Chinese Hackers Infiltrate New York Times Computers

Right, that's exactly the other citation I needed.

I think that explains why the US is so hostile to the activities of china (and vice versa)

Well, you implied in your comment below that you weren't interested in a simple "discussion of how evil a regime is". Very understandable and I agree with you. Yet the thing is that without this context Americans just don't understand why the Chinese military would get involved on a negative story about a leader. It seems like a gross overreaction. Indeed, without understanding the context it just seems "evil".

Until you realize that undercutting popular support for a leader is step 1 in the PNAC handbook for democratic change. We accuse them of atrocities, we accuse them of holding WMDs, we accuse them of suppressing freedom of speech, we get their population to believe that they are illegitimate by funding "democracy" movements. Then the fighting starts and we drop off weapons with the rebels, even if we know full well this could result in something worse ("Obama administration clearly was worried about the consequences of its hidden hand in helping arm Libyan militants").

Now half a dozen countries are burning across the Middle East in the name of setting up US-controlled democracies.

Yet most Americans don't get why the Chinese would defend their leaders reflexively or why the Chinese military would hit out. The view goes something like this: Sure, Wen Jiaobao may have skimmed some money off the top, but politicians are constantly caught in scandals and China has gotten richer while the US has gotten poorer. So China's corruption isn't fatal to growth, while America's bank/Fed chimera may well be. And yet America wants to set China on fire just like it has so many other countries in the world, first with words and then with guns.

So, yes, I do believe this context is relevant. You don't need to agree with their views, but you do need to understand why they see this as self-defense against US imperialism.

Again, all you've done is repeat the same explanation for the Great Firewall and censorship of news as soon as it starts to appear to be capable of "fomenting dissent". It's worth noting that many in China do not share your view, and we have the weibo messages to prove it. While there is certainly a good bit of animosity aimed at the US (both well-sourced and born of invented stories), it's ridiculous to claim that even a large portion of the populace believes that they need to be protected from revolution brought about by american psyops in the news.

Assuming that of them certainly sells the people of China short, not to mention the complete lack of agency you seem to believe the people that actually live in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, etc had in deciding to revolt in the first place. It's not clear what your personal belief is here (you're only reporting on the "context", after all), but you've repeated the libya arms thing enough that I'll assuage your fears: look back through history. Nation building by rebel proxy does not work as intended. You only have to look at your so called new "US-controlled democracies" to dispel any idea of US control.

Meanwhile, the new york times reported on corruption in those around Wen Jiabao, and the Chinese government hacked into their systems apparently so they could find out who provided information to the reporters and how they got the information that they did. It's a silly strawman to suppose that "without this context Americans just don't understand why the Chinese military would get involved on a negative story about a leader." No, it's extremely clear, and I think few here were very surprised.

All this focus on the sophistication of the Chinese hackers irritates me slightly.

Reading between the lines, it seems the NYT would likely have weathered this "sophisticated" attack a lot better if they had observed a few simple security best practices:

- Salt your password hashes (rendering rainbow tables inert)

- Train your staff NOT to open attachments from unknown sources (especially if you've just written an inflammatory article on a foreign government official)

- Configure your mail server to automatically strip and quarantine any attachment (inbound or outbound) that isn't of a type defined in a very strict white list

- In addition to network firewalls, make use of the software firewall on the PC's themselves by tightly controlling what processes on the machines are given egress permission

This stuff isn't rocket science and if the NYT can't get it right (knowing that they're a natural high profile target), what hope do other firms have?

The focus of the discussion should be on getting to the bottom of why we keep seeing these basic security oversights being made over and over again, not panicking about Chinese über hackers and suggesting everyone move to smart cards, retina scans or paper.

If you read my comments above, you can see that I did indeed read the top comment.

All that is provided is the assertion that all (american?) organizations questioning the Chinese government are apparently seen as arms of the United States's campaign against China, which explains why the Chinese government would make this move. What I was asking for any specific evidence that would preclude the much more obvious explanation that the New York Times wrote a story exposing corruption surrounding the Chinese Premier, and the people infiltrating the system were looking for the sources of that information (which is what the New York Times themselves are claiming). Without specific information, all we're left with is that "the Chinese government does not like dissent", and the Arab spring narrative is merely sophistry.