Comments on: Did China Cause 2003 American Blackout?

By: mike

mike — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 03:08:13 +0000

“China” don’t do shit!

This is an endless, ongoing problem. There are two ways this accusation could be phrased:

1) Pimply garage-based independent hackers launched attacks.

2) Special PLA elite cyber-warfare units launched attacks.

Funny how often stories are worded to imply #2, while buried somewhere down in the story is the caveat it’s really #1? I figure about half political-journalistic sensationalism, half cognitive shortcut.

Bloggers should really have a ban on putting “China” as the subject of any non-descriptive sentence. As if the country is some monolithic entity that does things!

By: Josh

Josh — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 11:20:37 +0000

Never thought of Dan as an ambulance chaser…although he does claim to be a good athlete.

And it the theory that I’m scaring people so they hire Dan? I’m confused.

By: Ying Jia

Ying Jia — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 07:38:54 +0000

Cyber-terrorism cynicism conspiracy theories so dodgy American lawyers can scare their naieve local clients into spending more money with them on legal protection. “China bad. You need to hire me to keep you out of trouble from those communists”. Go see http://www.chinalawblog.com and see how much Dan Harris and his gang of Seattle ambulance chasers REALLY love China.

By: hehe

hehe — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 11:53:50 +0000

Leo,

He is not retarded, he is too smart at least he thinks he is.

By: Leo

Leo — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 17:45:24 +0000

To name a few facts:

When the recent earth quake came to China, the Chinese earthquake authorities’ announcements were always 10-20 min later than those of the American. The Chinese pulibc charged the authorities with hiding the information while the authorities could only reply that they had done their best.

After the quake the Chinese government sent in the troops and helicopters. The helicopters could not land in the epicenter because they had no local coordination. A Chinese student sent her data of coordination and won the praise of the official press. Her data were based on the Google Earth.

A few days ago a PLA Mig-171 was down during the rescue operation. The authorities sent more than 10, 000 military and civilian personnel to search the area and promised 10,000 RMB award, dead or alive. The Mig-171 was not equipped with devices to send out positioning signal, which is a minimal requirement for the US military, as well as a little more sophiscated civilian, aircrafts.

Now you tell me the PLA lauched a cyber attack on the US and was caught doing so. Are they retarded?

By: Ying Jia

Ying Jia — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 05:22:06 +0000

A Harris & Moure / China Law Blog client raided for selling fake Cisco product? Way to go Dan. Ya gotta just lurve that hourly billing.

By: Falen

Falen — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 20:56:30 +0000

Are you intentionally ignoring the sentence that says “…did not explicitly rule out a Chinese role.” Like they didn’t “explicitly rule out” Osama Bin Laden, Alien, etc etc… That’s a warning bell that tells me “bad journalism.” An just like that, this article is full of innuendos and short on real proof linking China to the break-in. They have

By: Jing

Jing — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 13:01:02 +0000

Sadly no, China had nothing to do with the U.S. blackout of 2003 or likely the Florida one.

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/05/did-hackers-cau.html

“So China would have to have planted the race condition in a product used around the world, then, using the most devious malware ever devised, arranged for trees to grow up into exactly the right power lines at precisely the right time to trigger the cascade. ”

This is nothing more than paranoid conspiracy crafting by kooks and frothing at the mouth neo-cons.

By: China Hearsay: China law, business, and economics commentary

China Hearsay: China law, business, and economics commentary — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 12:00:09 +0000

[...] has generally been circulated much more than it deserves. Even the normally cynical and skeptical Josh blogged about this story in a seemingly sincere and non-sarcastic way (I could be wrong, [...]

By: hopi

hopi — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 03:42:36 +0000

I find the article a bit paranoid, especially in terms of the business arena. There are far easier ways (not necessarily ethical ways though) to find out negotiation bottom lines than hacking. People switch jobs all the time, maybe an employee of the Chinese company onced worked at another company that negotiated against the American company. It’s also possible that the Chinese negotiators were just really good, they did their home work, and did an accurate assessment of the market. Who knows, there are many potential scenarios. I find it odd that these people believe the Chinese hacked without proof. I’ve worked with the Chinese and it seems most are way too busy tending to the redecoration of their new home, following the latest real estate market trend, and thinking about fun places to hang out, to just sit there and think about the most sinister ways to win an upper hand in negotiations. Most Chinese seem to be decent people. This is not to say that there aren’t bad Chinese apples, but it’s weird that they are always thought of in the worst light.

That said, I certainly would hope that both governments are improving their cyber security to protect confidential information and cyber infrastructure. They owe it to their people.