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So the plan is to hide and not to disclose the problematic companies, and then blame everything on China... Absurd.

mc32 8y ago
It reminds me of the Google China incident. except google pulled out and revamped their practices (though as outsiders we know little of what really happened),
- justinclift 8y ago
  > google pulled out and revamped their practices Give it 5 years. See if Google are just waiting for things to "cool down" before going back at it.
  - Groxx 8y ago
    Dragonfly implies they have been working towards that attempt for a while, and weren't too far away from it being launchable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine) So yea, already happened, will probably happen again.
  - ineedasername 8y ago
    This. Pichai's comments before congress didn't say it was cancelled. What he said ammounted to simply stating "we don't yet have a release date"
- cronix 8y ago
  > except google pulled out and revamped their practices All while working behind the scenes trying to make a Chinese controlled Google (Dragonfly) for China, complete with the censorship tools that any government that wants to control its people would love? Several large American companies seem to be chomping at the bit to do these types of projects and help repressive governments in order to profit, until the light of truth gets shown on them... Or were you referring to the time when they were already in China and pulled out over censorship issues? https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/technology/google-employees-protest-search-censored-china.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/technology/google-employe... I'm not even sure why China needs google, they've already stolen the source code years ago. Maybe they're after updates to the algorithms. > In a blog post, Google chief legal officer David Drummond said hackers stole the source code that powers Google’s vaunted search engine and also targeted the e-mail accounts of activists critical of China’s human rights abuses. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/chinese-hackers-who-breached-google-gained-access-to-sensitive-data-us-officials-say/2013/05/20/51330428-be34-11e2-89c9-3be8095fe767_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/chine...
  - opnitro 8y ago
    I mean, this isn't really a new phenomenon. See the United Fruit Company (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company#Guatemala https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company#Guatemala)
  - bduerst 8y ago
    The pilot project of one APAC director doesn't represent the entire company. Per an exgoogler on the project, Scott Beaumont tried to bypass the company's privacy and security review process, and the employees revolted. The focus on Google's dragonfly is strange because it never came to fruition, yet other major tech companies like Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon are already operating in China and currently giving similar concessions to the Chinese government.
    - ineedasername 8y ago
      From what I've read Pichai was a champion of the project though and gave the director the cover he needed to bypass standard procedure.
    - jammygit 8y ago
      Google does a lot of things people don't like, but among huge companies they're still the 'good guys' in some ways. Its a big part of their brand. Isn't it nice that one of the world's biggest companies cares enough about losing that to change its plans?
      - rhizome 8y ago
        Google does a lot of things people don't like, but among huge companies they're still the 'good guys' in some ways. Its a big part of their brand. Just because it's a part of their "brand" doesn't mean they "are" that thing. Caveat surfor.
    - alasdair_ 8y ago
      >The pilot project of one APAC director doesn't represent the entire company. Sure, no action is ever representative of an entire company - there are always exceptions, but in this case, the CEO and other senior leadership were both behind the project AND behind hiding it from others - you can't paint it as a rogue operation from "one APAC director".
- samfisher83 8y ago
  China is the second most powerful nation in the world. If they want to hack you there is not much you can do about it. They could just send spies into your organization. Pretty much all the computers are built there. They could bug the equipment, or they could just economically flex their muscle. Look to what happen to ZTE when US threw sanctions at them.
odiroot 8y ago
China is the new Boogeyman of 2010s.
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  Well... China actually exists, and is actually doing some of the things that people are scared of them for.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  China is a state sponsor of hacking and industrial espionage and they're also incarcerating quite a number of people based on their ethnicity, and harvesting their organs when they die in incarceration. Among other things. Call it what you want but, even with a lot of grey in between, these things are real and material. That said, I suggest the number of stories appearing in the press as of late might be part of a steady leak of information from US authorities as part of their strategy to put pressure on China during trade negotiations.
  - dunpeal 8y ago
    Right, but if all I do is accept obvious reality as it is, I'll be just like everyone else! How will others know I'm intellectually superior to them, unless I express some edgy contrarian view?!
  - Scaevolus 8y ago
    Organs aren't very useful when people die outside of a hospital. They're harvested from brain dead patients or those that have just undergone cardiac death. edit: I was responding to "harvesting their organs when they die in incarceration" -- this sounds like it's a natural death.
    - drhodes 8y ago
      https://www.amnestyusa.org/execution-vans-organ-harvesting-business-as-usual-in-china/ https://www.amnestyusa.org/execution-vans-organ-harvesting-b... > For many years, it has been known that China uses execution vans, kind of like specially outfitted ambulances, to more efficiently carry out its exceedingly large number of executions. The method of killing in these vans is lethal injection, which has been slowly but surely replacing the firing squad as China’s preferred means of execution, and both lethal injection and the vans are believed to facilitate the widespread practice of harvesting organs of the executed prisoners, an unbelievably appalling practice.
karmasimida 8y ago
Or Russia. The source of all problems that the West is facing.
- threeseed 8y ago
  No Russia is the source of problems that Russia creates. Influencing elections and referendums, assassinating people abroad, hostile acquisition of parts of a country, widespread cheating at sport, assassinating opposition members etc.
  - ekianjo 8y ago
    > Influencing elections and referendums That is no way limited to Russia.
    - threeseed 8y ago
      That doesn't excuse the behaviour. And Russia is far more aggressive than other country. Even today we had Putin telling UK's government in a press conference to respect Brexit which directly helps Russia by weakening the EU/NATO.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - chrisco255 8y ago
      Can't reply to sibling comment...but maybe Russia taking sides at all causes people to doubt the democratic process. Should we automatically take the opposite position of Putin? That's just as subversive.
    - pl1234 8y ago
      for the USA, israel is the biggest offender
- ekianjo 8y ago
  Things haven't changed that much since post-ww2.
nkrisc 8y ago
At the same time I can see their reasoning: a nation would only need to attack a company with the goal of ruining their reputation in order to benefit a domestically-favored competitor.
- yayana 8y ago
  You mean without getting identified as the source though? If you can simultaneously reveal both aspects, who would choose the domestic playground of an attacker over somewhere they couldn't stay undetected?
cronix 8y ago
> So the plan is to hide and not to disclose the problematic companies, and then blame everything on China... Absurd. Or the methods used so others can try to protect themselves.
guelo 8y ago
Why would we not blame the hackers? You can criticize someone for having bad locks but the burglar is still the one that belongs in jail.
- fulafel 8y ago
  They are blaming "China" for doing what NSA's burglars (or "America") do all day.
- koolba 8y ago
  If a burglar robs your house and steals a gun it’s your duty to report that it was stolen.
  - FPGAhacker 8y ago
    Not necessarily to the public though. Perhaps a more apt analogy would be your house is burgled while you are away, do the authorities have an obligation to tell everyone in the neighborhood or just you?
    - gota 8y ago
      Did the burglarized house contain copies of the keys of all their neighbors? We're abusing the metaphor by now, but there's clear interest of the clients of the companies in the matter...
    - piva00 8y ago
      Abusing the analogy: instead of a house you have apartments and the burglar broke in to the building and now might have access to the other tenants' homes, don't you have to report that to the landlord, police AND your neighbors?
  - Thaxll 8y ago
    Not every hack are related to your personal data.
  - jostmey 8y ago
    Still, are you going to place a majority of the blame on the victim or the burglar? It would seem that a majority of the blame lies with China if the allegations are true (I suspect they are)
ineedasername 8y ago
of course you blame china. if your house gets broken into and then you still don't buy new locks or a security system and you house continues to get violated... sure you're not very smart but it's still the criminals commiting the crime. And that wasn't even the comparable situation. From the article it looks like IBM was continually responding to an evolving attack and very deep and extensive penetration. Maybe, possible, at worst, IBM was arguably negligent here but it's still Chinas fault the situation occured.
- adventured 8y ago
  Even after all of these years I still see a continued underestimation of how good China is at these types of hacks. There's very plausibly no nation/group better at it, or that could do it better, including the NSA. They have accumulated immense experience and it's an always on process with China, so they evolve and learn with security adjustments.
friedman23 8y ago
It's absurd that you even suggest not blaming China
rataata_jr 8y ago
As if companies have freedom in China.
equalunique 8y ago
Sentiment shared. Working in the public sector there are many things which continually go un-adressed and as a result continually provide favorable conditions to APTs.

mc32 8y ago

It reminds me of the Google China incident. except google pulled out and revamped their practices (though as outsiders we know little of what really happened),

justinclift 8y ago
> google pulled out and revamped their practices Give it 5 years. See if Google are just waiting for things to "cool down" before going back at it.
- Groxx 8y ago
  Dragonfly implies they have been working towards that attempt for a while, and weren't too far away from it being launchable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine) So yea, already happened, will probably happen again.
- ineedasername 8y ago
  This. Pichai's comments before congress didn't say it was cancelled. What he said ammounted to simply stating "we don't yet have a release date"
cronix 8y ago
> except google pulled out and revamped their practices All while working behind the scenes trying to make a Chinese controlled Google (Dragonfly) for China, complete with the censorship tools that any government that wants to control its people would love? Several large American companies seem to be chomping at the bit to do these types of projects and help repressive governments in order to profit, until the light of truth gets shown on them... Or were you referring to the time when they were already in China and pulled out over censorship issues? https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/technology/google-employees-protest-search-censored-china.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/technology/google-employe... I'm not even sure why China needs google, they've already stolen the source code years ago. Maybe they're after updates to the algorithms. > In a blog post, Google chief legal officer David Drummond said hackers stole the source code that powers Google’s vaunted search engine and also targeted the e-mail accounts of activists critical of China’s human rights abuses. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/chinese-hackers-who-breached-google-gained-access-to-sensitive-data-us-officials-say/2013/05/20/51330428-be34-11e2-89c9-3be8095fe767_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/chine...
- opnitro 8y ago
  I mean, this isn't really a new phenomenon. See the United Fruit Company (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company#Guatemala https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company#Guatemala)
- bduerst 8y ago
  The pilot project of one APAC director doesn't represent the entire company. Per an exgoogler on the project, Scott Beaumont tried to bypass the company's privacy and security review process, and the employees revolted. The focus on Google's dragonfly is strange because it never came to fruition, yet other major tech companies like Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon are already operating in China and currently giving similar concessions to the Chinese government.
  - ineedasername 8y ago
    From what I've read Pichai was a champion of the project though and gave the director the cover he needed to bypass standard procedure.
  - jammygit 8y ago
    Google does a lot of things people don't like, but among huge companies they're still the 'good guys' in some ways. Its a big part of their brand. Isn't it nice that one of the world's biggest companies cares enough about losing that to change its plans?
    - rhizome 8y ago
      Google does a lot of things people don't like, but among huge companies they're still the 'good guys' in some ways. Its a big part of their brand. Just because it's a part of their "brand" doesn't mean they "are" that thing. Caveat surfor.
  - alasdair_ 8y ago
    >The pilot project of one APAC director doesn't represent the entire company. Sure, no action is ever representative of an entire company - there are always exceptions, but in this case, the CEO and other senior leadership were both behind the project AND behind hiding it from others - you can't paint it as a rogue operation from "one APAC director".
samfisher83 8y ago
China is the second most powerful nation in the world. If they want to hack you there is not much you can do about it. They could just send spies into your organization. Pretty much all the computers are built there. They could bug the equipment, or they could just economically flex their muscle. Look to what happen to ZTE when US threw sanctions at them.

odiroot 8y ago

China is the new Boogeyman of 2010s.

AnimalMuppet 8y ago
Well... China actually exists, and is actually doing some of the things that people are scared of them for.
sonnyblarney 8y ago
China is a state sponsor of hacking and industrial espionage and they're also incarcerating quite a number of people based on their ethnicity, and harvesting their organs when they die in incarceration. Among other things. Call it what you want but, even with a lot of grey in between, these things are real and material. That said, I suggest the number of stories appearing in the press as of late might be part of a steady leak of information from US authorities as part of their strategy to put pressure on China during trade negotiations.
- dunpeal 8y ago
  Right, but if all I do is accept obvious reality as it is, I'll be just like everyone else! How will others know I'm intellectually superior to them, unless I express some edgy contrarian view?!
- Scaevolus 8y ago
  Organs aren't very useful when people die outside of a hospital. They're harvested from brain dead patients or those that have just undergone cardiac death. edit: I was responding to "harvesting their organs when they die in incarceration" -- this sounds like it's a natural death.
  - drhodes 8y ago
    https://www.amnestyusa.org/execution-vans-organ-harvesting-business-as-usual-in-china/ https://www.amnestyusa.org/execution-vans-organ-harvesting-b... > For many years, it has been known that China uses execution vans, kind of like specially outfitted ambulances, to more efficiently carry out its exceedingly large number of executions. The method of killing in these vans is lethal injection, which has been slowly but surely replacing the firing squad as China’s preferred means of execution, and both lethal injection and the vans are believed to facilitate the widespread practice of harvesting organs of the executed prisoners, an unbelievably appalling practice.

karmasimida 8y ago

Or Russia. The source of all problems that the West is facing.

threeseed 8y ago
No Russia is the source of problems that Russia creates. Influencing elections and referendums, assassinating people abroad, hostile acquisition of parts of a country, widespread cheating at sport, assassinating opposition members etc.
- ekianjo 8y ago
  > Influencing elections and referendums That is no way limited to Russia.
  - threeseed 8y ago
    That doesn't excuse the behaviour. And Russia is far more aggressive than other country. Even today we had Putin telling UK's government in a press conference to respect Brexit which directly helps Russia by weakening the EU/NATO.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - chrisco255 8y ago
    Can't reply to sibling comment...but maybe Russia taking sides at all causes people to doubt the democratic process. Should we automatically take the opposite position of Putin? That's just as subversive.
  - pl1234 8y ago
    for the USA, israel is the biggest offender
ekianjo 8y ago
Things haven't changed that much since post-ww2.

nkrisc 8y ago

At the same time I can see their reasoning: a nation would only need to attack a company with the goal of ruining their reputation in order to benefit a domestically-favored competitor.

yayana 8y ago
You mean without getting identified as the source though? If you can simultaneously reveal both aspects, who would choose the domestic playground of an attacker over somewhere they couldn't stay undetected?

cronix 8y ago

> So the plan is to hide and not to disclose the problematic companies, and then blame everything on China... Absurd. Or the methods used so others can try to protect themselves.

guelo 8y ago

Why would we not blame the hackers? You can criticize someone for having bad locks but the burglar is still the one that belongs in jail.

fulafel 8y ago
They are blaming "China" for doing what NSA's burglars (or "America") do all day.
koolba 8y ago
If a burglar robs your house and steals a gun it’s your duty to report that it was stolen.
- FPGAhacker 8y ago
  Not necessarily to the public though. Perhaps a more apt analogy would be your house is burgled while you are away, do the authorities have an obligation to tell everyone in the neighborhood or just you?
  - gota 8y ago
    Did the burglarized house contain copies of the keys of all their neighbors? We're abusing the metaphor by now, but there's clear interest of the clients of the companies in the matter...
  - piva00 8y ago
    Abusing the analogy: instead of a house you have apartments and the burglar broke in to the building and now might have access to the other tenants' homes, don't you have to report that to the landlord, police AND your neighbors?
- Thaxll 8y ago
  Not every hack are related to your personal data.
- jostmey 8y ago
  Still, are you going to place a majority of the blame on the victim or the burglar? It would seem that a majority of the blame lies with China if the allegations are true (I suspect they are)

ineedasername 8y ago

of course you blame china. if your house gets broken into and then you still don't buy new locks or a security system and you house continues to get violated... sure you're not very smart but it's still the criminals commiting the crime. And that wasn't even the comparable situation. From the article it looks like IBM was continually responding to an evolving attack and very deep and extensive penetration. Maybe, possible, at worst, IBM was arguably negligent here but it's still Chinas fault the situation occured.

adventured 8y ago
Even after all of these years I still see a continued underestimation of how good China is at these types of hacks. There's very plausibly no nation/group better at it, or that could do it better, including the NSA. They have accumulated immense experience and it's an always on process with China, so they evolve and learn with security adjustments.

friedman23 8y ago

It's absurd that you even suggest not blaming China

rataata_jr 8y ago

As if companies have freedom in China.

equalunique 8y ago

Sentiment shared. Working in the public sector there are many things which continually go un-adressed and as a result continually provide favorable conditions to APTs.