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China's Man-On-the-Side Attack on GitHub

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Re: China's Man-On-the-Side Attack on GitHub

#11

Post by mqsoh »

themartorana wrote: post #8
tn13 wrote: post #7

Our government is using our own money to spy and undermine our tech companies. What exactly is it doing to ensure American companies are defended ? Protecting us from international thugs like China's Communisty Party is the primary duty of our government.

"... should be the primary duty of our government." Fixed it? Although it's interesting to think about. Actual government retaliation would/could be seen as war provocation, especially if China holds on to any plausible deniability. Cyber warfare is currently very hard to prove, but even harder to hold accountable for. Even with DPRK, and our little shut-down-the-"internet" quiet retaliation thing that happened a few…

There must be obscure rules. The United States government can plausibly deny shutting down DPRK's Internet. ...It was barely plausible that there was a reason to shut it down.

There's numerous people and numerous ways for those people to respond to this attack. Maybe they're getting something ready or maybe they don't care.

Re: China's Man-On-the-Side Attack on GitHub

#12

Post by oxide »

themartorana wrote: post #8
tn13 wrote: post #7

Our government is using our own money to spy and undermine our tech companies. What exactly is it doing to ensure American companies are defended ? Protecting us from international thugs like China's Communisty Party is the primary duty of our government.

"... should be the primary duty of our government." Fixed it? Although it's interesting to think about. Actual government retaliation would/could be seen as war provocation, especially if China holds on to any plausible deniability. Cyber warfare is currently very hard to prove, but even harder to hold accountable for. Even with DPRK, and our little shut-down-the-"internet" quiet retaliation thing that happened a few…

his post sounded like he thinks the government ought to be defending instead of attacking

Re: China's Man-On-the-Side Attack on GitHub

#13

Post by meritt »

mraison wrote: post #10

I still don't really get it. What's the actual goal behind the attack? When the Chinese government decides to block a website, I can at least understand their motivations, as bad as they may be. But DDOSing Github just seems to be pissing the whole world off for a few hours without any actual long term consequences.

They're probably demonstrating that the Chinese government can leverage nearly the entire Chinese internet userbase to DDOS anyone they want, at any time, and the easiest protection mechanism is to block Chinese IPs. Which is exactly want they want.

Re: China's Man-On-the-Side Attack on GitHub

#15

Post by _xnmw »

mraison wrote: post #10

I still don't really get it. What's the actual goal behind the attack? When the Chinese government decides to block a website, I can at least understand their motivations, as bad as they may be. But DDOSing Github just seems to be pissing the whole world off for a few hours without any actual long term consequences.

Who said this would only be for a few hours? DDOSing Github drives up their hosting costs massively, creating a financial incentive to comply with China's demands.

Aside from that, it's just Eastern politics, which works by a whole lot of bullying and childish tactics when they don't get their way. Not to say that it doesn't happen in Western politics, just much more subtly. And it doesn't seem so bad since we're the good guys.

Re: China's Man-On-the-Side Attack on GitHub

#16

Post by girvo »

meritt wrote: post #13
mraison wrote: post #10

I still don't really get it. What's the actual goal behind the attack? When the Chinese government decides to block a website, I can at least understand their motivations, as bad as they may be. But DDOSing Github just seems to be pissing the whole world off for a few hours without any actual long term consequences.

They're probably demonstrating that the Chinese government can leverage nearly the entire Chinese internet userbase to DDOS anyone they want, at any time, and the easiest protection mechanism is to block Chinese IPs. Which is exactly want they want.

> leverage nearly the entire Chinese internet userbase

Well, not just Chinese users. Anyone who was accessing a site that used Baidu's analytics, regardless of where they came from. Things like this remind me why I like Piwik so much.

Re: China's Man-On-the-Side Attack on GitHub

#17

Post by _xnmw »

meritt wrote: post #13
mraison wrote: post #10

I still don't really get it. What's the actual goal behind the attack? When the Chinese government decides to block a website, I can at least understand their motivations, as bad as they may be. But DDOSing Github just seems to be pissing the whole world off for a few hours without any actual long term consequences.

They're probably demonstrating that the Chinese government can leverage nearly the entire Chinese internet userbase to DDOS anyone they want, at any time, and the easiest protection mechanism is to block Chinese IPs. Which is exactly want they want.

Except this particular attack is not coming from Chinese IPs, rather from visitors of Chinese websites from outside China.

Re: China's Man-On-the-Side Attack on GitHub

#19

Post by grandalf »

jewbacca wrote: post #4
misiti3780 wrote: post #2

i read that github contains content that the Chinese do not like and that is why this is happening - what is the content they are so pissed about ?

https://github.com/cn-nytimes/ and https://github.com/greatfire/ host information about and software for circumventing the Chinese government's internet censorship systems -- which, among many other things, blocks access to, eg, Google, and The New York Times. Apparently they (the Chinese government) are not willing to entirely block Github traffic in the same way (presumably as an important tool for their software i…

> information about and software for circumventing the Chinese government's internet censorship systems -- which, among many other things, blocks access to, eg, Google, and The New York Times.

The actual impact of the attack was to have thousands of news outlets and discussion forum sites mention and link to the github repos that offer circumvention.

Further, by attacking Github, it's guaranteed that many of the most tech-savvy Chinese internet users will have the existance of the forbidden repos launched into their consciousness.

Of course the Chinese government knows this and was likely not responsible for the attack.

The attack would not be possible to commit by the actual perpetrator if there weren't such a knee-jerk bias against the Chinese government's internet censorship.

Let it also be noted that the US Government censors lots of information too, both through so-called "official secrets" requiring security clearance granted by party members, and via laws that crack down on things deemed morally wrong, as well as illicit drugs.

Re: China's Man-On-the-Side Attack on GitHub

#20

Post by rtpg »

_xnmw wrote: post #17
meritt wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're probably demonstrating that the Chinese government can leverage nearly the entire Chinese internet userbase to DDOS anyone they want, at any time, and the easiest protection mechanism is to block Chinese IPs. Which is exactly want they want.

Except this particular attack is not coming from Chinese IPs, rather from visitors of Chinese websites from outside China.

right, which is why unfortunately github couldn't counter by piping in some anti-china propaganda or something.

As a sidenote though, VPN users are probably also affected.

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