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)

The story "Two Chinese schools said to be tied to online attacks" published February 18, 2010 at 7:15 PM is no longer available on CNET News.

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[monkeyfun14]

So it begins...

[kin_101]

Actually, it's more like

So it concludes... or So it winds down...

[Angry CPU]

@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

[kin_101]

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?

[sharmajunior]

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.

[genpichong]

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?

[kin_101]

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.

[renGek]

At least their university is teaching them some practical courses in comp sci. Our universities have pitiful comp sci curriculum.

[kin_101]

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.

[kin_101]

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.

[mbenedict]

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 "[e-mail]" as his business email address; but in China that would be quite normal.

The point is in China these email addresses are generally known.

[bridgecnet]

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?

[Angry CPU]

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.