2nd China Army Unit Implicated in Online Spying

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/10/technology/private-report-further-details-chinese-cyberattacks.html

by JohnTHaller • 12 years ago

45 15 12 years ago

opendais2• 12 years ago

Well, I think we've pretty much established that the USA's modus operandi is deniable assets [e.g. compromised anonymous hacking groups] for direct attacks and a massive surveillance network.

The Chinese are more direct, less disciplined with opsec [using personal emails/projects that link to active operatives], and seem more irritated by the loss of face from the accusations than anything else.

Unless I missed something?

Anyway, this genuinely seems like it is going to be the new Cold War if it isn't already. I just hope it is with less loss of life and less open warfare via proxies.

Tbh, I wonder if this is going to be the rationale [unofficially, if not officially] for maintaining indefinite Patriot Act provisions and/or intelligence programs.

Cookingboy• 12 years ago

I don't think it's going to be a cold war like the last one. With the amount of globalization and how much U.S and China rely on each other economically (China is becoming the biggest market for many American companies, and America is still the biggest importer of Chinese goods), it doesn't benefit anyone to have a real hostile relationship.

A lot of the hostile postures are methods for each government to redirect its population's attention toward external problems instead of focusing on internal ones. For Americans, instead of really acknowledging weakness in our society, a simple blame like "The Chinese are stealing everything from us , including tech and jobs" is very attractive for a populist politician. For the Chinese, vilifying the U.S government as a global bully fuels nationalism internally and distract the people away from issues such as social inequality and government corruption.

But in the end, both countries' leaders totally realize they absolutely need each other, so this "frenemy" relationship will continue for quite a while.

opendais2• 12 years ago

Fair enough. :) I'd be happy to be wrong, it just seems like it is getting more public.

chris_mahan• 12 years ago

Sort of like two parents who deep down despise each other yet act normal, for the sake of the children, but who don't realize that the children know exactly what's going on and wish their parents would either forgive each other and love again or just divorce and move on.

coldtea2• 12 years ago

I don't think it's going to be a cold war like the last one. With the amount of globalization and how much U.S and China rely on each other economically (China is becoming the biggest market for many American companies, and America is still the biggest importer of Chinese goods), it doesn't benefit anyone to have a real hostile relationship.

There were saying exactly the same thing for European powers just before World War I started.

The same things almost to the letter, actually: "The economic interdependence between industrial countries meant that war would be economically harmful to all the countries involved."

From this boom for one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion , but there were many other sources with similar thinking.

The thing is, relying on each other means almost nothing. It's a temporary situation, and it can change in a heartbeat when the two countries get to compete for the same resources and/or third markets. And also as the relationship between who is the supplier of "cheap labor" and who is the "market", with the affluent middle class, changes.

mpyne2• 12 years ago

it doesn't benefit anyone to have a real hostile relationship.

It benefits China greatly to have a "hostile" relationship, at least as far as using networked computing to carry it out.

Computers and cyber-attacks bring a lot for China that are asymmetrically not as advantageous for much of the rest of the world.

- They are much more covert means of conducting espionage (either industrial or political, take your pick). Obviously NSA finds this useful too, but even if we assume NSA had an industrial espionage program as advanced as China's, what does China have for the U.S. to steal, relative to what the U.S. has for China? This question repeats itself for every other country in the West.

- Attribution of cyberattacks is difficult, which adds to the deniability aspect. If literally all that China has to worry about is a loss of face, then they can proverbially cry all the way to the bank. No one is going to be nuking or invading China for an over-active spy program.

- Because of the economic ties you mention, it is difficult for victim nations to take effective deterrence measures to convince China to change their behavior, since many measures that might cause China to feel a pinch would hurt the parties imposing sanctions just as much.

Moreover, "eye for an eye" is taken off the table by the asymmetric nature of the threat, and passive defense is taken away by the interconnected nature of the Internet. Sure, the U.S. and its critical industries can do better as far as defense, but so far it's been a case of "the bomber will always get through".

So looking at the situation from China's perspective, you'd almost have to ask why they would ever stop. Western norms and morals are not necessarily their norms and morals and in any event the deterrence/coercion framework is simply not there. There's no good reason for China to stop covert methods (even if there are good reasons to avoid being overtly hostile).

samstave2• 12 years ago

this genuinely seems like it is going to be the new Cold War if it isn't already.

It has been for years... they were just trying to keep it under wraps. If it weren't for that pesky meddling Snowden for aiding our enemies... the world's public would have been none the wiser! Bankers and corporate benefactors of the intelligence race could have continued raping the world while maintaining plausible deniability that the ebb and flow of markets was just a naturally occurring chaos!

Thank god Snowden hasn't been able to reveal the shenanigans of the great robbery of 2008!!! Imagine what the plebs would do!

Drat!!

contingencies• 12 years ago

Voting this up because despite the casual tone the perspective is absolutely correct.

redpower• 12 years ago

Unfortunately for haters of the West the game is over and China is no longer the savior. China is a liability unless they are purchasing your natural resources.

coldtea2• 12 years ago

Not sure what that means. Why would it have to be a "savior"? And why it's a "liability"?

firstOrder• 12 years ago

I take this with a grain of salt. You have a security business trying to drum up business, anonymous NSA sources etc. I take the indictment of the five with a grain of salt as well - it very conveniently comes just when US corporations are getting flak around the world about how the US government spies and steals trade secrets via the commodities US corporations are trying to sell.

If you look at espionage over the past century, the James Bond concept is it is countries wanting to get the US military's secret plans. The reality is it is overwhelmingly industrial espionage. Countries behind the curve want to catch up to the industrial power on the bleeding edge. Even the atomic espionage in the 1940s, which was more military, followed this same pattern of wanting to keep up with the US.

One reason I take all this with a grain of salt is Chinese espionage is a little more subtle than western espionage. In the US/USSR spy vs. spy there were dead drops, honey traps, microfilm and all of that. In some ways Chinese espionage hasn't changed much in thousands of years. They get a tiny bit of information from a wide variety of different sources. Then they take all the information and put it together. It's kind of hard to point the finger at someone and say they are a spy since the information given never seems all that much. Of course there are exceptions but this is how it's usually done. You don't find pretty redheads like Anna Chapman sneaking into the country.

mpyne2• 12 years ago

You don't find pretty redheads like Anna Chapman sneaking into the country.

No, China does that too. It's a big problem over at U.S. Pacific Command over in Hawaii. They do the rest of the stuff you mention as well, don't get me wrong, but they're not in love with, or opposed to, any specific method. If it works, it works.

samstave2• 12 years ago

As much as I like the idea that Crowdstrike has researchers that have identified the Chinese in a cyber attack as some sort of revelation, we have known about this for literally over a decade.

I've even posted about it here on N years ago: at lockheed they were subject to extensive Chinese spying and very intricate and successful social engineering attacks. Chinese agents would either go to, or comb, attendee list of DoD conferences and then contact them as plausible other attendees from the same conference where they would say something along the lines of "Hey Joe! We attended the same conference about system such-and-such. Here are my notes on the talk we both saw on X - let me know what you think" where the attachement of the notes had a payload.

Further, they were so dedicated to the attacks that they would go and attack the machines of 2nd 3rd and 4th party contributors to a project such that they could infect the USB inserts to these machines with hopes of getting onto lockheeds network.

They also were successful in installing a leaky worm on the Lockheed network which was trickling out data slowly, but once it was discovered -- and the chinese knew that it had been discovered -- they turned it up to 11 to push out as much data as it could until the egress points from lockheeds network could be closed.

this was all between 2002?--~2007.

Yeah, no surprises here....

Throw67F4D509• 12 years ago

Russia must also have significant network espionage capabilities, and if I were Russia, I'd strongly consider starting my attacks on US and Western European targets by first infecting some of the millions of unpatched Windows boxes in China, particularly any machines in Chinese military school dorms.

moron4hire• 12 years ago

This is like playing the parlour game "Mafia". When the "mafia"is discovered, it's really not a surprise. It's just "oh, hey, yeah, that's the end of that round, who is next?"

2nd China Army Unit Implicated in Online Spying

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