February 18, 2010 7:15 PM PST

Two Chinese schools said to be tied to online attacks

Experts in the United States connected the intrusions into Google and other corporations to computers at a top Chinese university and a school with ties to China's military.
(From The New York Times)

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So it begins...
Posted by monkeyfun14 (3280 comments )
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Actually, it's more like

So it concludes... or So it winds down...
Posted by kin_101 (21 comments )
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"traced to computers at two educational institutions in China, including one with close ties to the Chinese military,"

And for that reason alone we know its nothing to do with the Chinese government or military or even a state sponsor because any hacker that has skill would not hack from a source like that.

However, a foreign entity who wants to cover their tracks and make an attack *look* as if its being carried out by the Chinese government, military or state sponsor would.

If the Chinese government and its sponsors are at good as hacking as we say they are then these attacks were definitely nothing to do with them.

It's more likely another entity who is wanting to make the attacks look Chinese is behind the attacks, for political gain against the Chinese government for whatever reason.

However, it must be noted that America and China have been in arguments over trade and arms sales for some time, and China has been making life hard for the United States to bring sanctions against Iran at the UN.

Who is China's main adversary at the moment America?

If I was an investigator for this i'd be pointing fingers at America.

And guess what if I was wanting to investigate this and I suspected America, you wouldn't use an AMERICAN spy agency to lead the investigation, are you insane?

You would have an independent body unbiased of any country to carry out the cyber investigation.

Of course, the results of the investigation are only ever going to go in favour of the United States and against China, because its an American spy agency leading the investigation.

The whole thing is biased and ridiculous, and is never going to be a fair, balanced or an independent investigation.

The investigation is not going to get to the truth, its only ever going to end with the United States blaming China.

What we need is an independent investigation, not one carried out by an American spy agency, who would be one of the main suspects for carrying out the attack if we were ever talking about the Chinese government being framed for hacking or sponsoring a hack.
Posted by n3td3v (3164 comments )
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What the hell are you talking about?
Posted by monkeyfun14 (3280 comments )
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"And for that reason alone we know its nothing to do with the Chinese government or military or even a state sponsor because any hacker that has skill would not hack from a source like that"

Unless they KNEW we would figure that, and did it anyway knowing we wouldn't believe it! My god, it's so simple!
Posted by guest18934367 (253 comments )
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@ n3td3v Stop being a Chinese lap dog how much is China paying you by the way
Posted by fgwgner (88 comments )
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That ignores the strong ties to the chinese military since this institution trains a lot of their operatives, for lack of a more fitting term. if it was old students wroking in the government or miltary, it would make sense that they are aware of the schools network systems and could even have set-ups in place at the school to use. Like experimenting with hacking while at school.
Posted by SilentDaeth (81 comments )
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"What the hell are you talking about?"

I'm calling for an independent investigation to get to the truth, not one that is relying on information from a spy agency who houses some of America's top hackers who's job it is to support US foreign policy and could be involved in the attack.

It's simple.

There is a chance NSA hacked Google China to set up the Chinese government, so the last person you ask for information regarding an attack is people from the NSA.

It's ridiculous to be completely frank that a criminal investigation involves China's number one cyber enemy, The NSA, to find out who really carried out the attack, when there is a possibility it was an NSA attack or NSA sponsored.

I'm not saying it is The NSA, but if I was looking at or compiling a list of suspects, The NSA would be one of the names on that list of suspects.
Posted by n3td3v (3164 comments )
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"by sharmajunior February 18, 2010 10:41 PM PST
As usual n3td3v

comes around with his major bull. EVERYONE, HE IS CHINESE. He wants the US to suffer and will shamelessly sell gov't secrets to China because of his duty. Every Chinese is the same."

He is chinese and you are indian. Pot calling kettle black? You both steal jobs from us so I don't know if I like any of you.
Posted by PurpleNation (2 comments )
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@n3td3v

I still find it hard to understand why you make excuses as the evidence mounts day after day. Personal and Professional logs are being archived daily to support the facts.

You can see for youself.

Setup a Honeypot and/ or check @

http://isc.sans.org/reports.html

John
Posted by Angry CPU (54 comments )
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It's not hard for signals intelligence agencys to map out the honeypots that the main vendors use and manipulate them.

Not hard for signals intelligence agencys to run continuous global operations from Chinese hosts filling up the private sector with China data.

So when the yearly reports come out, their adversaries are the top trending attacking country!

Good propaganda easily achieved to make sure your enemy country is the number one attacker in security vendor reports that come out and given to the media such as CNET.

It's not clear cut at all whats going on.

This is cyberwarfare, its not childs play straight forward.
Posted by n3td3v (3164 comments )
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Because reports like those only points to apparent sources. Assuming you heard about terms like zombies or hijacked computer. How secure do you think Chinese computers are when compared to US computers?
Posted by kin_101 (21 comments )
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As usual n3td3v

comes around with his major bull. EVERYONE, HE IS CHINESE. He wants the US to suffer and will shamelessly sell gov't secrets to China because of his duty. Every Chinese is the same.
Posted by sharmajunior (2534 comments )
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No, I'm not Chinese. I'm just trying to get the main stream to wake up to the realities of cyber warfare.
Posted by n3td3v (3164 comments )
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What? A vocational school involved in the attack? It is the best Ads for the school. LOL. Is this the so called links to the Chinese government or military?
Posted by genpichong (11 comments )
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I am sure this vocational school is going to be famous now. Somewhat amazing though, even a vocational school's computer science class is so powerful in China. ITT really need to pump up its curriculum.
Posted by kin_101 (21 comments )
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At least their university is teaching them some practical courses in comp sci. Our universities have pitiful comp sci curriculum.
Posted by renGek (1394 comments )
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Ok, it seems that this fiasco is about to come to a conclusion. So much for "government-sponsored highly coordinated attacks". It is possible to have a tech savvy geek or two (or three) to tests their newly learned skills or simply to have fun (I do not condone these, mind you). It is however a far cry from the smear campaign launched by the US. This is yet another proof of the US media's credibility problem.
Though NYT goes out of its ways to establish a "tie" of the vocational school with Chinese military, but it seems that the "tie" is only limited to recruitment. This is quite like stating that if US military recruits at Stanford, then Stanford can be referred to as a school that "has ties with the US military" - whatever that means. (The military recruitment from a vocational school seems to make sense because the top students in top universities I think are less inclined to work in the military and prefer to work in the business environment to make more money or to further their studies overseas.)
This whole smear campaign mounted by Google (which is a major US corporation that has ties with the US intelligence community :) ) is really unfortunate, and is an ill conceived strategy to gain market share in China.
My advise to the Chinese people, have fun with reading the US media on China. When they are engaged in a smear campaign, don't get emotional and don't believe a word of what they are saying until they've provided nothing less than hard and solid proof. No need to get angry as well, because this is just their way of reporting. And if you don't have too much time, skip all their "news" that talks about China.
Posted by kin_101 (21 comments )
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There's always these nagging questions I don't understand from one of Google's accusations. How does Google know that those accounts compromised are the "human rights activists" accounts? Is Google collaborating with them in secret (thus knowing exactly who they are) from the very beginning? Or is Google scanning all the Chinese emails/accounts to identify (maybe periodically) different "categories" of the Chinese people? Is there a list or multiple lists of names that Google uses to identify and match the Chinese people? The disturbing logical extension to these questions is: Is Google co-operating with some intelligence agency to spy on the Chinese people?

Maybe answers to those questions are much more obvious than I think. But I'd appreciate if someone can help me pointing out my blind spot. Thanks.
Posted by kin_101 (21 comments )
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Short answer: they Googled to see who the accounts to belonged to.

I'm only partially kidding. In China, people use free email accounts (like Gmail or Hotmail) both for personal and for business use. In the West, it would be very weird if a partner at a prominent law firm (who is also a noted human rights activist) lists "xyz_law@gmail.com" as his business email address; but in China that would be quite normal.

The point is in China these email addresses are generally known.
Posted by mbenedict (1007 comments )
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A vocational school involved in the attack? I totally doubt. Students in Vocational School in China are usually non-qualified High School Students. At the end of Middle School, Students need to take Exam. The qualified students go to high schools, unqualified students go to Vocational School (usually, the lowest 30% or so students).
"Shao acknowledged that every year four or five students from his computer science department were recruited into the military." If this is called by related to Military, then at least 50% of Vocational schools and high schools are related to Military since some of their graduates would go to Army.

By the way, with this standard, how many Vocational Schools and High Schools are Military related in USA?
Posted by bridgecnet (1 comment )
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I can see from the level of some excuses and posts here that people are totally unqualified to answer let alone have a clue about digital forensics and cartography. You can spill Propaganda all you want but you?re underestimating the training and resources when it comes to responding to cyber warfare within the US. The world is using this same attitude when it comes to war and rules of engagement, it?s a joke.
Posted by Angry CPU (54 comments )
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