYT this time. The 'Great firewall' was built to prevent any uprising similar to 'Arab spring' from being started.

How likely do you think a Chinese spring would be? It's unfortunate that we don't get more foreign perspective on HN and Reddit - I hope you comment more.

> It's unfortunate that we don't get more foreign perspective on HN and Reddit.

Agree. But you should be aware that culturally different point of views and requests to avoid US-centrism on HN are often downvoted. I have experienced it myself. I do not care that much except that I fear other potential contributors may feel it as an injunction to "shut up".

For exmple, I detected that many of my colleagues (in an It company) read HN very regularly, but I am under the impression that they would not try to comment or would be repelled by downvotes.

Re: Chinese Hackers Infiltrate New York Times Computers

#110

Post by veidr » Thu, Jan 31, 2013, 6:05 AM UTC

temphn wrote: post #19

I think it's important to understand the Chinese perspective on this issue, if only to see why they do these things. Start with this: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/15/world/15aid.html?pagewante... U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings Even as the United States poured billions of dollars into foreign military programs and anti-terrorism campaigns, a small core of American government-financed organizations were pr…

I don't think you are wrong about the way China perceives the US influence, and I don't think China is wrong to perceive it that way, either.

The US government publicly avows its support for human rights and democracy around the world in general (even as it diminishes those very principles within its own borders -- but that's another story). It's not exactly a secret, although America definitely makes exceptions for its own convenience all the time (e.g. its support for the Shah of Iran, or the dictator Mubarak), and doesn't tend to publicly proclaim its support for revolution by as-yet unknown actors in nuclear-armed states like China.

However, I don't see any evidence that this notion is related to this specific case of hacking. Concern about US influences that would threaten the autocratic regime that currently controls China may be one big reason why they developed a large-scale military hacking capability.

But in this particular case, it simply looks like the principal(s) of the regime using those capabilities to try to find out the names of people who leaked sensitive information -- presumably, so that those people can be imprisoned/tortured/murdered.