The Telegraph
China “hijacked” 15 per cent of the world’s internet traffic earlier this year, according to a report to the US Congress, in what could be a new form of cyber-terrorism.
A state-run telecoms firm is accused of diverting traffic including data from US military and government websites, and some in Britain, via Chinese servers.
Experts fear that the authorities could have carried out “severe malicious activities” as a result of the 18-minute operation, even harvesting sensitive data such as the contents of email messages or implanting viruses in computers worldwide.
The report by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission says it raises the prospect that China might use its powers to “assert some level of control over the internet”.
Great!
Now I can take my mind off the scanners.
I don’t get this. If this was intentional, then why did China tip it’s hand?
After all, wouldn’t it be better to have the capability and NOT tell anyone about it, so you can use it when you have to?
After all, now that we’re aware be sure this won’t be allowed to happen again.
Better Red than dead. If China doesn’t get it then some corporation will monopolize it. In case you haven’t noticed, the world is turning Red. It’s a “free trade” thing.
China can HAVE the internet. It was just a passing fad anyways. (-:
Let me get this straight.
They “monopolized” the net for 18 minutes.
That’s about long enough to OOPS and then reconfigure the switches when they realized that their TLD switch was set to filter “everything” (sending all of the packets into some server in Beijing.)
Its our fault for not switching to IPv6 already.
Don’t look for maliciousness when sheer stupidity will suffice.
Save us Uncle Sam!
We need the Department of Internet Security, or at least the Internet Safety Administration. Al Gore can be the chief.
One question:
Why the fuck are all packets NOT encrypted, I mean really?
I strongly recommend “Cyber War” by Richard Clarke.
He argues that China has already robbed America blind of its secrets and intellectual property by using the Internet.
And we ain’t seen nothing yet….
“, even harvesting sensitive data such as the contents of email messages….”
For a minute I thought they were talking about Google.
Uhm … isn’t the NSA infamous for sifting through every email and telephone conversation with super computers sifting every word?
If China can give us better bandwidth and speed than AT&T, than I’m all for a Chinese takeover.
Oh, those wacky Chinese.
They are just so…..alien.
Like Muslims.
At least Nazis were human.
All three groups quite undesirable, however.
Just ban all Chinese imports for 6 months and see how they feel.
Wait… this would lead to massive riots at every WalMart in the nation, scratch that idea.
I, for one, welcome our slanty-eyed overlords.
During the “Cold War”, the blacklist and other self-imposed censorships the US came up with. Ended up doing more damage than any “red” spies did, to the free world. So I’m just wondering if this “Chinese cyber threat” won’t be used in yet another negative way? Or for another set of liberty eroding edicts. Doing more damage, in order to “protect us”, than the Chinese ever could.
Systems software should be strengthened to resist these attacks and intrusions. But I fear a more political solution will be floated first. Like removing anything that provokes offends the Chinese enough to attack. Which ends up meaning, anything the Chinese want, they’ll get handed to them. Unless its owned by the super rich. Just one more way the Middle Class gets eaten alive.
“The report by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission says it raises the prospect that China might use its powers to ‘assert some level of control over the internet’.”
You mean like the US is intending to do with COICA?
The government should really have their own network that is secure and not attached to the “internet.” Then none of this would ever be an issue.
When Governments realize the even they aren’t safe on the Internet, then maybe they will mandate that sensitive Government and Industry systems NOT BE CONNECTED TO THE PUBLIC NET, BUT ON PRIVATE NETS !!! You know those PIMPLY TEENAGER, THE CHINESE, AND EVEN THE RUSSIAN MAFIA HAVE NOTHING BETTER TO DO THE STEAL WHAT IS PUT IN PLAIN SIGHT !!!
Yup – and SAIC buying 1% of GM is definitely the best sign of China taking over Wall Street.
In your Republican wet dreams.
Fuck China. If it really got bad, the “elite” hackers out in cyberspace will rally, and they can easily disconnect China from the internet at a drop of a hat, and let China wallow in their own intrAnet.
Tried to find an apt Mao Marxist quotation to lift this but can’t. It’s all obedience and hard work, isolationist dogma and hatred of liberalism (pretty much all that the TP espouse, which is concerning). Control is everything to the Chinese government, it reassures them. Like owning a handgun, which doesn’t mean you’re ever going to use it.
I call bullshit on this. No country apart from the US can “control” the net and “divert” traffic except for packets that are already passing through their routers. Any packets that disappear are resent automatically, and they’ll get routed around any black hole and make it through eventually.
Sniffing, yes, but control? Nope. The US is the exception, simply because so many backbones connect through and so many domain name authorities are housed there. Take the US off-line and it would indeed damage a huge portion of the Internet.
At some point cyber war is going to get hot.
At that point US servers need to be able to at least control traffic inside the US to the point of keeping it from being redirected outside the US and cut off traffic from other sources if they absolutely have to.