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Comment by MatthewB | Hacker News Reader

Does it bother anyone that China continues to hack us? It is very possible that this was a government-backed attack, which wouldn't be the first against Google by the Chinese government.

The biggest problem is that these don't seem to be sophisticated attacks. They didn't find a backdoor or install some malicious piece of code...they simply "hacked people" with phishing scams.

I think a great place for the US govt (and Google) to spend money would be to inform people about phishing and how to detect it. Being a savvy internet user, I sometimes forget that these scams that look ridiculous to me might very well look legitimate to someone else.

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The reason we only see the unsophisticated attacks might well be that the ones that are carried out professionally are never caught.

If I was China and intent on this kind of cybercrime I wouldn't put all my eggs in one basket, but would try different avenues to get to my target. Resources don't seem to be a problem since it's apparently government backed.

I would see this as the top of the iceberg, and expect there to be more sophisticated attacks hiding out there that we might never know about.

> expect there to be more sophisticated attacks

Like hacking SecureID? The previous attack Google discussed? The fact that just about anyone on port 22 sees half or more of their port-knocking from China? Shawn Carpenter's Titan Rain? (oh, wait, EMC now owns RSA and NetWitness ...)

Yeah, it bothers someone:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13614125

Just today it is widely reported the Pentagon is setting a new policy that cyber attacks can be considered acts of war which lets the Pentagon retaliate with conventional weapons. Hack my email, get an ICBM.

Posturing.

That's a good 90% of their (The DOD's) job though.

I saw this a few days ago. I believe that if another country hacked the US and took top secret data, it could potentially cause as much damage as a conventional weapon. So, using conventional weapons in retaliation for cyber-attacks doesn't seem that far fetched.

We are definitely in an interesting time with regards to technology and policy. Both exciting and scary.

I would not be surprised if the United States got a specialized "Cyber Force" branch of the military sooner rather than later to go along with Army, Navy, and Air. There are apparently already papers about it like this one from 2008:

PDF: http://www.albanylawjournal.org/articles/solce_0609.pdf

Abstract: https://litigation-essentials.lexisnexis.com/webcd/app?actio...

Granted, that niche is somewhat filled by the NSA, but it is not a branch of the military per se. And increasingly cyberspace will be as important or more so than land, sea, and air.

The problem is any formal "Cyber Force" announcement will kick off the 21st Century arms race. But forming a Cyber Force in secret will severely limit effectiveness. I think we're about at the tipping point when the United States sees a hacker battalion here and there as not enough. It needs strong hacker branch.

I don't think you'll see a new branch, but there already is a Cyber Command - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Cyber_Command

The problem is attribution. Imagine if all an Al-Qaeda hacker had to do to start a major war was to compromise a Chinese computer and use it to attack a sufficiently sensitive US military target.

I'd expect the US to be doing the exact same thing to China. I'd be surprised if they weren't.

Pretty much this. We spy on them, they spy on us. Not much to be done about it. It used to be bugs in hotel rooms, now it's email phishing schemes.

Bingo!!

I'm sure its no accident that the Pentagon stated they may treat cyber attacks as "acts of war" - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13614125

Except that unless they actually do treat it as an act of war, it's an empty and pointless threat.

And they're clearly not treating it as an act of war, which is why the US (thankfully) isn't at war with China right now.

Politically, going to war with China just because they hacked the SecDef's email would be an impossible sell to the American people, who frankly aren't that keen on starting World War 3 unless it's absolutely necessary. If the Pentagon is getting hacked by China then the correct response is better security, not making threats, whether idle or serious.

What bothers me at least is that although Google finds these things (thank you), how many non-gmail accounts have been hacked but nobody has noticed yet.

The US Government has backdoors into every large webservice in the world. China has to hack their way in. That's the main difference here, as the USG long ago stopped being "on our side".

Easy to read western propaganda and jump to conclusions without viewing the whole picture.

Of course the US hack the Chinese govt. Just because china don't publish accounts of attacks does not mean attacks are not occurring.

We already know Google are quite jaded towards China given their failure to succeed in the china market. Thus I take anything they comment about China with a grain of salt, given they clearly have an agenda.

An attack originating in Jinan does not necessarily mean chinese govt either. Given China's opaqueness on cyber issues, anyone wanting to hack anyone else could use china as a place to do it.

Though I agree, governments should invest in educating people on phishing scams.

50 cent army much?

Looks like it. 1 comment (the grandparent), account created 69 days ago, shilling for the Chinese government.

For those who don't get the reference, here's an article that explains it: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/sep/22/chinathemedia.ma...

I see, so rather than actually discuss the points I make, just attack me as some chinese govt astro-turfer... wtf!?

Just because I haven't commented before doesn't make my comment less valid... does it?

Unfortunately, after seeing the firewall logs of several Internet facing machines in distinct hosting providers in different parts of the world, it's quite interesting to notice that 90% if not more of the port scans, http vulnerability scans, among others, come from network blocks from that part of the planet.

Even more illuminating that if their great firewall is so advanced, being able to block anything on a need basis, is not concerned on blocking these.

My understanding was the great firewall isn't so advanced. It is essentially a filter system, run in quite a manual fashion (i.e eyeballs on screens assessing if things should be blocked).

I'm not refuting attacks originating from china, there is piles of evidence that support this.

Things to keep in mind - there are more internet users in china, than anywhere else, so there is going to be more of 'everything' from china. One needs to convert the stats into per-capita ratios before making meaningful conclusions about % of attacks etc.

My main issue (in my original post) is the jump from "Attack from Chinese IP addresses on gmail accounts" to "China attacked us [The US]" - without any qualification.

It promotes a nationalistic 'Us against Them' mentality that is primarily based on hysteria rather than fact.

Very well said. In fact, blind nationalism is the very same strategy the 50-cent party uses (referring to the parent comment).

I haven't heard the term "50 cent army" before. I assume it's not a rapper's fan club?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party

Ah, I see.

I'm a member of the Kiss Army, the Skynyrd Nation, and the Bananarama Republic.

> An attack originating in Jinan does not necessarily mean chinese govt either.

In that case, we should expect to see a vigorous Chinese investigation into this illegal activity that originated from China, right?

Just like there was a comprehensive Chinese response to the well-documented cyber attacks on several American tech companies that originated from China in Dec 2009?

> In that case, we should expect to see a vigorous Chinese investigation into this illegal activity that originated from China, right?

Tell you what, Chinese police never deal with "Internet Theft" or "online intrusion" unless a large amount money is envolved.

And why do they even bother to investigate Gmail which is constantly in-accessable in China?

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