7 ms·

Sources say China used iPhone hacks to target Uyghur Muslims

42 points by djug 7y ago

bluerobotcat 7y ago
To add a bit of context, China forces Android users in Xinjiang to install surveillance apps: - https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ne94dg/jingwang-app-no-encryption-china-force-install-urumqi-xinjiang https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ne94dg/jingwang-app-no-en... - https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/7xgame/at-chinese-border-tourists-forced-to-install-a-text-stealing-piece-of-malware https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/7xgame/at-chinese-border-... Such apps wouldn't work on iOS, due to its tighter security. But apparently if you're China that's not much of a deterrent, because you can just buy a rootkit to get around such limitations.
- fredgrott 7y ago
  supposedly Fuchsia closes that hole
Despegar 7y ago
It's telling that Google wasn't willing to name China publicly and that someone (most likely someone at Project Zero) had to leak it to this reporter off-the-record. Maybe they still have some hope of re-entering China?
- word-reader 7y ago
  It didn't have to be someone at Project Zero. Anyone with a bunch of network logs could have searched for some of the fingerprints or URLs that were publicly available and deduced the target from associated traffic.
api 7y ago
This is semi off topic, but why (from a mainstream Chinese perspective) is China targeting Uyghur Muslims? Is there just a general ideology of enforced conformity or is this a special case?
- Proven 7y ago
  How about you spare us and just google it?
- ahmadss 7y ago
  "Chinese officials are concerned that Uighurs hold extremist and separatist ideas, and they view the camps as a way of eliminating threats to China’s territorial integrity, government, and population." [1] 1- https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/chinas-crackdown-uighurs-xinjiang https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/chinas-crackdown-uighurs-xi...
- aldoushuxley001 7y ago
  It's not just Uyghur Muslims, it's also Tibetans & the Falun Gong. I'm sure there's other groups as well. It seems to mostly be about ensuring there's no competing power structures, the strongest of which usually revolve around religion. Effectively, China really doesn't want another Taiping Rebellion.
- wsxcde 7y ago
  Uighur's and Tibetans have historically not had significant ties with mainland China. The Uighurs are Turkic and have closer cultural ties to the likes of Kazakhstan. The Tibetans are more closely tied to India/Nepal.* After the Mao revolution, the Chinese annexed these territories and started a huge bout of propaganda claiming these regions were always part of China. The propaganda has worked on the mainland Chinese, but obviously, the Uighurs and Tibetans don't buy it because they know their own history. There's been some recent unrest in Uighur autonomous region, so China is starting around round of indoctrination and police state tactics. *I know this is a controversial claim especially for people of Chinese origin. So if you doubt this, a couple of facts worth pointing out are the following. The Dalai Lama's government in exile is headquartered in Dharamshala in Northern India. Loads of Tibetan kings have had Nepali wives. Tibetan is most closely related to languages spoken in Ladakh, Sikkim, Bhutan and Nepal -- two of these are Indian states and the other two are effectively Indian protectorates. Some of the most important "gurus" in Tibetan Buddhism (e.g. Rinpoche aka Padmasambhava) were Indian. The Tibetan script is based on Brahmi which is an ancient Indian script that gave rise to all modern Indian scripts such as Devanagari (used for Hindi/Marathi etc.), Gurmukhi (used for Punjabi), Tamil, Kannada, Bengali, Assamese, etc.
word-reader 7y ago
So we now know that drive-by rooting of even "locked-down" and "secure" user devices like the iPhone is possible and in active use by state actors. What are the odds that other governments, even the US (which has the additional advantage of being able to gag Apple and Google), are doing this? Seems like it would become a more important way to do surveillance as more data and networks become encrypted.

42 points by djug 7y ago

To add a bit of context, China forces Android users in Xinjiang to install surveillance apps: - https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ne94dg/jingwang-app-no-encryption-china-force-install-urumqi-xinjiang https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ne94dg/jingwang-app-no-en... - https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/7xgame/at-chinese-border-tourists-forced-to-install-a-text-stealing-piece-of-malware https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/7xgame/at-chinese-border-... Such apps wouldn't work on iOS, due to its tighter security. But apparently if you're China that's not much of a deterrent, because you can just buy a rootkit to get around such limitations.

fredgrott 7y ago
supposedly Fuchsia closes that hole

Despegar 7y ago

It's telling that Google wasn't willing to name China publicly and that someone (most likely someone at Project Zero) had to leak it to this reporter off-the-record. Maybe they still have some hope of re-entering China?

word-reader 7y ago
It didn't have to be someone at Project Zero. Anyone with a bunch of network logs could have searched for some of the fingerprints or URLs that were publicly available and deduced the target from associated traffic.

api 7y ago

This is semi off topic, but why (from a mainstream Chinese perspective) is China targeting Uyghur Muslims? Is there just a general ideology of enforced conformity or is this a special case?

Proven 7y ago
How about you spare us and just google it?
ahmadss 7y ago
"Chinese officials are concerned that Uighurs hold extremist and separatist ideas, and they view the camps as a way of eliminating threats to China’s territorial integrity, government, and population." [1] 1- https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/chinas-crackdown-uighurs-xinjiang https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/chinas-crackdown-uighurs-xi...
aldoushuxley001 7y ago
It's not just Uyghur Muslims, it's also Tibetans & the Falun Gong. I'm sure there's other groups as well. It seems to mostly be about ensuring there's no competing power structures, the strongest of which usually revolve around religion. Effectively, China really doesn't want another Taiping Rebellion.
wsxcde 7y ago
Uighur's and Tibetans have historically not had significant ties with mainland China. The Uighurs are Turkic and have closer cultural ties to the likes of Kazakhstan. The Tibetans are more closely tied to India/Nepal.* After the Mao revolution, the Chinese annexed these territories and started a huge bout of propaganda claiming these regions were always part of China. The propaganda has worked on the mainland Chinese, but obviously, the Uighurs and Tibetans don't buy it because they know their own history. There's been some recent unrest in Uighur autonomous region, so China is starting around round of indoctrination and police state tactics. *I know this is a controversial claim especially for people of Chinese origin. So if you doubt this, a couple of facts worth pointing out are the following. The Dalai Lama's government in exile is headquartered in Dharamshala in Northern India. Loads of Tibetan kings have had Nepali wives. Tibetan is most closely related to languages spoken in Ladakh, Sikkim, Bhutan and Nepal -- two of these are Indian states and the other two are effectively Indian protectorates. Some of the most important "gurus" in Tibetan Buddhism (e.g. Rinpoche aka Padmasambhava) were Indian. The Tibetan script is based on Brahmi which is an ancient Indian script that gave rise to all modern Indian scripts such as Devanagari (used for Hindi/Marathi etc.), Gurmukhi (used for Punjabi), Tamil, Kannada, Bengali, Assamese, etc.

word-reader 7y ago

So we now know that drive-by rooting of even "locked-down" and "secure" user devices like the iPhone is possible and in active use by state actors. What are the odds that other governments, even the US (which has the additional advantage of being able to gag Apple and Google), are doing this? Seems like it would become a more important way to do surveillance as more data and networks become encrypted.