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U.S. Coding Website GitHub Hit with Cyberattack
- conradk 12y agoInteresting how this article came out at about the same time "Ask HN: Why isn't the GitHub attack being covered by the news?" [1] was trending on HN. I can't read the article without going through a subscription process first. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9284688 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9284688
- sheetjs 12y agoGo to google news and search for the headline.
- manojlds 12y agoHow does that work? Referrer?
- ikeboy 12y agoYes. http://www.jongales.com/blog/2014/02/13/how-to-get-around-the-wsj-paywall/ http://www.jongales.com/blog/2014/02/13/how-to-get-around-th...
- paralelogram 12y agohttps://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/40543?hl=en https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/40543?hl=en
- zo1 12y agoOr you could, instead, not bother wasting time on it? I can't get to it, and I'm not willing to subscribe, so I won't read the article.
- btown 12y agoIn Chrome, prepend ? to the paywalled URL to get a Google search for the article's URL, then click the link there so that Google is your referrer.
- daniel-levin 12y agoThank you very much for this!
- ikeboy 12y agoAnyone having problems viewing, click https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB8QqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fu-s-coding-website-github-hit-with-cyberattack-1427638940&ei=0yAYVbTbNceoNqu6hJAL&usg=AFQjCNEA_qnPu8LObRFwO5yE5oPzTQ4HhQ&bvm=bv.89381419,d.eXY https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...
- PeterWhittaker 12y agoThanks, tried it, but with or without cookies, this still tells me I need to subscribe or login.
- rellik 12y agoFor those that find this doesn't work (like me), just go to google and type the name of the article.
- hrayr 12y agosearch "U.S. Coding Website GitHub Hit With Cyberattack" on google and click on the first link.
- nhebb 12y agoI've noticed this trick only works if I'm using Chrome. In Firefox (my default browser), the article content is still blocked.
- camhenlin 12y agoWhile it's nice to see a large news organization reporting the attack, it would still be nice to see a political figure aknowledge that an American company was cyber attacked by the Chinese government
- teamhappy 12y agoNot happening, because: 1. You need facts to back that claim 2. $1.3 trillion debt 3. Stuxnet et al. Nobody gains anything from opening that particular door.
- ikeboy 12y agoAhem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberwarfare_in_China#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberwarfare_in_China#United_S... http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/fbi-warns-u-s-businesses-china-backed-cyberattacks-n226821 http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/fbi-warns-u-s-businesse... http://www.darkreading.com/risk-management/china-cyber-espionage-threatens-us-report-says/d/d-id/1085047 http://www.darkreading.com/risk-management/china-cyber-espio... http://www.investing.com/news/technology-news/chinese-hacked-u.s.-military-contractors,-senate-probe-finds-309836 http://www.investing.com/news/technology-news/chinese-hacked...
- teamhappy 12y agoYou should read the articles before you post them. > The United States has accused China [...] China has denied accusations of cyberwarfare, and has accused the United States [...] > The FBI warned U.S. businesses on Wednesday that hackers it believes to be backed by the Chinese government [...] > [...] Chinese espionage and cyber espionage activities may be carried out by individuals without obvious government ties. (Emphasis is mine.) That seems to be the game we're playing. Everybody is super concerned but nobody's actually doing anything for the aforementioned reasons. // ↓ Fair point (the accusation bit) If an accusation is all the OP wants, I don't see why anybody would doubt that will happen tomorrow.
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- jessaustin 12y agoSpecifically, the traffic was directed to two pages on GitHub... the other linked to a copy of the New York Times’ Chinese language website... A spokeswoman for the New York Times declined to comment. It isn’t clear who controls the GitHub site that contains the copy of the paper’s content. [EDIT: Apparently this is a copy.] Notwithstanding the actions of some in China, reposting newspapers doesn't seem like a service GitHub really wants to provide. Would anyone complain if GH were to pull this content? Incidentally, TFA was quite informative; good job WSJ!
- ikeboy 12y agoIt's a copy, in the hopes that governments won't want to block github.
- allochthon 12y agoIt's a reasonable tactical move, and GH can't be expected to bear the cost indefinitely. But it would ultimately hurt freedom of speech outside of China if GH capitulates. (Asked HN about this yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9282950. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9282950.)
- dujiulun2006 12y agoDoesn't matter to us Chinese people because WSJ is evil and we are protected by the mighty GFW from it too. [sarcasm sign]
- eliben 12y agoSilly question: Can Github just carpet-block all Chinese IP addresses? Would this mitigate the attack? Or is it that GH doesn't want to punish real Chinese users (some of whom may well be paying customers) for their government's tactics?
- blamarvt 12y agoThe DDoS tactics may have changed but the initial attack [0] was from all non-Chinese IPs who were visiting Chinese websites. That's what makes this attack so difficult to block -- requests aren't being made from Chinese IPs but rather from everwhere else. [0] - http://insight-labs.org/?p=1682 http://insight-labs.org/?p=1682
- hifier 12y agoMaybe a naive question, but in the original attack, couldn't the 'bad' requests have been identified using the referrer?
- madlag 12y agoYes, that's one of the method that was used: from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9284226 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9284226 : > The first round was cross-domain JavaScript, stopped with an "alert()". Second round was cross-domain <img>, stopped with referrer. Third was DDoS-ing GitHub Pages. Fourth is the ongoing TCP SYN Flood attack.
- hifier 12y agoIn that case, why is https://github.com/greatfire/ https://github.com/greatfire/ still returning the alert(..) js when not coming from Baidu?
- pyre 12y ago> > The first round was cross-domain JavaScript, stopped with an "alert()". > Second round was cross-domain <img>, stopped with referrer. It does not mention that the alert() used the referrer.
- w_t_payne 12y agoI would imagine that there are some interesting legal avenues that could be pursued here.
- darkhorn 12y agoYes, like bringing back East Turkistan and Tibet. Sertainly you are going to win this legal action and China will pay Github.
- rawnlq 12y agoHypothetically, if another "U.S." company with higher economical consequences got cyberattacked, would it be considered an act of war? For example if Facebook got shutdown for a few days/weeks. Or does it have to be military/government/infrastructure related tech? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberwarfare#Cyberwarfare_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberwarfare#Cyberwarfare_in_th... "The new United States military strategy makes explicit that a cyberattack is casus belli just as a traditional act of war."
- enraged_camel 12y agoIt most likely wouldn't be considered an act of war, for several reasons. Most cyber-attacks are difficult to trace to a source, and even when they are traced, it's basically impossible to prove (beyond a reasonable doubt) that the attack was state-sponsored. Countries let more serious transgressions slide, because wars are costly and they cause orders of magnitude more damage than any cyberattack. In the grand scheme of things, economic damage resulting from cyber-espionage or cyber-sabotage is regarded -- or at least should be regarded -- as a cost of doing business on the Internet. Companies should treat DDoS attacks the way banks treat robberies: inevitable and expected. And just like banks, they should simply buy insurance to cover the costs and damages.
- BetaMechazawa 12y agoI honestly feel that in this case we can say that beyond a reasonable doubt this is a state-sponsored attack. This is because of both the target and the fact that traffic is manipulated at the "great" firewall to initiate this attack.
- darkhorn 12y agoTo be considered an act of war the USA should have something to gain such as oil or destroying a small communist coutry.
- pjc50 12y agoSo is shooting down an airliner (MH17), but you just don't declare war on another nuclear power if you want to see tomorrow.
- EdSharkey 12y agoSeems very shortsighted of China to do this. Don't they expect reprisals if not from our government, then github itself? Although it probably goes against their corporate policies, Github really ought to block access to all China IP addresses for all repos OTHER than greatfire and the nytimes until the offending DDoS codes are removed from baidu.
- AYBABTME 12y agoReprisal of this sort would have no effect other than worsening Github's stance in front of China. Reprisal from corporations against a large state are pretty useless. The best and smartest thing a corporation can do is complain to their local diplomacy. Nations are sovereign, if you hit them back as a corporation, they'll just block you and there's nothing you can do about it.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- dagw 12y agoReprisal with out very solid proof just makes the 'repriser' look bad. Even if you can 100% prove that the attack came from with the Chinese government, all China has to do is blame ha idealistic, but naive, rogue admin and promise that steps have been taken to make sure it doesn't happen again.
- pjc50 12y agoreprisals How large are the github armed forces?
- dba7dba 12y agoI go check wsj.com site and the ad on top is one from HUAWEI.
- nvk 12y agoPaywall
- randiantech 12y agoGithub is "a US Coding Website"? What? Theres thousand of non US code repos there.
- ta82828 12y agoGrammar ambiguity: the site is in the US. So a "US Website" -> what kind of website? A coding website -> US (Coding Website) -> "US Coding Website"