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Pin-pointing China's attack against GitHub

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Re: Pin-pointing China's attack against GitHub

#91

Post by dragonwriter »

smilekzs wrote: post #89
maxerickson wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think an interesting question is how likely it is that some of the great firewall is compromised. (It could be by some party outside of China, or by some group inside of the Chinese government that does not have an official mandate to use it for things like the Github attack)

Extremely unlikely. GFW is, ironically, considered "critical infrastructure" and is closely monitored.

Ironically? How is it ironic that a centerpiece of the he Chinese Government's control and monitoring of information is considered critical infrastructure and closely monitored by the Chinese Government?

Re: Pin-pointing China's attack against GitHub

#92

Post by whybroke »

whoopdedo wrote: post #11

To say that the "Chinese government" is involved I think understates the situation. We know as fact that their army has invested considerable time and money in a cyberwarfare unit. And that the company that operates the Firewall is a military contractor. When Sony was hacked a few months ago, the media couldn't wait to label it a "terrorist act" by North Korea. I just now searched Google News for "github terrorism".…

There is never going to be serious public criticism of China in the west because there are vast numbers of western organizations making vast sums there. The public will see little to nothing that might ask for trade restrictions as a response.

If decades of continuous trade deficit and serious attacks on places like Los Alamos go under or unreported, don't hold your breath for GitHub.

Of course if it were North Korea (or Iran) it would be headlines.

Re: Pin-pointing China's attack against GitHub

#93

Post by weberc2 »

snowwolf wrote: post #87
baconschizer wrote: post #64

Is this April fool joke? Or are you guys really taking this whole Chinese government theory seriously? If you were leading a 1.6bn populated country how much you would care about a programmer's code site? To give all those conspiracy theorists a clear picture, what really happened is merely the scale of problem you have never worked on or dreamed to be working on outside China. This happened year ago when a Chinese s…

I made a similar comment elsewhere in the thread, but lets assume it's not the Chinese government and it's something accidentally deployed or a hack by some unknown entity. Why is the code still running a week later? It doesn't take that long to find the offending server/s code and remove it. Especially as it is making the Chinese government look bad, there would be added incentive to fix this pretty quickly.

If it was an "accident" that made the Chinese government look bad, we would be hearing about the "unrelated" murder of magistrates by now.

Re: Pin-pointing China's attack against GitHub

#94

Post by moe »

This mouth-breathing Bullshit really needs to stop.

the overwhelmingly most likely suspect for the source of the GitHub attacks is the Chinese government.

Why would the "Chinese government" carry out an open attack against an american company for absolutely no potential gain at all?

Do you really think they are stupid enough to believe such an attack could remove these two software packages from the internet?

Re: Pin-pointing China's attack against GitHub

#95

Post by mckoss »

imron wrote: post #81
Ashwinning wrote: post #16

"blocking GitHub is not really a viable option" he said. Tell that to the world's craziest democracy - India, which banned GitHub, Vimeo, Pastebin and a bunch of others in December last year. Some bans were lifted later. Source : http://www.zdnet.com/article/india-blocks-32-websites-includ...

Agree with this. Anyone who thinks blocking GitHub is not really a viable option has never been on the other side of the GFW. The Chinese government will happily block any site they want to and they have little/no regard for the popularity or usefulness of the site in question, and often they will block popular foreign sites to help copycat local versions thrive. Off the top of my head they block Facebook, Twitter an…

You can't selectively block content on an SSL connection w/o having a back door to the encryption keys used to secure the connection. A man in the middle attack would be detectable unless the root certificates were compromised.

Re: Pin-pointing China's attack against GitHub

#96

Post by wnevets »

moe wrote: post #94

This mouth-breathing Bullshit really needs to stop. the overwhelmingly most likely suspect for the source of the GitHub attacks is the Chinese government. Why would the "Chinese government" carry out an open attack against an american company for absolutely no potential gain at all? Do you really think they are stupid enough to believe such an attack could remove these two software packages from the internet?

What is the diplomatic downside for china exactly? If China can occupy & claim other countries territory in the face of international pressure without a problem, what makes you think a convert op to DDoS github is out of the question?

Re: Pin-pointing China's attack against GitHub

#97

Post by moe »

snowwolf wrote: post #63
mfkp wrote: post #8

While this is a very interesting read (learned a thing or two), the author's conclusion is a bit suspect. Using my custom http-traceroute, I've proven that the man-in-the-middle machine attacking GitHub is located on or near the Great Firewall of China. Although suspicious, it seems one would need to know a lot more about China Unicom and their infrastructure to say this conclusively.

I think the thing everyone is forgetting is that if it isn't state sponsored/approved then why hasn't it been turned off (as far as I am aware the attack is still ongoing). If it was a hack, surely China Unicom should have fixed it by now?

Has someone contacted China Unicom about this?

Perhaps they don't even know something is going on?

Re: Pin-pointing China's attack against GitHub

#98

Post by est »

imron wrote: post #81
Ashwinning wrote: post #16

"blocking GitHub is not really a viable option" he said. Tell that to the world's craziest democracy - India, which banned GitHub, Vimeo, Pastebin and a bunch of others in December last year. Some bans were lifted later. Source : http://www.zdnet.com/article/india-blocks-32-websites-includ...

Agree with this. Anyone who thinks blocking GitHub is not really a viable option has never been on the other side of the GFW. The Chinese government will happily block any site they want to and they have little/no regard for the popularity or usefulness of the site in question, and often they will block popular foreign sites to help copycat local versions thrive. Off the top of my head they block Facebook, Twitter an…

> Agree with this. Anyone who thinks blocking GitHub is not really a viable option has never been on the other side of the GFW.

Before long time ago, people hosting tons of anti Chinese government stuff on Google, especially Common Storage Service, yes people say China wouldn't dare block Google.

LOL

Re: Pin-pointing China's attack against GitHub

#99

Post by brudgers »

nicpottier wrote: post #85
brudgers wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diplomatic logic suggests Github is serving as an object lesson: 1. 中华人民共和国 has laws. 2. 中华人民共和国 is well connected to the internet. 3. 中华人民共和国 can project its interests around the world easily in rather nasty ways. 4. 中华人民共和国 can project its interests from within its borders. 5. 中华人民共和国 has an interest in controlling commerce within its borders. I believe this is an act of foreign policy, not domestic. It's not about…

The mechanics of the attack are entirely within the realm of sanctioned internet behavior Not sure what you mean by "sanctioned" here. Technically possible? Yes. But also abusing and perverting the most important medium of our age. The internet largely works BECAUSE of trust and cooperation and BECAUSE actors chose to not fuck with each other. If China truly is behind this I have half a mind to just cut them entirely…

The web is built to permit any website to load arbitrary javascript on a person's browser for whatever use that website chooses. It is also built to permit any website from loading arbitrary tracking technology for whatever purpose the website chooses, but 中华人民共和国 is not really interested in that.

There is significant evidence that the US, UK, and other state actors are fucking with people. That it is not in the same way 中华人民共和国 is is a relevant fact to some people and hair splitting to others. Likewise the trend in 中华人民共和国 toward greater democracy and in the US, UK and other nation states toward greater oligarchy is a relevant fact to some and hair splitting to others.

Free speech and democracy only exit so long as the sovereign believes they will keep the peace. The US, UK and other sovereigns willingly restrict free speech in favor of intellectual property interests in recent days. They have always been willing to curtail the trappings of popular sovereignty to keep the peace. That's the social contract.

The internet has grown where and in directions that coincide with the interests of sovereigns. Sometimes that means acceding to popular demand. Sometimes it doesnt (e.g. Napster).

Re: Pin-pointing China's attack against GitHub

#100

Post by brudgers »

jacquesm wrote: post #79
brudgers wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diplomatic logic suggests Github is serving as an object lesson: 1. 中华人民共和国 has laws. 2. 中华人民共和国 is well connected to the internet. 3. 中华人民共和国 can project its interests around the world easily in rather nasty ways. 4. 中华人民共和国 can project its interests from within its borders. 5. 中华人民共和国 has an interest in controlling commerce within its borders. I believe this is an act of foreign policy, not domestic. It's not about…

> The great wall comes with terms and conditions. I don't consider myself subject to those terms and conditions and attacking github affects me in a very direct way. As such this is not acceptable and I hope that sufficient work will go into un-ambiguously determining who did this.

Github is a commercial interest. 中华人民共和国 has in recent years worked with commercial interests to mutually acceptable solutions. From 中华人民共和国's standpoint, what the internet's surfs want is Github's concern and they can make their business decisions accordingly.

Consider it a DCMA takedown notice.

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