Sources say China used iPhone hacks to target Uyghur Muslims | Hacker News Reader

Sources say China used iPhone hacks to target Uyghur Muslims

techcrunch.com

42 pointsdjug16 comments

To add a bit of context, China forces Android users in Xinjiang to install surveillance apps:

- https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ne94dg/jingwang-app-no-en...

- https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/7xgame/at-chinese-border-...

Such apps wouldn't work on iOS, due to its tighter security. But apparently if you're China that's not much of a deterrent, because you can just buy a rootkit to get around such limitations.

supposedly Fuchsia closes that hole

So we now know that drive-by rooting of even "locked-down" and "secure" user devices like the iPhone is possible and in active use by state actors. What are the odds that other governments, even the US (which has the additional advantage of being able to gag Apple and Google), are doing this? Seems like it would become a more important way to do surveillance as more data and networks become encrypted.

It's telling that Google wasn't willing to name China publicly and that someone (most likely someone at Project Zero) had to leak it to this reporter off-the-record. Maybe they still have some hope of re-entering China?

It didn't have to be someone at Project Zero. Anyone with a bunch of network logs could have searched for some of the fingerprints or URLs that were publicly available and deduced the target from associated traffic.

This is semi off topic, but why (from a mainstream Chinese perspective) is China targeting Uyghur Muslims? Is there just a general ideology of enforced conformity or is this a special case?

"Chinese officials are concerned that Uighurs hold extremist and separatist ideas, and they view the camps as a way of eliminating threats to China’s territorial integrity, government, and population." [1]

1- https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/chinas-crackdown-uighurs-xi...

It's not just Uyghur Muslims, it's also Tibetans & the Falun Gong. I'm sure there's other groups as well.

It seems to mostly be about ensuring there's no competing power structures, the strongest of which usually revolve around religion.

Effectively, China really doesn't want another Taiping Rebellion.

Uighur's and Tibetans have historically not had significant ties with mainland China. The Uighurs are Turkic and have closer cultural ties to the likes of Kazakhstan. The Tibetans are more closely tied to India/Nepal.* After the Mao revolution, the Chinese annexed these territories and started a huge bout of propaganda claiming these regions were always part of China. The propaganda has worked on the mainland Chinese, but obviously, the Uighurs and Tibetans don't buy it because they know their own history. There's been some recent unrest in Uighur autonomous region, so China is starting around round of indoctrination and police state tactics.

*I know this is a controversial claim especially for people of Chinese origin. So if you doubt this, a couple of facts worth pointing out are the following. The Dalai Lama's government in exile is headquartered in Dharamshala in Northern India. Loads of Tibetan kings have had Nepali wives. Tibetan is most closely related to languages spoken in Ladakh, Sikkim, Bhutan and Nepal -- two of these are Indian states and the other two are effectively Indian protectorates. Some of the most important "gurus" in Tibetan Buddhism (e.g. Rinpoche aka Padmasambhava) were Indian. The Tibetan script is based on Brahmi which is an ancient Indian script that gave rise to all modern Indian scripts such as Devanagari (used for Hindi/Marathi etc.), Gurmukhi (used for Punjabi), Tamil, Kannada, Bengali, Assamese, etc.

Tibet has been close to China, as opposed to India for more than a thousand years.

Sikkim is in India because of the British, not because it is "Indian" (so to speak)... In fact it was in China's sphere of influence until the British took it over.

> Tibet has been close to China, as opposed to India for more than a thousand years.

That is just laughably false. If you live in the US, I suggest visiting a Tibetan store to disabuse yourself of this communist propaganda. (There are tons of Tibetan stores in Berkeley, CA for instance.) You'll find them selling many items that are instantly recognizable to Indians that Chinese people wouldn't have a clue about. Things like Ganesha figurines, Rudrakhsha malas and kurtis.

An easier option is to try asking an actual Tibetan person. They'll tell you the same thing that I'm saying.

I am not looking for political battles here or to spread propaganda from either side. I am not sure that a Tibetan store in Berkeley CA is a neutral and accurate representation of Tibet's history.

The starting point is that geography makes access to the Tibet region much easier from the East and North than from the South. So-called "Greater Tibet" extends East and North East quite beyond the current Tibet Autonomous Region in China.

Perhaps as a consequence, Tibetan are ethnically closer to East Asians than to South Asians (I think that is visually obvious). Their language is not related to Indian languages and neither is traditional clothing.

Historically Tibet has had close contacts with China and was periodically under Chinese vassality/rule since at least the Tang Dynasty in the 7th century.

To claim that Tibet "has historically not had significant ties with China" is simply not accurate.

Likewise, Xinjiang/Uyghurs have had ties with China for even longer because of the silk road, with China establishing a protectorate over the area in the Han Dynasty about 2,000 years ago.

> * I am not looking for political battles here or to spread propaganda from either side. I am not sure that a Tibetan store in Berkeley CA is a neutral and accurate representation of Tibet's history.*

What do you think is an accurate representation of Tibetan history? I've also been to Dharamshala and spoken to Tibetans in exile. They also echoed similar views, which I'm guess you will now discard as being unrepresentative of Tibetan history.

> The starting point is that geography makes access to the Tibet region much easier from the East and North than from the South. So-called "Greater Tibet" extends East and North East quite beyond the current Tibet Autonomous Region in China.

Greater Tibet is a made-up concept. It includes places like Arunachal Pradesh where Hindus outnumber Buddhists, and Hindus themselves are outnumbered by Christians. The same width Ladakh. It's just communist propaganda to justify a Chinese land grab.

> Perhaps as a consequence, Tibetan are ethnically closer to East Asians than to South Asians (I think that is visually obvious).

Thank you for your opinion, but I'm not interested in 18th century racist tropes.

> Their language is not related to Indian languages and neither is traditional clothing.

I like how you dismiss the fact that their script is directly derived from Brahmi but consider their language very important. For the record though, plenty of languages related to Tibetan are spoken in the north and north east of India.

Also enlighten us on what you think traditional Indian clothing is, and what traditional Tibetan clothing is.

> Historically Tibet has had close contacts with China and was periodically under Chinese vassality/rule since at least the Tang Dynasty in the 7th century.

Yes, the Chinese have repeatedly tried to invade Tibet. If you think that is a claim for Chinese culture being close to Tibetan culture, I don't know what to tell you! Do you also think that French culture is similar to Arab culture because the "Holy" Roman emperors repeatedly tried to invade Jerusalem?

It's always CCP regime survival.

This is about fighting indepentist movements and religious extremists.

Xinjiang has a border with Afghanistan and obviously the sort of religious extremism that we saw there can potentially spill into Xinjiang.

The threat for China is thus nationalist sentiment strengthened by religious extremism.

Also, there are natural resources on this territory, which China would not be willing to lose.

See: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/world/asia/china-invests-...

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