The Chinese Government have been busy on the net!

Biggins

Reading the magazine Webuser (issue 271) it states that the Chinese government last year alone closed 1.3 million websites. :eek:

They closed that many (including Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and Google) last year that there was a 41 percent drop in web usage by its people.

Thats mad! :eek:

Chuck Stone

As long as they leave the nudey ones alone the regime is safe.

SadieSue

Browsing the internet over there must be so boring!

Samich

another chink in the chinese's armour

Oh_Noes

Biggins wrote: »

They closed that many (including Facebook... Twitter and Google)

All hail our new overlords!

Samich wrote: »

another chink

Racist! :pac:

My name is URL

A great bunch of firewalls

Badgermonkey

Biggins wrote: »

the Chinese government last year alone closed 1.3 million websites

Thank god Fas.ie survived.

It's where programming from 1996 goes to die.

Samich

the great firewall of china

Min

Samich wrote: »

the great firewall of china

You beat me to it, was going to post that.

Sticky_Fingers

Visiting websites in China must be something like this:

Son Of A Vidic

I say the Chinese government is involved in a lot more online 'activities' than just closing down websites.

Saila

someone said "you win the internet" to them and they took it literally

Guill

Corvus Maximus wrote: »

I say the Chinese government is involved in a lot more online 'activities' than just closing down websites.

I would hope so!

Saila

Biggins wrote: »

including Facebook, Twitter...

:books flight on china air:

Kev_ps3

Biggins wrote: »

Reading the magazine Webuser (issue 271) it states that the Chinese government last year alone closed 1.3 million websites. :eek:

They closed that many (including Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and Google) last year that there was a 41 percent drop in web usage by its people.

Thats mad! :eek:

At least they're not invading other countries and killing thousands of people.

Samich

Kev_ps3 wrote: »

At least they're not invading other countries and killing thousands of people.

Ya, they're good dictators, they actually are.

Biggins

Kev_ps3 wrote: »

At least they're not invading other countries and killing thousands of people.

Tibet?
Too busy killing their own people?

Tubsandtiles

For a country with thousands of IT graduates each year this is stupid

Biggins

Tubsandtiles wrote: »

For a country with thousands of IT graduates each year this is stupid

With all those graduates, maybe thats how they got to ban/block so many sites?

Images of John Hurt working in his dark depressing work cubical section, re-writting history for the 1984 (film) faceless government, springs to mind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QF51CqBy81U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4rBDUJTnNU

Trevor451

The sad/ironic thing is that the US is doing the EXACT SAME THING. The US has the power to shut down any website it wants without a trail :rolleyes:

Biggins

Trevor451 wrote: »

The sad/ironic thing is that the US is doing the EXACT SAME THING. The US has the power to shut down any website it wants without a trail :rolleyes:

True to an extent - having the power and doing it though, are two separate entities.

Trevor451

Biggins wrote: »

True to an extent - having the power and doing it though, are two separate entities.

The us has done in it in the past. Have a look at this article:

http://torrentfreak.com/u-s-government-starts-new-round-of-pirate-domain-seizures-110521/

Biggins

Trevor451 wrote: »

The us has done in it in the past. Have a look at this article:

http://torrentfreak.com/u-s-government-starts-new-round-of-pirate-domain-seizures-110521/

America indeed has done it but that was for coptright issues most of the time, others for unquestionably sites that advocate clear violence, etc (yes, the USA is not perfect).
Britian will be doing similar to the USA shorty and increasingly so - given the successful outcome of a court case just recently in London.
I assume other European countries do similar to some extent especially when it come to bulletin boards and child porno.

...That said, so far NOTHING compares to the total cutting off of websites China does - and that includes North Korea where they are so backward, only the elite know mostly what "internet" is and actually have it.

seanmacc

Trevor451 wrote: »

The us has done in it in the past. Have a look at this article:

http://torrentfreak.com/u-s-government-starts-new-round-of-pirate-domain-seizures-110521/

Even simple Rio Ferdinand was kicked back into place by America's internet police: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2011/07/31/rio-ferdinand-claims-whit_n_914176.html

Biggins

seanmacc wrote: »

Even simple Rio Ferdinand was kicked back into place by America's internet police: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2011/07/31/rio-ferdinand-claims-whit_n_914176.html

Pity they couldn't delete him too!

Biggins

I suspect China has a lot to answer for!

Has the United States already suffered its cyberwar Pearl Harbor?

Short version:

McAfee’s study shows that numerous U.S. government agencies were successfully attacked. In addition, Canada, South Korea, Vietnam, the United Nations, and India were hacked. Numerous electronics and defense companies have also fallen victim....

The first shots appear to have been fired in the first major cyber-war. The next question is: “Who’s behind them?” Alperovitch isn’t saying, but some observers suggest that China is behind what might be called a technology Pearl Harbor.

Graphic of who's getting attacked by many trained IT techies from another country: http://tinyurl.com/3u4pqzb

---

Long Version:

Cyber-warfare sounds like something from a science fiction novel. It’s not. It’s reality. Cyber-security firm McAfee claims to have uncovered a cyber-espionage campaign that’s been going on for five years against more than 70 public and private organizations in 14 countries.

The campaign, called “Operation Shady RAT” (remote access tool), was described by Dmitri Alperovitch, McAfee’s VP of threat research in a recent blog post: Revealed: Operation Shady RAT. According to Alperovitch, these attacks are major assaults against both countries and corporations.

He writes, “Having investigated intrusions such as Operation Aurora [China's attack on Google) and Night Dragon (systemic long-term compromise of Western oil and gas industry), as well as numerous others that have not been disclosed publicly, I am convinced that every company in every conceivable industry with significant size and valuable intellectual property and trade secrets has been compromised (or will be shortly), with the great majority of the victims rarely discovering the intrusion or its impact. In fact, I divide the entire set of Fortune Global 2000 firms into two categories: those that know they've been compromised and those that don't yet know. "

Alperovitch also declares that these government-sponsored attacks are on an entirely different scale than those of the kiddie attacks made by such groups as Anonymous and Lulzsec. The McAfee executive wrote, "The targeted compromises--known as 'Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) … we are focused on are much more insidious and occur largely without public disclosures. They present a far greater threat to companies and governments, as the adversary is tenaciously persistent in achieving their objectives. The key to these intrusions is that the adversary is motivated by a massive hunger for secrets and intellectual property; this is different from the immediate financial gratification that drives much of cybercrime, another serious but more manageable threat."

Furthermore, "What we have witnessed over the past five to six years has been nothing short of a historically unprecedented transfer of wealth - closely guarded national secrets (including from classified government networks), source code, bug databases, email archives, negotiation plans and exploration details for new oil and gas field auctions, document stores, legal contracts, SCADA [supervisory control and data acquisition] configurations, design schematics and much more has ‘fallen off the truck’ of numerous, mostly Western companies and disappeared in the ever-growing electronic archives of dogged adversaries.”

McAfee claims to have uncovered this by gaining “access to one specific Command & Control server used by the intruders. We have collected logs that reveal the full extent of the victim population since mid-2006 when the log collection began.”

The actual attack method is familiar to anyone in computer security. “The compromises themselves were standard procedure for these types of targeted intrusions: a spear-phishing email containing an exploit is sent to an individual with the right level of access at the company, and the exploit when opened on an unpatched system will trigger a download of the implant malware. That malware will execute and initiate a backdoor communication channel to the Command & Control web server and interpret the instructions encoded in the hidden comments embedded in the webpage code. This will be quickly followed by live intruders jumping on to the infected machine and proceeding to quickly escalate privileges and move laterally within the organization to establish new persistent footholds via additional compromised machines running implant malware, as well as targeting for quick exfiltration the key data they came for.”

A recent spear-phishing study–an e-mail based attack that tries to trick you into clicking on what appears to be a safe Web link but actually tries to steal data or delivers malware–found that “23% of people worldwide are vulnerable to targeted/spear phishing attack” and that “on an average 60% of corporate employees that were found susceptible to targeted spear phishing responded to the phishing emails within three hours of receiving them.” With odds like that, it’s easy to see why corporate and government spear-phishing could work so well.

McAfee’s study shows that numerous U.S. government agencies were successfully attacked. In addition, Canada, South Korea, Vietnam, the United Nations, and India were hacked. Numerous electronics and defense companies have also fallen victim.

What’s the point of these attacks? Alperovitch isn’t sure but he believes, “If even a fraction of it is used to build better competing products or beat a competitor at a key negotiation (due to having stolen the other team’s playbook), the loss represents a massive economic threat not just to individual companies and industries but to entire countries that face the prospect of decreased economic growth in a suddenly more competitive landscape and the loss of jobs in industries that lose out to unscrupulous competitors in another part of the world, not to mention the national security impact of the loss of sensitive intelligence or defense information.”

The first shots appear to have been fired in the first major cyber-war. The next question is: “Who’s behind them?” Alperovitch isn’t saying, but some observers suggest that China is behind what might be called a technology Pearl Harbor.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/has-the-united-states-already-suffered-its-cyberwar-pearl-harbor/53901?tag=nl.e550

End of the day, its no third world country that is out there doing all the damage and hacking/attacking.
Its a country that has a lot to gain by stealing technology and information to use to its own means.
I know who I suspect.

Don Juan DeMagoo

Biggins wrote: »

I suspect China has a lot to answer for!

Has the United States already suffered its cyberwar Pearl Harbor?

End of the day, its no third world country that is out there doing all the damage and hacking/attacking.
Its a country that has a lot to gain by stealing technology and information to use to its own means.
I know who I suspect.

Hold on a second Biggins, I fail to see what China has to gain, as america is its golden goose, seeing as it is so financially indebted to China.

Biggins

Don Juan DeMagoo wrote: »

Hold on a second Biggins, I fail to see what China has to gain, as america is its golden goose, seeing as it is so financially indebted to China.

China now might have the money - but tech-wise, they are still playing catch-up big time in a lot of areas.
They have a lot to gain if they can short-cut the R&D (Research and Development) process by years, if not decades - via the internet and a bit of hacking/stealing?

Don Juan DeMagoo

Biggins wrote: »

China now might have the money - but tech-wise, they are still playing catch-up big time in a lot of areas.
They have a lot to gain if they can short-cut the R&R process by years, if not decades - via the internet and a bit of hacking/stealing?

I may not know a great deal but from reading history every superpower or one on the rise always stole/replicated other powers techniques etc and incorporated them as their own, the roman empire for example. This follows through to the corporate world.

Basically i am saying that is this not an historical norm? Just to be clear I am not condoning it any way:)

Biggins

Don Juan DeMagoo wrote: »

I may not know a great deal but from reading history every superpower or one on the rise always stole/replicated other powers techniques etc and incorporated them as their own, the roman empire for example. This follows through to the corporate world.

Basically i am saying that is this not an historical norm? Just to be clear I am not condoning it any way:)

No, you have a valid true point based on history.
China (whom I suspect as chief current culprit) is doing it presently following on from others in history and have it down to a fine technical art it seems.

(Even America did it from WW2 and the space race)

Lollymcd

Is this why my friend from China doesn't answer my emails? Or is she just a bad friend?

Don Juan DeMagoo

Biggins wrote: »

No, you have a valid true point based on history.
China (whom I suspect as chief current culprit) is doing it presently following on from others in history and have it down to a fine technical art it seems.

(Even America did it from WW2 and the space race)

Not just America. Russia, France, Great Britain. To the victor goes the spoils. I am am just trying to debate with myself is what China is doing wrong or just a norm. I started picking up a bit of Mandarin a couple of months ago, just to be safe

Biggins

Don Juan DeMagoo wrote: »

Not just America. Russia, France, Great Britain. To the victor goes the spoils. I am am just trying to debate with myself is what China is doing wrong or just a norm. I started picking up a bit of Mandarin a couple of months ago, just to be safe

O' indeed - I just used America as one example (as so not to derail the thread by going on about others)

I Sort of have the thought that its wrong to be doing these things if it means loss of lives, earnings, etc unfairly towards those that might be the victims.

As for languages, I just a few days ago ordered (through the net) a Berlitz course in Chinese too - and a polish up course for my Japanese!

Danbo!

I wouldn't be sure about that article. A friend of mine went to china last week and updated his Facebook status while there.

Biggins

Danbo! wrote: »

I wouldn't be sure about that article. A friend of mine went to china last week and updated his Facebook status while there.

They do allow Facebook back on and off.
They keep yanking that one in particular or sections of it, when the company offends.
It might be allowed one week and not the next. Its a very regular thing apparently.

Don Juan DeMagoo

Biggins wrote: »

O' indeed - I just used America as one example (as so not to derail the thread by going on about others)

I Sort of have the thought that its wrong to be doing these things if it means loss of lives, earnings, etc unfairly towards those that might be the victims.

As for languages, I just a few days ago ordered (through the net) a Berlitz course in Chinese too - and a polish up course for my Japanese!

Wow fair play I am impressed!

Biggins

Don Juan DeMagoo wrote: »

Wow fair play I am impressed!

Joss Whedon called it right in Firefly/Serenity years ago as regards what the principle world languages would be in the future.
The man's a god!

Killer Pigeon

Kev_ps3 wrote: »

At least they're not invading other countries and killing thousands of people.

China is a crouching tiger; a hidden dragon. If they gain too much power, they will strike.

Capt'n Midnight

http://ph.news.yahoo.com/google-bans-11m-co-cc-sites-search-results-101605823.html

Citing their potential to store spam and malware, search giant Google has removed some 11 million .co.cc sites from its search results.

Capt'n Midnight

Biggins wrote: »

Joss Whedon called it right in Firefly/Serenity years ago as regards what the principle world languages would be in the future.
The man's a god!

The second most used language for blogs is of course Persian.

:eek:

Don Juan DeMagoo

Killer Pigeon wrote: »

China is a crouching tiger; a hidden dragon. If they gain too much power, they will strike.

Wouldn't every nation do the same in the exact same position though in all fairness ?

Don Juan DeMagoo

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

The second most used language for blogs is of course Persian.

:eek:

Wow did nor know that....... alright lads it is off to Thermopylae again lol

Biggins

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

The second most used language for blogs is of course Persian.

:eek:

That now, I didn't know.

benj

SadieSue wrote: »

Browsing the internet over there must be so boring!

it sure is, there in feb and even on the rte iplayer all you can get
is religious programmes.
fairly f**ked up allright.

Biggins

benj wrote: »

it sure is, there in feb and even on the rte iplayer all you can get
is religious programmes.
fairly f**ked up allright.

Aye, they try where possible, not to let too many western casual lifestyle influences/attitudes seep through.

benj

Danbo! wrote: »

I wouldn't be sure about that article. A friend of mine went to china last week and updated his Facebook status while there.

ya you can get on it for 15 min by downloading a company programme,
but after 15 min you have to sign up for it and pay,
wouldnt chance that over there :eek:

Biggins

benj wrote: »

ya you can get on it for 15 min by downloading a company programme,
but after 15 min you have to sign up for it and pay,
wouldnt chance that over there :eek:

Neither would I.
Lord knows what spyware could be buried in code or small inner program collecting data and/or monitoring also by the Chinese Government, once they allowed the app to run - but with quiet conditions attached in previous company negotiations.

Meanwhile as regards Facebook being banned at times, have a read here:
* http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=9351577890&topic=9469

* http://www.web2asia.com/2009/07/07/first-twitter-now-facebook-banned-in-china/

After microblogging service Twitter was already inaccessible during the last few days, Facebook now seems to be the latest victim of Chinas moves related to the recent incidents in its north western province. The recent bans and the blocking of Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and even hickups with Google products and MSN are a major pain for companies and individuals working in China. Previous blocks of Western Web 2.0 services that were banned in China were sometimes only temporary but this time we are afraid the block will be permanent. The only reliable way to access blocked websites like Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and many more is by using a professional VPN service (SSL not PPTP).

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China

...And if you can trust the news, they are even trying to buy it too!
See: http://nation.foxnews.com/china/2011/07/05/china-wants-buy-facebook
...A bit of a Chinese puzzle via their government!

Biggins

Question - and its NOT a complaint...

Not for the first time I've noticed that journal.ie has posted stories a day or two after they have been posted here in After Hours.

As with this very hacking story.
The Journal ran this story tonight on their website: http://www.thejournal.ie/72-global-organisations-hit-by-worlds-biggest-ever-cyber-attacks-192892-Aug2011/

Just wondering - is After Hours making their job a bit easier? LOL :pac:
Is our pay cheque in the post?

Lanaier

Biggins wrote: »

They closed that many (including Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and Google) last year that there was a 41 percent drop in web usage by its people.

Closed?

Those websites are blocked by the GFW.
There is a big difference between closing down a website and blocking one.
So were those "1.3 million" websites really closed?

I'm really having a hard time swallowing that number in either case.

Samich wrote: »

the great firewall of china

Min wrote: »

You beat me to it, was going to post that.

Beat him to what?
That phrase was probably coined sometimes in the 90's, that's what it's commonly referred to: "The GFW"

Kev_ps3 wrote: »

At least they're not invading other countries and killing thousands of people.

Patience.

Killer Pigeon wrote: »

China is a crouching tiger; a hidden dragon. If they gain too much power, they will strike.

Wow, you actually used that in a sentence.
You should write scripts for Micheal Bay.

No "Enter the Dragon"?
"Big trouble in (Big) little China"?

Lanaier

benj wrote: »

ya you can get on it for 15 min by downloading a company programme,
but after 15 min you have to sign up for it and pay,
wouldnt chance that over there :eek:

Most of us use a VPN.
Simple, safe, easy.