Chinese PLA hacker group

[big z]

http://money.cnn.com/2013/02/19/technology/security/china-hacking-war/index.html

It's interesting that they continue to deny they are stealing our information when there is evidence of them doing it.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

[Uncle Ted]

China has strong ties with its businesses, and any information gathered from U.S. corporations could wind up in the hands of a Chinese rival. Imagine Apple's rumored iWatch being produced first by a competitor that stole Apple's plans. Not only wouldApple lose an edge in the market, but the theft could impact the vast ecosystem of third-party software developers and accessory makers.




Ah, maybe too late...





The maker of iPhones, iPads, iPods, and Macintosh computers said it is working with law enforcement officials to hunt down the hackers, who appeared tied to a series of recent cyber attacks on US technology firms.

[...]

Brazen cyberattacks on US media and technology firms revived concerns over Chinese hackers, who analysts say are likely linked to the secretive Beijing government. China's army controls hundreds if not thousands of virulent and cutting-edge hackers, according to a report Tuesday by a US Internet security firm that traced a host of cyberattacks to an anonymous building in Shanghai. Mandiant said its hundreds of investigations showed that groups hacking into US newspapers, government agencies, and companies "are based primarily in China and that the Chinese government is aware of them". The report focused on one group, which it called "APT1" from the initials "Advanced Persistent Threat." "We believe that APT1 is able to wage such a long-running and extensive cyber espionage campaign in large part because it receives direct government support," Mandiant said. The group, it said, was believed to be a branch of the People's Liberation Army called Unit 61398, and digital signatures from its cyberattacks were traced back to the direct vicinity of a nondescript, 12-story building on the outskirts of Shanghai.


http://phys.org/news/2013-02-apple-hackers.html

[U-Ute]

Maybe it isn't China after all...

http://www.alternet.org/speakeasy/steven-hsieh/imperfect-report-chinas-army-hackers


In blunter terms, Mandiant is pointing the finger at China, one of the foremost subjects of U.S. fear mongering, without exhausting the company’s full range of analytic capability. If Carr’s assessment is correct, then Mandiant’s report is reckless at best, and disingenuous at worst. And the consequences of Mandiant’s omissions could come at great cost.

[big z]

Maybe it isn't China after all...

http://www.alternet.org/speakeasy/steven-hsieh/imperfect-report-chinas-army-hackers

Nice find

[Ma'ake]

I've seen some of the critiques of the Mandiant Report, and its veracity is yet to be determined.

However, there are larger issues with China stealing intellectual property, beyond this specific report. The interactions of China with the rest of the world will be fascinating to watch. In general, they see things quite differently than everyone else does. There's a notion in China that it will become the most powerful nation in the world, an inevitable and long over due ascendency, "China Rising".

There's a sense that whatever means are used to accomplish this ascendency are legitimate. For example, the scholar Christopher Ford attended a conference in Beijing where the topic was increasing mutual trust between nations. The Chinese felt before any discussion of trust or exchange of ideas were to occur, the first thing is other nations would need to correct misperceptions they have of China. One example is the Japanese view of Chinese-Japanese history.

Ford noted the incident in Corvallis Oregon where the Chinese government pressured the City Council of Corvallis to have a citizen's pro-Tibet, pro-Taiwan mural removed (http://www.npr.org/2012/09/19/161343395/why-does-china-want-a-mural-in-oregon-destroyed) and asked the Chinese leaders at the conference to reconcile this type of pressure with its claims that the US always tells other nations what they should do.

The Chinese response was that other people's perceptions of China were in fact Chinese internal affairs, and therefore it is appropriate for China to take actions outside of China to have those perceptions corrected. Presumably this would include hacking the NY Times and Washington Post to find out sources of anti-China information. Here's Ford's blog about the conference in Beijing: http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=publication_details&id=9468

Among the Chinese I work with is a very strong patriotism, and a tendency to avoid talking about politics, as it relates to China. Once you become friends, it's not uncommon to uncover very interesting viewpoints, such as the Dalai Lama being a CIA agent bent on the destruction of China. I asked one of my good friends about an article that said US corporations have a hard time securing their intellectual property in collaborations within China because there is no sense of "fair play" within China. She agreed, saying they don't even have a word for "fair" in their language. "Rules and laws are for the little people, and whatever you can get away with is legitimate".

Here's an article that reveals interesting differences between Chinese and Russian hackers: http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/20/17022378-expert-us-in-cyberwar-arms-race-with-china-russia?lite

If the US is to have a resurgence in the shifting power toward China, much of it will have to do with other nations preferring our way of looking at things, and an accompanying mistrust of China's intentions. We've had our share of misadventures (eg, Manifest Destiny, slavery, etc) but we have some attractive attributes that we need to capitalize on.

[LA Ute]

Good post, Ma'ake. Fascinating stuff.