Chinese Propaganda Accidentally Reveals Cyberwar 286
An anonymous reader writes "A Chinese military propaganda video aired in mid-July inadvertently showed a Chinese military university launching cyberattacks against U.S. websites. The Epoch Times reports the video shows 'custom-built Chinese software apparently launching a cyber-attack against the main website of the Falun Gong spiritual practice, by using a compromised IP address belonging to a United States university.' A screen in the video also reveals 'the name of the software and the Chinese university that built it, the Electrical Engineering University of China's People's Liberation Army.'"
WTF? Pre-post comment. (Score:2, Interesting)
Speaking of hacking, you posted over an hour before the article release time? How did you do this? I know you have a subscription, but so do I and I've always had to wait to comment until the article publish time. Hacked Slashdot lately?
Re:Streamlined (Score:2, Interesting)
I think you mean melamine-tainted. Melanin is something else - not an industrial plastic used* to mimic protein for certain chemical tests.
(* also used to make bowls and plates and stuff like that.)
Re:Script kiddies, seriously China? (Score:5, Interesting)
Blatant sub-kiddie-script level hacking by the Chinese government (possibly the best funded cyber-warfare division on the planet) against the Falun Gong being "exposed" by a web site created by the Falun Gong? I wonder why my Spidey-Sense is tingling?
Re:Script kiddies, seriously China? (Score:4, Interesting)
Apparently China's best and brightest hackers need a GUI with drop-down menus and a big "Attack" button.
The sleeping dragon is strong indeed. I wonder if they have a "Pull trigger to fire" sticker on their rifles too.
For the same reason not every single soldier knows how to make a rifle from raw materials. It's up to the weapon designers to build it and make it simple for the ground troops to use.
Save the script-resistant sites (opponent military computers, etc) for the special ops, let the butts-in-seats brigade cause general casualties around the commercial non-hardened sites.
Re:weird (Score:3, Interesting)
That's pretty much my reaction about folks who are rabidly against Scientology. I don't get it. Pin someone down as to why they're so against it and they make vague references to someone somewhere being killed or something by a Scientologist. The same can be said about any religion.
Anyway, back to Falun Gong. Here's what a Chinese ex-pat told me.
The Falun Gong very quickly organized tens of thousands of people to gather - doesn't matter that all they did was meditate - and it scared the shit out of the Chinese leadership. The ability to get that many people together that fast and under the noses of the leadership is extremely worrying to them. THAT put them on the leadership's shit list.
It's was interesting how he talked about the Chinese leadership. It was almost like a teenager talking about their overly strict and uptight parents. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll be back by eleven - whatever." Rolls eyes.
Re:weird (Score:5, Interesting)
I was recently watching a CCTV documentary on the Seven Scholars of the Bamboo Grove, and like everything on CCTV I always start wondering 'what is their political angle?' And sure enough, they were primarily focusing on the Seven Scholars deliberate avoidance in politics and how that preserved them when others were being purged for their intrigues. The CCP wants people to avoid politics as much as possible, which includes any criticism of the government.
Falun Gong questions the morality of the government and the CCP within the tradition three dimensional contexts of Chinese morality: Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. Even though China is a very secular society, these criticisms are very seriously taken by the CCP, which is always living in fear of losing control.
If you're really interested you could look into the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party (which is banned in China) and the Tuidang Movement. Both of which are sourced in Falun Gong and do have an air of propaganda to them at times, but a thinking person can still find useful information even among such chaff.
Re:WTF? Pre-post comment. (Score:5, Interesting)
actually, if they hit DC, we just declare the disaster so severe that the united states no longer exists -- they killed the beast! -- and then pick up right where we left off with USA2.
Minus all our debt to them.
Because that was USA1.
Re:weird (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:weird (Score:2, Interesting)
If your argument is true, then the essential claim is that Chinese people are stupider than their western counterparts and cannot distinguish bullshit from truth so the government must step in to save them. That would be believable if the government actually had a historical record of prioritizing people's lives.
Exactly. We westerns are obviously superior to asians, and would never believe silly things like homeopathy or Scientology. They must be really stupid.
Although your hate may make you think otherwise, stupid people are by no means exclusive to any one country.
Re:follow the money (Score:2, Interesting)