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Australia says it's under nation-state cyberattack

thecyberwire.com

61–70 of 82 posts

Re: Australia says it's under nation-state cyberattack

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By recognizing Taiwan as the defacto China

I think this would be a functionally useless move that might hasten the coming of a potential ww3. It doesn't seem like a solution to me, just provocation. It doesn't make the PRC less powerful, it doesn't change how much of the world's manufacturing has been moved there, it doesn't change who owes them money, or their cyber abilities/actions. What does it do but exclude them from any dialog to make force and violenc…

Because dialog doesn't work on them. They only understand force and power.

Re: Australia says it's under nation-state cyberattack

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention hacking attribution is extremely difficult. Read up on the “evidence” used to attribute the DNC hack. It’s the kind of stuff that wouldn’t pass the smell test with security engineers here.

It's funny you say that, because I'm a security engineer and I talked to loads of other security engineers who didn't question it. People at the top of the field. It looked bogus as hell at the time, but you couldn't easily say so. Hackers are as susceptible to partisan politics as anyone else. At least we now have the benefit of the CrowdStrike President's declassified testimony.

It took me forever to find out that the “back channel” with trump tower and Alfa Bank was a hacked Point-of-sale terminal in the lobby sending spam mail. Snopes still laughably lists this as “unproven”

I remember at the time thinking “what are they doing, using an IRC channel?”

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-server-tied-to-russi...

Re: Australia says it's under nation-state cyberattack

#63
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taiwan and Mainland China both claim to be true China. Taiwan used to be on UN security council till it was ousted and replaced by PRC: http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/04/taiwan-still-permanent-member... . We just have to replace them again.

What mandate would the Taiwan government have to rule China? Nobody on the mainland voted for them.

Nobody on the mainland voted for their current government either

Re: Australia says it's under nation-state cyberattack

#64
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taiwan and Mainland China both claim to be true China. Taiwan used to be on UN security council till it was ousted and replaced by PRC: http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/04/taiwan-still-permanent-member... . We just have to replace them again.

What mandate would the Taiwan government have to rule China? Nobody on the mainland voted for them.

The Tawainese government used to rule mainland China back when it was known as the Republic of China, before retreating to Taiwan during a civil war.

They were also the "China" entity that was the founding member of the UN. It was only a few years after the UN's founding that the Communist Party won the civil war and formed a new country (the People's Republic of China), yet it took several decades for the UN to officially recognize them as the representative of "China".

The argument to make isn't that they should have a mandate to rule mainland China, nor even that they should be mainland China's representative of the UN. But rather that they should be their own representative at the UN, and have claim to the permanent seat of the Security Council that mainland China currently holds, since it was originally theirs to begin with.

It's a nuclear strategy that'd cause all hell to break loose if that were ever attempted, but is a plausible enough argument that it could likely be forced through if enough parties truly wanted to strip China of their veto power.

Re: Australia says it's under nation-state cyberattack

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By recognizing Taiwan as the defacto China

I think this would be a functionally useless move that might hasten the coming of a potential ww3. It doesn't seem like a solution to me, just provocation. It doesn't make the PRC less powerful, it doesn't change how much of the world's manufacturing has been moved there, it doesn't change who owes them money, or their cyber abilities/actions. What does it do but exclude them from any dialog to make force and violenc…

WW3 is going to start in the South China Sea eventually, it seems. With each year it seems less and less avoidable.

Re: Australia says it's under nation-state cyberattack

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny you say that, because I'm a security engineer and I talked to loads of other security engineers who didn't question it. People at the top of the field. It looked bogus as hell at the time, but you couldn't easily say so. Hackers are as susceptible to partisan politics as anyone else. At least we now have the benefit of the CrowdStrike President's declassified testimony.

It took me forever to find out that the “back channel” with trump tower and Alfa Bank was a hacked Point-of-sale terminal in the lobby sending spam mail. Snopes still laughably lists this as “unproven” I remember at the time thinking “what are they doing, using an IRC channel?” https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-server-tied-to-russi...

I was screaming inside when the FBI started waving around that they had evidence and all they could show for it in public at the time was a handful of incoming HTTP requests from Russian IPs.

I get hundreds of MB of traffic from Russian, Chinese, etc IP addresses every week scanning for drupal/wordpress/etc vulnerabilities. It hardly meant anything.

Worse still is that we know that this happens and my colleagues still just go along with whatever companies like CrowdStrike or Trail of Bits or whoever say. Like we make business decisions based on their word alone. They're popular, so they must be correct. Group think is real and there's large numbers of us who aren't as capable as we claim to be. 95% of the work for most is checking the boxes on compliance questionnaires and getting shut down/stalled by the engineering & ops teams who actually make their companies money.

Re: Australia says it's under nation-state cyberattack

#67
post #48
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you please give me a proof that it's China and not someone else...or nothing at all? I always hear cyber-attack's from Russia, North Korea or China, but never from Israel or the US, are they just so bad in covering up or is maybe something else behind it?

> or is maybe something else behind it? What precisely are you saying?

>What precisely are you saying?

That you CAN say something, but its not true an never was.

Re: Australia says it's under nation-state cyberattack

#68
post #4

Should the international laws be amended to consider state-led cyber attacks an act of war in additional to traditional aggression? Seems like UN Security Council should deal with these matters.

International law barely exists and is unenforceable. If a superpower--especially a permanent Security Council member--wants to do something, there's absolutely no recourse. Look at Russia and Crimea. That's the most egregious violation of the notion of international law in recent history, and nothing of consequence happened. The big powers can do whatever they want, and the worst response will be token economic sanc…

In layman terms, what the fuck they want!!

Re: Australia says it's under nation-state cyberattack

#69
post #40
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you please give me a proof that it's China and not someone else...or nothing at all? I always hear cyber-attack's from Russia, North Korea or China, but never from Israel or the US, are they just so bad in covering up or is maybe something else behind it?

Such large scale attacks are organized and effectively weapons. Now, think which country wants to attack Australia and teach it lesson for various noises it has been making against it. Now look at the past history of the said country. There is your evidence.

So that means the next cyber-attack against the US comes from Afghanistan, Iran or Vietnam?

That's NOT evidence...could be true or not.

PS: But i think your 'evidence' is exactly what people of color have a problem with, especially in the US.

Re: Australia says it's under nation-state cyberattack

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it the US' problem? If AUSTRALIA were currently being led by a wiser politician, or indeed had in the last .. 20 years .. been led by wise politicians .. it wouldn't be in this mess right now in the first place. Its only because Australia kowtows with fluidity every time the US snaps its fingers that its in this mess right now. Australians need to stop being the lapdogs to the American empire, and start thinki…

> Why is it the US' problem? The US and Australia are allied. They're in Five Eyes together, for example.

Yeah, that's a heinous set of circumstances guaranteed lots and lots of future turmoil.
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