The article misses the context of our generation, in which multiple Western and Eastern governments as an underlying trend have been exercising the same behaviors.
Australia officially banned strong encryption for state surveillance this week. The Unite States got caught in the world's most intrusive global and domestic surveillance effort and buried the news of this through its relationship with the domestic press. Poland repealed its supreme court after upending its government. Israel has been criticized for its domestic assassination program targeting thousands of people a year. The United States has a threat scoring system automatically scoring political, social, economic, and other "risk" data into municipal police departments so that these people can be monitored and managed without a warrant.
The fact of the matter is Western nations have been engaging on censorship, surveillance and "perception management" and "strategic communication" (read: propaganda) campaigns at home and around the world for decades.
Chinese hackers aren't "Us versus Them". The British _helped_ the Chinese establish a modern propaganda program over the past decade. Where are the British in this article?
Overall, disappointed at the narrow view of the article. It can't offer solutions because its hasn't identified the problems.
Every country uses their advantages, but I think you've painted a false equivalence here. Your comment won't get you a reduced Social Credit System score. Nobody's going to come knocking on your door. You can post critiques of Britain, US, EU etc but you'll still be unjailed and alive in the morning.
You seem to be suggesting that the Chinese should be excused for such attacks because the British somehow helped them establish a propaganda program or that that they should be excused because Poland dismissed it's supreme court.
Do you not believe that any state sponsored attack on a non-state entity is inappropriate, or only those conducted by "the West"?
"Chinese hackers aren't "Us versus Them". The British _helped_ the Chinese establish a modern propaganda program over the past decade. Where are the British in this article?"
Can you point us to some articles about this? I've never heard of this. It's fascinating!
>The United States has a threat scoring system automatically scoring political, social, economic, and other "risk" data into municipal police departments so that these people can be monitored and managed without a warrant.
This wouldn't be surprising if true, but do you have a source to verify this claim?
I agree, but at the bottom of the article it states that the article is an excerpt from a book about the great firewall. From this context, I can understand the scope of the article. An article centered around your statements here would be interesting to read.
>Back in 2015, though, GitHub was still an up-and-coming, independent company whose success came from making it considerably easier for other people to create computer software.
GitHub was an "up-and-coming" company just three years ago in 2015? They were founded in 2008 and immediately exploded in popularity. I can't take the rest of the article seriously after reading just three paragraphs.
I would consider the audience not being engineers who use tools/services like github everyday. At the end of the day, github wasn't some huge public company with high market cap, and were recently bought by microsoft.
Up and coming doesn't mean small. It certainly saw significant growth from 2015-18. I don't think it's too egregious to write that, even if I wouldn't do it myself.
DDOSses (some of them) from China are indeed incredible. You trace them back, and they turn out to come from the central datacenters of China Telecom itself. Right out of the middle of their network core.
At first you think "IP spoofing". Every self-respecting DDOSer does it these days. And that's true. Then you start tracing the path of the traffic. Turns out the packets come straight from direct peering interface with China Telecom, in Hong Kong. The IPs WEREN'T spoofed (so luckily they suck at it, or at least some departments do).
Absolutely incredible. In my opinion this government maintains datacenters, at least 40-50 racks, JUST for ddosing sites they dislike on the internet.
Just imagine what the legal and PR disaster any western telco would face if they had maintained a datacenter dedicated to sabotaging others on the internet. Incredible.
It also makes it hard to decide what to do. Cut off China Telecom ? You get a choice: cut off all government (and academia) in China, or cut off everyone else (except "special economic zones"). That's pretty much it for mainland traffic.
Take any given server.
Log the IPs of invalid SSH attempts to access the machine over 3 months.
Plot the IPs on a geolocation.
Chinese originating IPs are the overwhelming number.
I posted my actual data years ago as a response to some comment, but I could just grab my recent logs and nothing has changed much (frequency, outliers, and some volume trading).
While the phrasing may be obtuse, it's a sentiment reflecting reality.
>GitHub and Tibetans like Lobsang Sither were among the first victims on a new front in China’s war on the internet, launched by a new breed of censor determined to go after the country’s enemies wherever they might be, using whatever means necessary.
I wonder if China's fentanyl factories aren't plugged into the internet...
A DDoS is not "hacking". I've personally seen DDoS much bigger than the one described in the article over things as trivial as League of Legends online gaming.
[+] [-] bigmonads|7 years ago|reply
Australia officially banned strong encryption for state surveillance this week. The Unite States got caught in the world's most intrusive global and domestic surveillance effort and buried the news of this through its relationship with the domestic press. Poland repealed its supreme court after upending its government. Israel has been criticized for its domestic assassination program targeting thousands of people a year. The United States has a threat scoring system automatically scoring political, social, economic, and other "risk" data into municipal police departments so that these people can be monitored and managed without a warrant.
The fact of the matter is Western nations have been engaging on censorship, surveillance and "perception management" and "strategic communication" (read: propaganda) campaigns at home and around the world for decades.
Chinese hackers aren't "Us versus Them". The British _helped_ the Chinese establish a modern propaganda program over the past decade. Where are the British in this article?
Overall, disappointed at the narrow view of the article. It can't offer solutions because its hasn't identified the problems.
[+] [-] richardw|7 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System
[+] [-] uberman|7 years ago|reply
Do you not believe that any state sponsored attack on a non-state entity is inappropriate, or only those conducted by "the West"?
[+] [-] hangonhn|7 years ago|reply
Can you point us to some articles about this? I've never heard of this. It's fascinating!
[+] [-] vokep|7 years ago|reply
This wouldn't be surprising if true, but do you have a source to verify this claim?
[+] [-] ilovetux|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ctoth|7 years ago|reply
Spot articles mentioning China's bad behavior before they get comments.
- Write a comment about how the very top comments will be blatant whataboutism/otherwise pointing out that ... "other people do X too!"
- Encrypt and publish the comment.
- Wait.
- Publish the key.
- Look like a time traveler.
[+] [-] lightbyte|7 years ago|reply
GitHub was an "up-and-coming" company just three years ago in 2015? They were founded in 2008 and immediately exploded in popularity. I can't take the rest of the article seriously after reading just three paragraphs.
[+] [-] bluntfang|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thro_a_way|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] goobynight|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] candiodari|7 years ago|reply
At first you think "IP spoofing". Every self-respecting DDOSer does it these days. And that's true. Then you start tracing the path of the traffic. Turns out the packets come straight from direct peering interface with China Telecom, in Hong Kong. The IPs WEREN'T spoofed (so luckily they suck at it, or at least some departments do).
Absolutely incredible. In my opinion this government maintains datacenters, at least 40-50 racks, JUST for ddosing sites they dislike on the internet.
Just imagine what the legal and PR disaster any western telco would face if they had maintained a datacenter dedicated to sabotaging others on the internet. Incredible.
It also makes it hard to decide what to do. Cut off China Telecom ? You get a choice: cut off all government (and academia) in China, or cut off everyone else (except "special economic zones"). That's pretty much it for mainland traffic.
Incredible.
[+] [-] fouc|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Supermancho|7 years ago|reply
Chinese originating IPs are the overwhelming number.
I posted my actual data years ago as a response to some comment, but I could just grab my recent logs and nothing has changed much (frequency, outliers, and some volume trading).
While the phrasing may be obtuse, it's a sentiment reflecting reality.
[+] [-] deogeo|7 years ago|reply
What happens to a group that doesn't unite or fight back because "Well we're not free of sin either"?
[+] [-] kylec|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] uberman|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] squozzer|7 years ago|reply
I wonder if China's fentanyl factories aren't plugged into the internet...
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] tomohawk|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] walrus01|7 years ago|reply