U.S. developing sanctions against China over cyberthefts | Hacker News Reader

U.S. developing sanctions against China over cyberthefts

washingtonpost.com

27 pointsnotsony22 comments

> “The indictments were a strong move,” said Rob Knake, a former White House cyber official

Yeah, you sure showed those peksy Chinese! "Shut it all down boys, the US has issued indictments against 5 of us. Better stop this hacking nonsense, things are getting serious".

Owning homes, educating one's children, and stashing ill-gotten money overseas is de rigueur for hypocritical PRC chieftains.

Those five indictments were perhaps a way of gently signalling to the higher-ups, who do have exposure to the legal machinery of the USA and its allies, that the golden parachutes they've painstakingly created for themselves outside of China could easily be taken from them.

Looking forward to see who sanctions who.

The wheels turn slowly. Amazing that it's taken this long.

The US has been involved in some similar activity, so it will be interesting to see if anything actually comes of this.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2013/06/22/u-s-hacked-...

This is utter bullshit. This looks like a whitehouse leaked story that is speaking directly to the Chinese saying:

"we could sanction you, and you're economy is pretty shit right now so rein your people in and stop promoting IP theft. Also, with that $180B[0] reduction in your position in t-bonds a few weeks ago, the tables are turning back in our favor"

Look at this quote from the article:

>The sanctions would be a second major shot at China on the issue. In May 2014, the Obama administration secured indictments on economic spying charges against five Chinese military members for hacking into the computer systems of major U.S. steel and other firms.

> The indictments were a strong move, said Rob Knake, a former White House cyber official.

Well, five people isn't that many but it was a show of strength, a strong move if you will, and a definitive stance against the hackers. This all but proves the US is serious about standing up to China.

From the NYT article about that incident:

The move by the Justice Department was almost certainly symbolic since there is virtually no chance that the Chinese would turn over the five People’s Liberation Army members named in the indictment.[1]

Ahh, got it political posturing via the American media doing some public scolding and little else.

EDIT: This is probably the most infuriating part though, snuck in right at the end:

>The sanctions would not be imposed in retaliation for China’s hacks of the Office of Personnel Management databases, which compromised the personal and financial data of more than 22 million current and former government employees and family members. The data heists, which took place last year but were discovered this year, were judged as having been carried out for traditional intelligence purposes — not to benefit Chinese industry.

So, the message we seem to be sending is steal 7% of OUR ENTIRE COUNTRIES PERSONAL DATA, no biggie. Hurt a few companies steel and energy competitive advantage and we will threaten you, then ultimately back down. Why? Because publicly we want to reaffirm our commitment to valuing companies much higher than our own citizens.

[0]http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-09/china-slas...

[1]http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/20/us/us-to-charge-chinese-wo...

Pot meet kettle.

Can you sight your sources?

There's tons of better sources, but this can give you an idea:

"NSA 'engaged in industrial espionage' - Snowden"

http://www.bbc.com/news/25907502

Zero meat in that link, sorry.

While I think it is possible that the US is engaged in economic spying for profit, there isn't as much info about them providing data to companies directly for profit, and certainly not in that link. Industrial spying is a power grab more than an economic one. Your article noted Siemens as a spying target. Here is a a possible reason for industrial spying:

> Stuxnet functions by targeting machines using the Microsoft Windows operating system and networks, then seeking out Siemens Step7 software.[0]

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet

> Can you sight your sources?

Have you been living under a rock the past few years?

s/sight/cite

Snowden files, 2013-2014.

The nastiest example is probably hacking into petrobrass, the oil company of a third world country.

Industrial spying on a third world country? That's like punching a cripple.

I doubt it will come to fruition.

Where do I start.

1. Sanctions are only effective if a lot of other countries also do it. Who would be willing to follow suit because of a cyber skirmish that doesn't involve them? Traditionally the Europeans would follow suit with this type of thing. But hell, Russia is taking land in their backyard and the Europeans can't even come to a consensus on that. Snow balls chance they form a unified opinion on China. Furthermore they are tired of following America in its quixotic foreign adventures. How about Australia? Nope. Their economy nowadays is shipping mineral wealth to China. Anything short of the PLAN maneuvering towards Sydney would make them think about sanctions. By the same reasoning, discount any country that appears darkly colored on this map: http://imgur.com/msbZwo6

2. Is America's geopolitical enemy China or Russia? Because right now they are getting quite close with each-other. Russia's economy would be even more fucked without China buying its gas, and China needs resources like I need adderall (hint: a lot). If you try to isolate and contain both at once, you'll just end up with a regional power bloc that parallels or even surpasses US hegemony.

3. Right now the Chinese economic slowdown has caused ripples in the world economies. Even though the Chinese stock market is relatively contained, the mere fear that the Chinese engine is stalling has caused a small panic around the world. Are we really so confident in our post-2008 recovery to just yolo it and inform investors that we will be kicking China while its down? This is like pointing a gun at your foot hoping to blow that hang-nail straight off.

4. China isn't some two-bit country. It will look like America is trying to use diplomatic and military clout in lieu of actual competitive advantage to maintain global dominance.

I'd like to imagine that Obama is smart enough not to actually do this (or only have a hopelessly watered down version). Here is my pet theory: Donald goddamn Trump. This upcoming election year the crotchety-old-man demographic has gone mainstream. Trump has bought China (and Mexico and a few other things) to the forefront. If status-quo candidate Clinton is to have a chance, the status-quo needs to look anti-China. Obama can help with that by throwing some hot air around and making some empty threats at China. Its ok, the Chinese understand that election year rhetoric means nothing. Maybe while Xi is dining at 1600 next week, Obama will tell him all of this explicitly.

If you really wanted to f over the Chinese and start a new cold war, start by undermining their canal plans to circumvent the straight of Malaca, promote regime change / instability in Pakistan (see: maritime silk road) and a few other countries (the other silk road project), conclude the Iran deal for good measure, finance Japanese political groups that want to amend away the passive part of their constitution, Strengthen ties with that other billion-people country in the region (India), and use Turkey to keep on doing what their doing with the Uigers. Warning: about half of this may result in another 9/11 at some point.

Good Good Let the Hate flow through !

A cyber-security cold war would be the best thing to happen to the CS industry and a lot better than real wars.

> and a lot better than real wars

Instead of people dying, everyone just loses all their credit and savings. That is until someone shuts down a dam and opens all the flood gates, or shuts off the power grid to a city, shut down airport flight tracking (or make planes show up where they are not), etc.

Cyber war seems almost scarier than a "real" war - because it almost exclusively targets civilians instead of combatants.

It depends how you look at it. If what you listed is possible to do, then it's possible to do right now - no war is needed. If people really expect such actions, then security will finally stop being an afterthought.

Credit cards and savings are already being stolen. Industrial controls are not yet taken over, (ignoring one-offs like stux) but they're definitely not controlled very well (have a look at the project which scanned the internet for exposed VNC). While flight tracking is isolated, false flight plans already stopped take-offs for some time.

Sure, governments can go much further than anyone has so far. But if we start to really think about it and protect systems for that possibility - great!

isn't the us government hacking all the time too?

While true as an abstract point, is there any evidence that US government shares (on a large scale) intel or stolen IP with commercial firms? I mean it's one thing if a high-ranking official would say to a CEO 'we found out company XYZ is bidding x million dollars against you'; but it's another to systematically feed design documents, customer records etc. into firms and keep that under wraps. Occam's Razor says that at some point, someone would have spilled the beans - long before Snowden.

Do you think that the US government won't share with industry if another country is leading in research and development?

That's not my question. My question is, if it would happen at a detailed scale (i.e., anything more than can be communicated in ad-hoc conversations), how likely is it that this could be kept under wraps?

My point being, of course, that I think that's highly unlikely, given how apparently even a US president can't stop the world from finding out that he fingerbanged a single intern. Therefore, the most logical conclusion would be that it doesn't happen. To all those saying it does: why isn't there proof of it? (please no 'the landing on the moon didn't happen' tinfoil hattery)

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