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China Sucks


Hugo Stiglitz

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On 6/19/2018 at 8:51 PM, Bill Clinton said:

So are the tariffs good or bad for America? How about China? What if we take their North Korean puppet and embolden Taiwan to split completly and permanently from China?

tariffs are, generally, bad for both sides, and usually worse for the country that imposes them

historically, they have never achieved anything other than making shit more expensive

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Chinese Hackers Targeted Internet-of-Things During Trump-Putin Summit

A spike in attacks sought access to devices that might yield audio or visual intelligence.

Four days before U.S. and Russian leaders met in Helsinki, hackers from China launched a wave of brute-force attacks on internet-connected devices in Finland, seeking to gain control of gear that could collect audio or visual intelligence, a new report says.

Traffic aimed at remote command-and-control features for Finnish internet-connected devices begain to spike July 12, according to a July 19 report by Seattle-based cybersecurity company F5.

“Finland is not typically a top attacked country; it receives a small number of attacks on a regular basis,” the report says.

China generally originates the largest chunk of such attacks; in May, Chinese attacks accounted for 29 percent of the total. But as attacks began to spike on July 12, China’s share rose to 34 percent, the report said. Attacks jumped 2,800 percent.

https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2018/07/chinese-hackers-targeted-internet-things-during-trump-putin-summit/149873/

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"The China-based hackers’ primary target was SSH (or Secure Shell) Port 22 — not a physical destination but a specific set of instructions for routing a message to the right destination when the message hits the server."

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LOL you can tell the reporter misunderstood the explanation of a SSH Brute Force Attack that someone gave to them.

After reading the F5 report the attack seems fairly innocuous. On a side note, I used to work for an F5 competitor and would present similar reports to customers and point to China on the pie chart and speak in an ominous tone. That shit was a money maker.

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And so, to cut off any dissent following the announcement, Chinese censors upped their game, keeping an even more watchful eye on anything online that could be deemed subversive.

Among the ‘subversive’ content was the English letter ‘N,’ which was apparently briefly censored. The New York Times explains that it was intended to “preempt social scientists from expressing dissent mathematically: N > 2, with ‘N’ being the number of Mr. Xi’s terms in office.”

Images of Winnie the Pooh were also blocked. The Chinese ruler has been likened to the cartoon bear in the past, with critics of Xi mocking him for having similar physical characteristics to the portly bear.

The honey-loving bear was first removed from Chinese websites and social media networks in 2013, when the meme first went into circulation following a Chinese visit to the U.S. Internet users posted a side-by-side comparison of a photo of Xi and President Obama walking with an image of Winnie the Pooh and Tigger. Despite being a seemingly cute bear, Chinese censors are notorious for blocking any content that seems even mildly critical of the Chinese leader.

https://www.google.com/amp/amp.timeinc.net/fortune/2018/03/01/xi-jinping-winnie-the-pooh-censored

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In his NPR interview, David Sanger referenced the 2015 Chinese hack of Office of Personnel Mgmt. data (SF-86 forms) for over a million current and former federal employees. OPM had stored the data unencrypted on the Dept. of Interior site. That's where the Chinese found it.

Interview

https://www.npr.org/2018/06/19/621338178/journalist-warns-cyber-attacks-present-a-perfect-weapon-against-global-order

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13 hours ago, retread said:

In his NPR interview, David Sanger referenced the 2015 Chinese hack of Office of Personnel Mgmt. data (SF-86 forms) for over a million current and former federal employees. OPM had stored the data unencrypted on the Dept. of Interior site. That's where the Chinese found it.

Interview

https://www.npr.org/2018/06/19/621338178/journalist-warns-cyber-attacks-present-a-perfect-weapon-against-global-order

What a bunch of half asses! 

Why didn't they use a secure bathroom server...those have never been hacked by a foreign nation! 

Seriously...this is the problem when you give Gov or large corps all this data.  They're still being run by a bunch of dipshits...and with Gov they're lazy dipshits that are almost impossible to fire. 

"Oh...you left a millions of files on a server unencrypted?  Well, if this was Wendy's or 7-11 we'd fire you for a fuck up 1% this bad...but as a Federal Employee...there's literally nothing we can do to you.  Also, I've been asked to talk to you about your porn viewing during business hours.  Once again...nothing we can do to you other than notate this in your file...but we'd really appreciate it if you'd keep the volume down"  

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56 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

True but the Russians’ cyber strength isn’t hacking, it’s information warfare. 

Every modernized nation is out there hacking & doing information warfare.  

Russia does it...we do it...China does it....

We just have a lot more to lose both financially & freedoms wise. 

No one is trying to hack into the average Chinese or Russian's credit. 

I'm fairly certain how the next Russian presidential election is going to turn out as well.

And although I think the whole Russian / US election story is utter bull shit...I do think that the cyberwarfare that we're seeing will end up in US citizens loosing freedoms...and being spied on, probably even more than we are already.  Nothing good comes from a Gov having unlimited information on it's people. NOTHING.

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On 7/22/2018 at 6:48 AM, Bullneck said:

Check out what the Chinese are up to.  Note that this only talks about what they're doing on land.  Ports and islands must be a different article.

 

_101607661_china_rail_map_976_v3-nc.png

 

"America first."  Great idea, Donald

The machines doing this are awesome, thanks for the link. So the railways go around iraq and afghanistan, avoiding US influence, while thoroughly connecting Iran to the trade network. This bodes well.....

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  • 2 weeks later...

Google Is Planning a Censored Search App for China, Intercept Reports

Bloomberg News

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-01/google-plans-a-censored-search-app-for-china-intercept-says

August 1, 2018

Company has been working on project since 2017, news site says

Search giant’s services are largely blocked in the mainland

Alphabet Inc.’s Google is preparing to launch a censored version of its search engine for China that will block results Beijing considers sensitive, The Intercept reported.

Google’s been working on a project code-named Dragonfly since the spring of 2017 and demonstrated a sanitized version of its search app to Chinese officials, the news outlet reported, citing company documents and unidentified people familiar with the matter. A final version of the app could be launched within six to nine months, it said.

“We provide a number of mobile apps in China, such as Google Translate and Files Go, help Chinese developers, and have made significant investments in Chinese companies like JD.com. But we don’t comment on speculation about future plans,” Google said in an emailed statement.

China has been the biggest hole in Google’s global footprint since it largely withdrew from the country in 2010 by refusing to self-censor search content. Its stance later saw most of its services blocked, including Gmail and the Google Play app store. Offering a censored search app would mark a significant about-face for a company that began life with the motto “Don’t Be Evil” and champions free communication on the internet.

In the company’s absence, Baidu Inc. has strengthened its grip on search in China while Microsoft Corp.’s Bing operates in the country by censoring subjects and words. Facebook and Twitter are blocked outright. Shares in Baidu, which reported better-than-expected results a day earlier, fell as much as 3 percent in pre-market trade.

“Google is waking up to smell the coffee,” said Andy Mok, founder and president of Beijing-based consultancy Red Pagoda Resources LLC. “Not being in China is a huge strategic miscalculation. The liberals of this world obviously will recoil at the idea.”

In recent years, Google has made overtures to Beijing and the country’s tech industry, providing its TensorFlow AI products as well as investing in Chinese corporations and startups such as JD.com Inc.

The company decided to quicken the development of a censored app after Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai met with top government official Wang Huning in December 2017, the Intercept reported. Google insiders don’t know if China will approve the app amid an escalating trade dispute with the U.S., but search head Ben Gomes told staff last month to be ready to launch on short notice.

Beijing bans outright criticism of the government and mention of sensitive terms such as the Tiananmen massacre. The Intercept reported that such terms would be censored in the planned app.

According to the Intercept, the app will automatically pick up on and block websites on Beijing’s blacklist, known as the Great Firewall. Such banned sites will be removed from the first page of results, replaced by a legal disclaimer disclosing the action. In some cases, no results will be displayed at all if a user types in a particularly sensitive query, the Intercept cited confidential documents as saying.

Google “faces an uphill battle in getting users who are now very accustomed to Baidu to switch,” said Mark Natkin, managing director of Beijing-based Marbridge Consulting. “I am a bit surprised but it’s indicative of how much sway the China market now has.”

xi-pooh.jpg

Edited by Hugo Stiglitz
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Some people say China isn’t the China of the 50’s-60’s where they sent hundreds of thousands of people to their death to satisfy their whims. They say that the rising middle class, (pseudo) capitalism and general societal openness means they’d NEVER go back to those ways.

Others say they’re still Communist, and basic human rights are not codified into law. They’re strong-arming foreign companies for all kidsa stuff in exchange for access. Even the Catholic Church is bending to their will. And this will end badly for everyone involved.

So which is it?

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5 minutes ago, Parliament said:

Some people say China isn’t the China of the 50’s-60’s where they sent hundreds of thousands of people to their death to satisfy their whims. They say that the rising middle class, (pseudo) capitalism and general societal openness means they’d NEVER go back to those ways.

Others say they’re still Communist, and basic human rights are not codified into law. They’re strong-arming foreign companies for all kidsa stuff in exchange for access. Even the Catholic Church is bending to their will. And this will end badly for everyone involved.

So which is it?

They’re becoming increasingly fascist without all the unnecessary violence.  

They have moved away from anything resembling a free and open society.  They are using the fruits of the West to further control and exploit their population. The google article is a perfect example.

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1 hour ago, Parliament said:

Some people say China isn’t the China of the 50’s-60’s where they sent hundreds of thousands of people to their death to satisfy their whims. They say that the rising middle class, (pseudo) capitalism and general societal openness means they’d NEVER go back to those ways.

Others say they’re still Communist, and basic human rights are not codified into law. They’re strong-arming foreign companies for all kidsa stuff in exchange for access. Even the Catholic Church is bending to their will. And this will end badly for everyone involved.

So which is it?

China is still a Communist nation. They still are working towards a socialist state, it's still a Marxist transition. They are just using a liberalized economy to move towards a socialist state. They have definitely moved past the Stalinist economic model, I believe they started their new economic policy while still under Mao. Although it was under Xiaoping that China embraced Bukharinism which lead to the liberalization of their economy. The Soviets attempted the same thing under Gorbachev but that didn't work out as well. Similar to the USSR, China has continuously modified their economic policy with the plan to eventually arrive at a socialist state.

The current iteration in China is a state run capitalist system. The capitalist economy is allowed to flourish because it's meant to strengthen the state. It's not an emergence of spontaneous order between free economic actors like what occurred in the West. However, there is enough economic freedom granted by the state for capitalism to thrive.

I'm hopeful that the emerging middle class will recognize their economic influence and push for more rights but China doesn't have a concept of natural rights like we do in the West. I do think that the state run capitalist system has limitations and they will need more liberalization to compete with the West in the long term.

 

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47 minutes ago, F250 said:

I do think that the state run capitalist system has limitations and they will need more liberalization to compete with the West in the long term.

I agree with this, the only thing holding China back from reaching its true potential is not moving towards a more free and open society.

or “westernizing”

Edited by Hugo Stiglitz
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  • 3 weeks later...

Oof, I had not heard about this:

Quote

(big snip worth reading)

...

Once one person was identified as a CIA asset, Chinese intelligence could then track the agent’s meetings with handlers and unravel the entire network. (Some CIA assets whose identities became known to the Ministry of State Security were not active users of the communications system, the sources said.)

One of the former officials said the agency had “strong indications” that China shared its findings with Russia, where some CIA assets were using a similar covert communications system. Around the time the CIA’s source network in China was being eviscerated, multiple sources in Russia suddenly severed their relationship with their CIA handlers, according to an NBC News report that aired in January—and confirmed by this former official.

...

Cyber is a tough world to hide,especially with the semi closed network in China, tragically for many it seems.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/15/botched-cia-communications-system-helped-blow-cover-chinese-agents-intelligence/

Edited by zork
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ETA: Same story as Zork’s. Mistakes were made 

https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/15/botched-cia-communications-system-helped-blow-cover-chinese-agents-intelligence/

Mistakes were made

It was considered one of the CIA’s worst failures in decades: Over a two-year period starting in late 2010, Chinese authorities systematically dismantled the agency’s network of agents across the country, executing dozens of suspected U.S. spies. But since then, a question has loomed over the entire debacle.

How were the Chinese able to roll up the network?

Now, nearly eight years later, it appears that the agency botched the communication system it used to interact with its sources, according to five current and former intelligence officials. The CIA had imported the system from its Middle East operations, where the online environment was considerably less hazardous, and apparently underestimated China’s ability to penetrate it.

“The attitude was that we’ve got this, we’re untouchable,” said one of the officials who, like the others, declined to be named discussing sensitive information. The former official described the attitude of those in the agency who worked on China at the time as “invincible.”

Other factors played a role as well, including China’s alleged recruitment of former CIA officer Jerry Chun Shing Lee around the same time. Federal prosecutors indicted Lee earlier this year in connection with the affair.

But the penetration of the communication system seems to account for the speed and accuracy with which Chinese authorities moved against the CIA’s China-based assets.

“You could tell the Chinese weren’t guessing. The Ministry of State Security [which handles both foreign intelligence and domestic security] were always pulling in the right people,” one of the officials said.

“When things started going bad, they went bad fast.”

The former officials also said the real number of CIA assets and those in their orbit executed by China during the two-year period was around 30, though some sources spoke of higher figures. The New York Times, which first reported the story last year, put the number at “more than a dozen.” All the CIA assets detained by Chinese intelligence around this time were eventually killed, the former officials said.

The CIA, FBI, and National Security Agency declined to comment for this story. The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.

At first, U.S. intelligence officials were “shellshocked,” said one former official. Eventually, rescue operations were mounted, and several sources managed to make their way out of China.

 

 

 

One of the former officials said the last CIA case officer to have meetings with sources in China distributed large sums of cash to the agents who remained behind, hoping the money would help them flee.

When the intelligence breach became known, the CIA formed a special task force along with the FBI to figure out what went wrong. During the investigation, the task force identified three potential causes of the failure, the former officials said: A possible agent had provided Chinese authorities with information about the CIA asset network, some of the CIA’s spy work had been sloppy and might have been detected by Chinese authorities, and the communications system had been compromised. The investigators concluded that a “confluence and combination of events” had wiped out the spy network, according to one of the former officials.

Eventually, U.S. counterintelligence officials identified Lee, the former CIA officer who had worked extensively in Beijing, as China’s likely informant. Court documents suggest Lee was in contact with his handlers at the Ministry of State Security through at least 2011.

Chinese authorities paid Lee hundreds of thousands of dollars for his efforts, according to the documents. He was indicted in May of this year on a charge of conspiracy to commit espionage.

But Lee’s alleged betrayal alone could not explain all the damage that occurred in China during 2011 and 2012, the former officials said. Information about sources is so highly compartmentalized that Lee would not have known their identities. That fact and others reinforced the theory that China had managed to eavesdrop on the communications between agents and their CIA handlers.

When CIA officers begin working with a new source, they often use an interim covert communications system—in case the person turns out to be a double agent.

The communications system used in China during this period was internet-based and accessible from laptop or desktop computers, two of the former officials said.

This interim, or “throwaway,” system, an encrypted digital program, allows for remote communication between an intelligence officer and a source, but it is also separated from the main communications system used with vetted sources, reducing the risk if an asset goes bad.

Although they used some of the same coding, the interim system and the main covert communication platform used in China at this time were supposed to be clearly separated. In theory, if the interim system were discovered or turned over to Chinese intelligence, people using the main system would still be protected—and there would be no way to trace the communication back to the CIA. But the CIA’s interim system contained a technical error: It connected back architecturally to the CIA’s main covert communications platform. When the compromise was suspected, the FBI and NSA both ran “penetration tests” to determine the security of the interim system. They found that cyber experts with access to the interim system could also access the broader covert communications system the agency was using to interact with its vetted sources, according to the former officials.

In the words of one of the former officials, the CIA had “fucked up the firewall” between the two systems.

U.S. intelligence officers were also able to identify digital links between the covert communications system and the U.S. government itself, according to one former official—links the Chinese agencies almost certainly found as well. These digital links would have made it relatively easy for China to deduce that the covert communications system was being used by the CIA. In fact, some of these links pointed back to parts of the CIA’s own website, according to the former official.

The covert communications system used in China was first employed by U.S. security forces in war zones in the Middle East, where the security challenges and tactical objectives are different, the sources said. “It migrated to countries with sophisticated counterintelligence operations, like China,” one of the officials said.

The system was not designed to withstand the scrutiny of a place like China, where the CIA faced a highly sophisticated intelligence service and a completely different online environment.

As part of China’s Great Firewall, internet traffic there is watched closely, and unusual patterns are flagged. Even in 2010, online anonymity of any kind was proving increasingly difficult.

Once Chinese intelligence obtained access to the interim communications system,­ penetrating the main system would have been relatively straightforward, according to the former intelligence officials. The window between the two systems may have only been open for a few months before the gap was closed, but the Chinese broke in during this period of vulnerability.

Precisely how the system was breached remains unclear. The Ministry of State Security might have run a double agent who was given the communication platform by his CIA handler. Another possibility is that Chinese authorities identified a U.S. agent—perhaps through information provided by Lee—and seized that person’s computer. Alternatively, authorities might have identified the system through a pattern analysis of suspicious online activities.

China was so determined to crack the system that it had set up a special task force composed of members of the Ministry of State Security and the Chinese military’s signals directorate (roughly equivalent to the NSA), one former official said.

Once one person was identified as a CIA asset, Chinese intelligence could then track the agent’s meetings with handlers and unravel the entire network. (Some CIA assets whose identities became known to the Ministry of State Security were not active users of the communications system, the sources said.)

One of the former officials said the agency had “strong indications” that China shared its findings with Russia, where some CIA assets were using a similar covert communications system. Around the time the CIA’s source network in China was being eviscerated, multiple sources in Russia suddenly severed their relationship with their CIA handlers, according to an NBC Newsreport that aired in January—and confirmed by this former official.

The failure of the communications system has reignited a debate within the intelligence community about the merits of older, lower-tech methods for covert interactions with sources, according to the former officials.

There is an inherent paradox to covert communications systems, one of the former officials said: The easier a system is to use, the less secure it is.

The former officials said CIA officers operating in China since the debacle had reverted to older methods of communication, including interacting surreptitiously in person with sources. Such methods can be time-consuming and carry their own risks.

The disaster in China has led some officials to conclude that internet-based systems, even ones that employ sophisticated encryption, can never be counted on to shield assets.

“Will a system always stay encrypted, given the advances in technology? You’re supposed to protect people forever,” one of the former officials said.

 

Edited by Hugo Stiglitz
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  • 2 weeks later...

Pretty hard to believe they haven't been able to steal US catapult tech yet. Seems like the US is still decades ahead there.

 

Speaking of...what did Navy ever do about drumpf wanting old steam vs electro magnetic catapults in newest carriers?

 

 

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A Chinese billionaire and CEO of one of the country’s biggest online retailers was arrested in Minnesota on criminal sexual conduct charges Friday and released a day later. Richard Liu, the founder of JD.com, was taken into custody in Minneapolis over what his company said were false accusations made against him while he was in the U.S. on a business trip. “The local police quickly determined there was no substance to the claim against Mr. Liu, and he was subsequently able to resume his business activities as originally planned,” JD.com said in a statement. Liu was listed in a jail roster for the Hennepin County Sheriff’s office, but police have yet to comment on his arrest.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/minnesota-police-arrest-and-quickly-release-chinese-billionaire

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  • 4 weeks later...

Not saying this is how it will go but very possible that China will be used as the ultimate boogeyman for the upcoming elections to negate or influence election results. I don't doubt China and Russia are meddling but they are queuing up China as the main enemy (maybe they are). China could be scheming to go against Trump and Russia for. You would have two powers trying to rip us apart from the inside. All the while we trip over our dicks because the current administration. 

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40 minutes ago, SmokeyTheBear said:

Not saying this is how it will go but very possible that China will be used as the ultimate boogeyman for the upcoming elections to negate or influence election results. I don't doubt China and Russia are meddling but they are queuing up China as the main enemy (maybe they are). China could be scheming to go against Trump and Russia for. You would have two powers trying to rip us apart from the inside. All the while we trip over our dicks because the current administration. 

Oh yeah, China is being made out to be the boogie man in the election.  And for the record, they are trying to influence the election through the trade war.  The Chinese response to Trump’s idiotic tariffs is to surgically strike farmers and producers in very Republican districts.  

They know how to hurt the republicans better than democrats.  The Chinese play chess, Trump plays hungry hippos. 

So much winning.

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https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/2018/10/5/17942546/interpol-president-missing-china

Meng Hongwei, the president of Interpol — an international organization that coordinates law enforcement agencies worldwide — hasn’t been seen since last week, when he departed from France on his way to China on September 29, according to multiple reports.

The French authorities opened an investigationinto his disappearance after Meng’s wife reportedly went to authorities in Lyon, where Interpol is headquartered, to let them know that she hadn’t heard from her husband since he landed in China.

Meng, according to the South China Morning Post, is a Chinese national and former Communist Party official, and he is still listed as a vice-minister for the Chinese government. The outlet also reported that he’s “under investigation” in China, but Chinese authorities have not offered comment.

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5 hours ago, SmokeyTheBear said:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/2018/10/5/17942546/interpol-president-missing-china

Meng Hongwei, the president of Interpol — an international organization that coordinates law enforcement agencies worldwide — hasn’t been seen since last week, when he departed from France on his way to China on September 29, according to multiple reports.

The French authorities opened an investigationinto his disappearance after Meng’s wife reportedly went to authorities in Lyon, where Interpol is headquartered, to let them know that she hadn’t heard from her husband since he landed in China.

Meng, according to the South China Morning Post, is a Chinese national and former Communist Party official, and he is still listed as a vice-minister for the Chinese government. The outlet also reported that he’s “under investigation” in China, but Chinese authorities have not offered comment.

You don't police us, we police you!

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