{"id":1230,"date":"2011-06-02T11:49:27","date_gmt":"2011-06-02T09:49:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ofcourseimright.com\/?p=1230"},"modified":"2011-06-02T11:49:27","modified_gmt":"2011-06-02T09:49:27","slug":"as-if-on-queue-google-accounts-attacked-from-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/?p=1230","title":{"rendered":"As if On Queue: Google accounts attacked from China"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The BBC reports<\/a> today how China is rejecting Google’s statement that attacks on its users originated from China.\u00a0 It’s very fair for China to call into question from whence attacks originate.\u00a0 The best Google can really authoritatively say is that they saw attacks coming from a particular set of IP addresses that happen to be registered to a network that resides in a particular location, in this case Jinan<\/a>.<\/p>\n

However, the attacks targeted individuals said to be Chinese dissidents or adversaries.\u00a0 In this case, as the BBC writes, while it is very difficult to state with assurance that the attacks were made by the Chinese government, the technique used, spear phishing, leads one to believe that this attack was in fact paid for, in some way, by a government.\u00a0 Spear phishing involves learning about a particular individual, and then crafting a message that that person would think came from someone they knew, and convincing that person to view an attachment that itself contains a virus.\u00a0 That virus must be relatively unknown, or virus checkers will pick it up.\u00a0 The cost of spear phishing is high, and the monetary pay-off tends to be low.\u00a0 Therefore, it is a good fit for an intelligence organization.<\/p>\n

In addition, as I wrote not long ago, Cambridge University investigated a break-in of the Office of His Holiness, The Dalai Lama.\u00a0 Those attacks also seemed to originate from China, they were also targeted against an adversary, and worst of all, China apparently acted upon the information stolen by applying diplomatic pressure against those countries who invited the Dalai Lama.<\/p>\n

At the very least, China bears some culpability for allowing the attack.\u00a0 Here we have a government that does not believe in the free flow of information, and so they are known for monitoring everything.\u00a0 How, then, did this attack escape their notice?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The BBC reports today how China is rejecting Google’s statement that attacks on its users originated from China.\u00a0 It’s very fair for China to call into question from whence attacks originate.\u00a0 The best Google can really authoritatively say is that they saw attacks coming from a particular set of IP addresses that happen to be … Continue reading “As if On Queue: Google accounts attacked from China”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":172,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,87,4,9],"tags":[141,408,407],"class_list":["post-1230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humanity","category-internet","category-politics","category-security","tag-china","tag-cyber-war","tag-spear-phishing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/172"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1230"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1232,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1230\/revisions\/1232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}