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News & ArtsMonday, January 25, 2010
Politics / Tech Cyberwar: We're in Trouble, Save Us Google!
Posted by Anthony Hecht on Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 9:24 PM
The Times has a great piece on cyber warfare and the recent attack on Google and other company's servers. Many people suspect the Chinese government was behind these attacks, though no one can prove it, and the whole thing is what caused Google to announce that it would stop censoring search results in China.
The situation is pretty fucking scary. Not only are we generally powerless to stop these attacks and do we have no great options for retaliation or deterrent, but since we can't be sure where these attacks come from, it wouldn't even help much if we did.
The results could be big, obvious nightmare scenarios—electric grid failures, air traffic control shut down—or much smaller, but equally problematic (and harder to spot) things like installations of trojan horses, manipulation of markets, search results, etc. The big systems like military networks and banks are relatively well protected, but as the Times article points out, it's a modern Maginot Line. Run into a hardened network? Go around.
1
We sat on our duffs and watched them build this network. Not the Chinese government -- they're the clients. The botnets, run by criminal gangs. Google "ghostnet". The first botnets were discovered a decade ago. Many millions of computers are infected. The crooks don't give a shit about governments or censorship or anything else; they just want money. A government that's willing to pay is a good client.
Be sure to thank your congressman next time you see him. They allowed this to happen, because they mostly believe that doing anything about spam is "restraint of trade". Try that argument on when the White House can't get email.
Be sure to thank your congressman next time you see him. They allowed this to happen, because they mostly believe that doing anything about spam is "restraint of trade". Try that argument on when the White House can't get email.
2
Wasn't a significant part of the hack of Gmail accounts done via plain old phishing for passwords, and was most successful against people who used the same password for everything? A particularly bad move if you're a Chinese dissident.
So we're not powerless to protect ourselves. Individually. It's too late to save our civilization, of course, and I always had it figured this would end in zombies, but it's the same either way. Everything will collapse into chaos, around a handful of determined survivors.
So we're not powerless to protect ourselves. Individually. It's too late to save our civilization, of course, and I always had it figured this would end in zombies, but it's the same either way. Everything will collapse into chaos, around a handful of determined survivors.
3
One thing to keep in mind: the Chinese networks connect to the wider Internet at only three different places. They're designed to be choke points so that the government can filter what's going in and out better.
So it probably wouldn't take too much for someone with the requisite skills to cut China off at the knees (along with all of the commerce that flows over those choke points).
Information warfare is a two-way street.
So it probably wouldn't take too much for someone with the requisite skills to cut China off at the knees (along with all of the commerce that flows over those choke points).
Information warfare is a two-way street.
5
The Chinese hackers used an exploit in Internet Explorer. If you're still using that POS, you deserve a trojan.
6
@3 - I think we can be fairly certain that any public knowledge of the specifics of how the Chinese network works is incomplete at best, as it is with our own. More than likely it's completely wrong. The "3 access points" thing may be sort of true for the public Internet in China, but I can't begin to believe it's true of their network as whole, and certainly not of the government's own systems.
7
We can still unplug China from the Net, because we still control the node servers and the trunk lines and communications satellites.
Let alone the interrupts in every hardware circuit.
If they keep it up, we'll pull the plug.
Let alone the interrupts in every hardware circuit.
If they keep it up, we'll pull the plug.
8
@5 ftw.
@6 is a nice theory, but it ignores all that black ops money and blackmail we've been doing for oh so very long.
@6 is a nice theory, but it ignores all that black ops money and blackmail we've been doing for oh so very long.
9
@1 - Definitely a lot of blame to be placed at regulators for not being more aggressive about these things, but it's also just the nature of the network. It's decentralized and self-healing by design. I think the point is that that design makes these kinds of attacks and vulnerabilities very difficult to avoid. Email has been a great vector for infecting computers, but with tougher spam regulation, there would just be a different route. If it's on the network, it's vulnerable.
10
These stories are supposed to scare people into giving Obama the power to turn off the internet at will. Computer security will always be a risk on the internet, and the multi-billion dollar industry it's created is a testament to that. The only way to achieve perfect security is to never open anything up. Banks are also nowhere near as protected as everyone thinks. Sure not in the "hack into the e-safe and pull out the fat wads of cash" but in the "I know how to make your system give me everything I want without having anything" way.
What the real story was, several months ago, when that line in the Atlantic was cut, that was supposed to be opening up huge systems in the middle east. When cyberwar gets fucking real.
What the real story was, several months ago, when that line in the Atlantic was cut, that was supposed to be opening up huge systems in the middle east. When cyberwar gets fucking real.
12
I seriously doubt it's the Chinese government. After all, if they do anything to us, won't half their workforce be unemployed? Jeopardize American companies and they risk all those lovely off-shored jobs.
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