The new cold war is here. The narratives everywhere are starting to change in support of it, and I wager that the rhetoric is going to continue to escalate.
Suddenly "lab leak" isn't racist and isn't implausible.
Biden is going to go cozy up with Putin, which was at one time unthinkable.
Reddit and other social media has drastically shifted tone. Patriotic voices are upvoted, positive opinions on China downvoted.
Supply chains are moving (especially semiconductor supply chains and critical components).
One of the things I'm surprised by: Thinkpads are getting criticism. I was looking to buy a new one the other day and there was hostility in the forums over China.
On the other side of the ocean, Chinese propaganda has heated up too. Yesterday state media supposedly published an image of the G7 as The Last Supper.
Those UFO drones are probably either China or the US.
Where will we be in five years? Is this going to continue escalating into more than just words?
Is it though? You don't hear about any of the Chinese malign activities on the mainstream media outside of the lab leak theory. On most social media you get deranked or chastised for bringing them up.
Well, if you took my words in good faith it should be obvious I'm not literally saying there are no other stories reported other than lab leak. Have you seen the stories of Chinese overfishing in Philippine waters? Have you seen stories of the Chinese militarization of islands in the South China sea or in the Bahamas? I've seen thousands of other stories on independent media that are not reported in the mainstream media. And maybe some of them have but they but the reporting is minimal and if you ask the average US citizen, they have no idea about any of these things. Honestly ask yourself in the last decade what percentage of world news reporting has been devoted to negative Chinese content. The answer is not much. And here I am getting downvoted for pedantry. This is what is wrong with the state of discourse online.
Certainly seems every Intel CPU has been compromised for decades, right? I’ve not followed it super closely so maybe I’m missing something. We don’t necessarily have exploits “in the wild” but someone in secret partnership with Intel could have gotten access to all kinds of things, it seems.
Why only hostile ? Im French and I sure hope we keep tabs on our american friends to prevent too wide a gap in technology that we'd turn into even more of a vassal satelite.
"Keep tabs on our American friends" is a bit different from "break into their electrical grid, water plants, and air traffic control systems". At least, I hope it is...
I can't remember which book I read it in, probably Dark Territory or Cyberspies, but the French were actually able to hack into the computers of the war room for the joint chiefs and POTUS. They were so freaked out that they were able to do it (and worried that other foreign actors like the Chinese could do the same) that they informed the Americans, including how they did it. This was around twenty years ago, if I recall correctly.
I think people underestimate European countries. Their less hostile, so people conclude that they lack capability, but they have 0days and cyberwarfare capabilities.
Not sure why the commment by echelon is flagged. I think it's a reasonable observation:
The new cold war is here. The narratives everywhere are starting to change in support of it, and I wager that the rhetoric is going to continue to escalate.
Suddenly "lab leak" isn't racist and isn't implausible.
Biden is going to go cozy up with Putin, which was at one time unthinkable.
Reddit and other social media has drastically shifted tone. Patriotic voices are upvoted, positive opinions on China downvoted.
Supply chains are moving (especially semiconductor supply chains and critical components).
One of the things I'm surprised by: Thinkpads are getting criticism. I was looking to buy a new one the other day and there was hostility in the forums over China.
On the other side of the ocean, Chinese propaganda has heated up too. Yesterday state media supposedly published an image of the G7 as The Last Supper.
Those UFO drones are probably either China or the US.
Where will we be in five years? Is this going to continue escalating into more than just words?
Well, I think not all his observations are correct.
>Patriotic voices are upvoted, positive opinions on China downvoted.
Fanboying of the CCP is usually downvoted. Useful or positive discussions about the country and culture aren't. Americans being overtly patriotic is still often controversial.
>Thinkpads are getting criticism. I was looking to buy a new one the other day and there was hostility in the forums over China.
Sure is surprising that people don't want to buy stuff from a country that is throwing Uighurs in concentration camps, from a company that I recall was caught red handed putting spyware on devices they sold.
Although I think the main reason the comment got flagged is that it isn't a HN style discussion, but looks more like someone from reddit getting lost and posting here
Not sure why the commment by fsflower quoting echelon is downvoted. I think he points to reasonable observations by echelon:
The new cold war is here. The narratives everywhere are starting to change in support of it, and I wager that the rhetoric is going to continue to escalate.
Suddenly "lab leak" isn't racist and isn't implausible.
Biden is going to go cozy up with Putin, which was at one time unthinkable.
Reddit and other social media has drastically shifted tone. Patriotic voices are upvoted, positive opinions on China downvoted.
Supply chains are moving (especially semiconductor supply chains and critical components).
One of the things I'm surprised by: Thinkpads are getting criticism. I was looking to buy a new one the other day and there was hostility in the forums over China.
On the other side of the ocean, Chinese propaganda has heated up too. Yesterday state media supposedly published an image of the G7 as The Last Supper.
Those UFO drones are probably either China or the US.
Where will we be in five years? Is this going to continue escalating into more than just words?
Lab leak isnt plausible?
Why is a rare virus appearing in the population, just down the road from a research facility which holds these kind of viruses, not plausible?
All: if you're going to comment on this story please make sure you're up on the site guidelines and that you're not about to take the thread into generic political or nationalistic flamewar. Those things are beyond tedious, inevitably turn ugly, and are not what HN is for.
I've lost enough digital photos and access to music that I've started doing this in my personal life with polaroids and a record collection. maybe I'm an early adopter of this backwards philosophy!
The New York City subway hack referenced in the article is interesting. Unlike the many ransomware attacks targeting public infrastructure, The New York Times reported that economic espionage was a possible goal:
It is unclear why the M.T.A. was a target of the campaign, but investigators have several theories. One focuses on China’s push to dominate the multibillion-dollar market for rail cars — an effort that could benefit from knowing more about the inner workings of a transit system that awards lucrative contracts.
However, the article also said it's possible "hackers mistakenly entered the M.T.A.’s system and discovered it was of little interest, which cybersecurity experts say is not unusual."
China operate the most used rail system in the world. They probably have the most knowledge just like Japan on the economics of operating a rail system.
The long-term operational strategy of the CCP (and probably every other foreign hostile power) is clear. Backdoor all critical and vital systems. Keep finger on button. Presumably, our folks at the NSA are doing the same. This becomes the new MAD doctrine.
It's not exactly like MAD because with MAD everyone has an accurate idea of how many nukes they have and the resulting destruction if they're exchanged. With cyberattacks you can't get an accurate idea of how backdoored your systems are, because if you did you would patch it. As a result, countries underestimate the damage they would take from retaliation and are more willing to use their collection of backdoors to create chaos at key moments. If nuclear MAD leans towards deterrence, cyberattacks lean towards escalation.
The actors have different playbooks. America's is "get in as quietly and as targeted as possible, and make the damage look like random equipment failing." Which makes sense. If they wanted to do value targeting at a wide scale they'd use a nuke or what have you. The mobility the domain of cyber gives them is deniability and operational security, not capability since they can basically bomb anywhere on the planet in under an hour. The dragnet stuff is done via MITM attacks or with friendlies like telcom and tech companies.
With the DPRK it's completely different. They don't have multiple points of access on the global internet. They don't have the worlds best military jets or satellites. Sure they have a few nukes, but they can be intercepted, so getting access to critical infrastructure is something they would value in the first minutes of a war with America.
But I agree with your overall premiss. In cyber you can't get a completely accurate idea of how backdoored your systems are. There is more observability here than people give credit for, because we hack the hackers to figure out their access levels then monitor the intruded on systems, but ultimately it's unknowable just what percentage of our systems are compromised and even if we could somehow know the degree of compromization, it wouldn't matter because a previously unused, wormable 0day could infect whole classes of systems we thought were secure.
Did you mean China instead of DPRK? That’s what this article is about.
Also, I think China does have multiple points of access to the internet, and is catching up with the world’s best jets and satellites (but not entirely caught up).
No I meant the DPRK. I don't know enough about the Chinese military to comment on their strategy, other than the stuff everyone knows like "hide our capacity, and bide your time" which is clearly what they're doing (or at least, trying to do) during their ascent.
But I've been following the DPRK for a while, and their cyber strategy is more obvious.
China, Russia, Iran, NK, maybe Turkey. Pact to chip away at the US sphere and take what they can. Classic zero sum. We should set this straight while we still have a chance.
From a corporate perspective (an my general belief) I wonder if making IP protections shorter in time would help this.
We lengthen IP protections, but todays world technology is moving faster than ever so you'd think it makes sense to reduce them. Originally patents were 14 years. Shorter patent length would encourage companies to focus further on innovation and logically you'd think things like industrial espionage would be somewhat reduced, at least at consumer levels, as the window/incentive to steal reduces based on the lower need. Plus this would make things fairer to companies that dont steal IP vs those that do.
I think this confuses patents with trade secrets. You only patent something that’s easy to observe and copy, and the patent is a public record that you have some temporary exclusive rights to the invention (well at least in theory. The world of software patents is warped to the point where the motivation to hold patents is mostly defensive against litigation). If another country doesn’t respect your patents, they do nothing.
If you can keep something secret, you don’t need or want a patent (which creates a public record). There’s no patent for the Coca-Cola recipe. And this is also a situation where espionage is useful.
So I'm curious are Chinese hackers allowed past the great firewall and allowed to roam freely on the internet? I wonder how that sort of freedom is managed, like I'm imagining a hacker stumbling across a hard drive full of Tianamen Square coverage or Uighur documentation or whatever the suppressed story is. Is that class of individuals given free license online and basically trusted not to go snooping around or cover their eyes when they find stuff they shouldn't be seeing?
The great firewall is not an impenetrable fortress. People in China routinely access the external world and most websites are not blocked at all until they are found to contain 'anti-nationalist' material.
Even then, people use a variety of VPNs to access sites not otherwise accessible.
As to your second point, people of all countries are easily blinded by their own nationalistic rethoric. I mean how many in the US had access to the same information as Snowden and said nothing? People acting in these circles are vetted for their patriotism and checks are in place to make sure they don't deviate.
People who are into these secret clubs -whether they are government agencies, hacking groups, terrorists, etc- tend to not want to lose their privileges, because it gives them power an insight- and also because they know the consequences to themselves -and possibly on their families- of violating their masters' trust.
It takes real courage to give that up and the outcome is probably often pretty bleak.
It seems like what's implied behind this question is that any Chinese hacker that's exposed to uncensored material would immediately turn against their evil regime, so the regime must constantly be on guard against ideological infiltration.
I think that's a really simplistic view of human motivations and a reflection of how China is viewed in the West onto how any "reasonable" Chinese hacker must also view China. When in fact, how this hacker might view about the situation could range anywhere from feeling that the government was justified in their actions from a realpolitik point of view to an acceptance that it's just one of those complicated problems in Chinese society that can't be solved overnight, like systemic racism or economic inequality in the US. I doubt Americans live every minute of their lives thinking of all the minor tragedies that occur in their country at any given moment, and is motivated by them to overthrow the American system. Rather, it's more of a shrug and carry on while trying to do a little better within the system they have.
Living in China and talking with many around me (not a representative sample since they all speak english), I agree: it's quite easy to see all this drama as an expression of jaleousy or ignorance from hypocritical westerners than an enlightened analysis of their condition.
If for us the solution is to have the crime rate of the USA, the inefficiencies of Europe, or the slow death of Japan, it's hard for them not to prefer the glorious albeit maybe artificial paradise promised by their rulers.
The problem is that hardly anyone knows what's the actual crime rate in China, how efficient it actually is or how the demographic situation is really unfolding. Information is intentionally opaque to the point nobody, whether in China or not, is able to make an informed opinion.
I'm thinking mostly of the comedy of the awkward situation it could potentially put someone in, not so much the hacker but the manager or master as another poster mentioned who would have to explain why his employees have a photo of tank man on their screen as their superiors walk in. "But I was just hacking, it's not me it's them?!?"
But realistically at most it would plant seeds of doubt like all the CIA craziness we've seen posted to HN of late. There's some pretty disturbing stuff with respect to that such that it made me appreciate some more of the anti government sentiments about the evil government and dirty affairs we've created in other countries.
Before this fan fiction gets too elaborate, it's probably easier for anyone in China to just look at CNN http://www.chinafirewalltest.com/?siteurl=cnn.com than spending the time to become a hacker.
52 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 101 ms ] threadSuddenly "lab leak" isn't racist and isn't implausible.
Biden is going to go cozy up with Putin, which was at one time unthinkable.
Reddit and other social media has drastically shifted tone. Patriotic voices are upvoted, positive opinions on China downvoted.
Supply chains are moving (especially semiconductor supply chains and critical components).
One of the things I'm surprised by: Thinkpads are getting criticism. I was looking to buy a new one the other day and there was hostility in the forums over China.
On the other side of the ocean, Chinese propaganda has heated up too. Yesterday state media supposedly published an image of the G7 as The Last Supper.
Those UFO drones are probably either China or the US.
Where will we be in five years? Is this going to continue escalating into more than just words?
Also today, on mainstream media, I saw an article about Chinese jet fighters and bombers encroaching (yet again) on Taiwan's airspace.
So I think that, yes, you do hear about Chinese malign activities on mainstream media, and not just the lab leak theory.
I think people underestimate European countries. Their less hostile, so people conclude that they lack capability, but they have 0days and cyberwarfare capabilities.
The new cold war is here. The narratives everywhere are starting to change in support of it, and I wager that the rhetoric is going to continue to escalate.
Suddenly "lab leak" isn't racist and isn't implausible.
Biden is going to go cozy up with Putin, which was at one time unthinkable.
Reddit and other social media has drastically shifted tone. Patriotic voices are upvoted, positive opinions on China downvoted.
Supply chains are moving (especially semiconductor supply chains and critical components).
One of the things I'm surprised by: Thinkpads are getting criticism. I was looking to buy a new one the other day and there was hostility in the forums over China.
On the other side of the ocean, Chinese propaganda has heated up too. Yesterday state media supposedly published an image of the G7 as The Last Supper.
Those UFO drones are probably either China or the US.
Where will we be in five years? Is this going to continue escalating into more than just words?
If you think a flagged comment shouldn't be flagged, you can vouch for it (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html#cvouch) or email us at hn@ycombinator.com.
In this case the comment was obviously a step into generic political and nationalistic flamewar and so was correctly flagged.
>Patriotic voices are upvoted, positive opinions on China downvoted.
Fanboying of the CCP is usually downvoted. Useful or positive discussions about the country and culture aren't. Americans being overtly patriotic is still often controversial.
>Thinkpads are getting criticism. I was looking to buy a new one the other day and there was hostility in the forums over China.
Sure is surprising that people don't want to buy stuff from a country that is throwing Uighurs in concentration camps, from a company that I recall was caught red handed putting spyware on devices they sold.
Although I think the main reason the comment got flagged is that it isn't a HN style discussion, but looks more like someone from reddit getting lost and posting here
The new cold war is here. The narratives everywhere are starting to change in support of it, and I wager that the rhetoric is going to continue to escalate.
Suddenly "lab leak" isn't racist and isn't implausible.
Biden is going to go cozy up with Putin, which was at one time unthinkable.
Reddit and other social media has drastically shifted tone. Patriotic voices are upvoted, positive opinions on China downvoted.
Supply chains are moving (especially semiconductor supply chains and critical components).
One of the things I'm surprised by: Thinkpads are getting criticism. I was looking to buy a new one the other day and there was hostility in the forums over China.
On the other side of the ocean, Chinese propaganda has heated up too. Yesterday state media supposedly published an image of the G7 as The Last Supper.
Those UFO drones are probably either China or the US.
Where will we be in five years? Is this going to continue escalating into more than just words?
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It is unclear why the M.T.A. was a target of the campaign, but investigators have several theories. One focuses on China’s push to dominate the multibillion-dollar market for rail cars — an effort that could benefit from knowing more about the inner workings of a transit system that awards lucrative contracts.
However, the article also said it's possible "hackers mistakenly entered the M.T.A.’s system and discovered it was of little interest, which cybersecurity experts say is not unusual."
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/02/nyregion/mta-cyber-attack...
The actors have different playbooks. America's is "get in as quietly and as targeted as possible, and make the damage look like random equipment failing." Which makes sense. If they wanted to do value targeting at a wide scale they'd use a nuke or what have you. The mobility the domain of cyber gives them is deniability and operational security, not capability since they can basically bomb anywhere on the planet in under an hour. The dragnet stuff is done via MITM attacks or with friendlies like telcom and tech companies.
With the DPRK it's completely different. They don't have multiple points of access on the global internet. They don't have the worlds best military jets or satellites. Sure they have a few nukes, but they can be intercepted, so getting access to critical infrastructure is something they would value in the first minutes of a war with America.
But I agree with your overall premiss. In cyber you can't get a completely accurate idea of how backdoored your systems are. There is more observability here than people give credit for, because we hack the hackers to figure out their access levels then monitor the intruded on systems, but ultimately it's unknowable just what percentage of our systems are compromised and even if we could somehow know the degree of compromization, it wouldn't matter because a previously unused, wormable 0day could infect whole classes of systems we thought were secure.
Also, I think China does have multiple points of access to the internet, and is catching up with the world’s best jets and satellites (but not entirely caught up).
But I've been following the DPRK for a while, and their cyber strategy is more obvious.
Recipients do get fever after the first dose, so it's not pure water.
We lengthen IP protections, but todays world technology is moving faster than ever so you'd think it makes sense to reduce them. Originally patents were 14 years. Shorter patent length would encourage companies to focus further on innovation and logically you'd think things like industrial espionage would be somewhat reduced, at least at consumer levels, as the window/incentive to steal reduces based on the lower need. Plus this would make things fairer to companies that dont steal IP vs those that do.
If you can keep something secret, you don’t need or want a patent (which creates a public record). There’s no patent for the Coca-Cola recipe. And this is also a situation where espionage is useful.
Even then, people use a variety of VPNs to access sites not otherwise accessible.
As to your second point, people of all countries are easily blinded by their own nationalistic rethoric. I mean how many in the US had access to the same information as Snowden and said nothing? People acting in these circles are vetted for their patriotism and checks are in place to make sure they don't deviate.
People who are into these secret clubs -whether they are government agencies, hacking groups, terrorists, etc- tend to not want to lose their privileges, because it gives them power an insight- and also because they know the consequences to themselves -and possibly on their families- of violating their masters' trust.
It takes real courage to give that up and the outcome is probably often pretty bleak.
I think that's a really simplistic view of human motivations and a reflection of how China is viewed in the West onto how any "reasonable" Chinese hacker must also view China. When in fact, how this hacker might view about the situation could range anywhere from feeling that the government was justified in their actions from a realpolitik point of view to an acceptance that it's just one of those complicated problems in Chinese society that can't be solved overnight, like systemic racism or economic inequality in the US. I doubt Americans live every minute of their lives thinking of all the minor tragedies that occur in their country at any given moment, and is motivated by them to overthrow the American system. Rather, it's more of a shrug and carry on while trying to do a little better within the system they have.
If for us the solution is to have the crime rate of the USA, the inefficiencies of Europe, or the slow death of Japan, it's hard for them not to prefer the glorious albeit maybe artificial paradise promised by their rulers.
But realistically at most it would plant seeds of doubt like all the CIA craziness we've seen posted to HN of late. There's some pretty disturbing stuff with respect to that such that it made me appreciate some more of the anti government sentiments about the evil government and dirty affairs we've created in other countries.