Category Archives: History

History, Poetry, Sailing, Security

Chinese Attacks Raise Concerns

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Let’s just get out of the way that there are many examples of wrongdoing by Chinese nationals. Take today’s clash with South Korea, for example:

A South Korean coastguard commando has been stabbed to death and another injured by Chinese fishermen detained for illegal fishing in the Yellow Sea.

Some might look at this story and say it’s an isolated example. Maybe we even can agree that these few fishermen, a tiny fraction of the total number of Chinese on the Yellow Sea, are the ones who do most of the damage. I phrase it that way because of a story I noticed today by the Associated Press: “A Few Chinese Hacker Teams Do Most US Data Theft”

As few as 12 different Chinese groups, largely backed or directed by the government there, do the bulk of the China-based cyberattacks stealing critical data from U.S. companies and government agencies, according to U.S. cybersecurity analysts and experts.

This should be good news, right? Only 12 groups in China? Does that equate to something like 0.0001 percent of all the different Chinese groups?

I guess you could say “largely backed or directed by the government” is supposed to add an element of legitimacy, but anyone familiar with China knows that everyone there still is largely backed or directed by the government.

Now here’s the bad news. Despite the tiny number of suspects, officials in the U.S. are not hopeful that they can prove anyone in China actually guilty.

It is largely impossible for the U.S. to prosecute hackers in China, since it requires reciprocal agreements between the two countries, and it is always difficult to provide ironclad proof that the hacking came from specific people.

Always difficult to provide “ironclad proof”? They say it like it is a bad thing. Even if we accept that China has a small number of suspects and that it is always difficult to prove someone guilty I don’t follow the logic to the next part of the article. Enter the U.S. military:

“Right now we have the worst of worlds,” said [James Cartwright, a retired Marine general and former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff]. “If you want to attack me you can do it all you want, because I can’t do anything about it. It’s risk free, and you’re willing to take almost any risk to come after me.”

The U.S., he said, “needs to say, if you come after me, I’m going to find you, I’m going to do something about it. It will be proportional, but I’m going to do something … and if you’re hiding in a third country, I’m going to tell that country you’re there, if they don’t stop you from doing it, I’m going to come and get you.”

First of all, this is a deterrence model, which I covered in my Dr. Stuxlove presentation based on the Dr. Strangelove movie by Stanley Kubrick. Deterrence is known to be far from a slam-dunk security strategy. It can create risks of its own which are larger and even much worse than the original threat of attack.

Second, he lost me at the “I’m going to find you”. If it is impossible to prove guilt in the first place then who are they going to find and threaten, people who aren’t proven guilty? I know it’s frustrating to follow loose threads but saying “I’m going to come and get you” can actually create a game in itself, as anyone familiar with Smurf attacks will remember. Someone could purposefully stage attacks to kick-off a premature and misguided escalation (i.e. back to the plot of Dr. Strangelove). The fix to Smurf redirects, incidentally (pun not intended), was not to threaten everyone with massive retaliation but to reduce risk through immunization that prevented the forwarding/relaying of attacks.

Back to the article, I noticed another strange comment that might be driven by an unfamiliarity with Chinese culture.

One of the analysts said investigations show that the dozen or so Chinese teams appear to get “taskings”, or orders, to go after specific technologies or companies within a particular industry. At times, two or more of the teams appear to get the same shopping list, and compete to be the first to get it, or the one with the greatest haul.

Motivated by what? It is tempting to say a paradigm of competition is a universal hacking mantra; perhaps the Chinese are now emulating the American system of competition. Again, however, it sounds very unlike Chinese philosophies and writing, such as the vision of success through following orders and looking backwards, as expressed in The Way of Lao Tzu. 

I have three treasures. Guard and keep them.
     The first is deep love.
     The second is frugality,
     And the third is not to dare to be ahead of the world.
Because of deep love, one is courageous.
Because of frugality, one is generous.
Because of not daring to be ahead of the world,
One becomes the leader of the world.

I also am curious about who really believes it makes sense for China to hold a competition of only two groups out of twelve. If China has almost unlimited human resources, and can launch attacks “risk free”, why would they hold such tiny attack competitions? Why hold back? There must be some risk or there would be far more than twelve groups..if you add up all the arguments in the article, it really does not make much sense.

In any case, perhaps it helps some to compare the twelve groups in the AP article to the nine evil fishermen of the Yellow Sea. Always proceed with caution in building a response so as not to lose control of the situation. The risk of ruthless and underhanded attack has to be factored when investigating and responding to breaches; death of the South Korean commando is tragic. At the same time an opportunity to approach and win insider support from any/all remaining Chinese groups, the ones not attacking, should not be overlooked or underestimated.

History, Poetry, Security

Sudanese Freedom Rap and Guns of Brixton

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Zoul4Revolution posted an interesting video of Sudanese protest music on YouTube:

But it was a comment on a Clash song from the same account that really caught my attention:

i’m from Sudan, we’re uprising against the fascist government of NCP, i’ve always sided with the peaceful uprising, been arrested and tortured many times, everytime I play [Guns of Brixton] I think about picking up a gun to join the armed revolution side

That led me to a quick search and the discovery of a nine video set that captures Guns of Brixton covers in numerous styles from around the world.

1) Hardcore

  • Analena
  • Dropkick Murphy’s
  • rtz global

2) Acoustic

  • calexico
  • Arcade Fire
  • Déportivo

3) Chillout

  • nouvelle vague
  • pre-school

4) Dub

  • Santogold – Guns of Brooklyn
  • radici del cemento & Fermin Muguruza

5) Polish

  • Analogs – Strzelby z Brixton
  • Alians – Bomby domowej roboty

6) Punk

  • Unwritten Law
  • The Blaggers Ita
  • Evilsons

7) Spanish

  • la furia – Armas de barrio
  • mundo livre sa

8) Rockabilly

  • Honeydippers
  • Rancho Deluxe

9) Ska

  • los fabulosos cadillacs
  • Inner Terrestrials
  • Union Jack

And of course there are many, many more cover versions…not least of all is a hit British song that borrowed only the bass line:

But after all that, I have yet to hear a Sudanese version.

History, Security

Naming names, BOF and the Chinese APT

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One of the great legacies of Roman Emperor Justinian the Great (527 to 565) was a uniform revision of law. It has remained the basis of civil law in many parts of the world. In his Byzantine IUSTINIANI DIGESTA of the year 533, for example, it was written:

22.3.2

Paulus libro 69 ad edictum

Ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat.

My Latin is a little rusty. Yet I am fairly certain that translates to a man named Paulus (Julius Paulus Prudentissimus, the most quoted Roman jurist in the Digest) saying the following:

Burden of proof (incumbit probatio) is on he who asserts (qui dicit), not on he who denies (qui negat)

Naming names

That old rule of law was the first thing that came to mind when I read the screeching opinion from CSO Publisher Bob Bragdon on “Naming names in APT”

Let’s call a spade a spade: China is the greatest threat to international cyber­security on the planet.

I’m tired of pussyfooting around this issue the way that I, and many others in security, industry and government have been for years. We talk about the “threat from Asia,” the attacks perpetrated by “a certain eastern country with a red flag,” network snooping by our “friends across the Pacific.” I swear, this is like reading a Harry Potter book with my daughter. “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named” just attacked our networks.

Let me be absolutely, crystal clear here. In this scenario, China is Voldemort. Clear enough?

Crystal clear? Spade a spade? China is Voldemort? This article must be tongue-in-cheek because it is so obviously self-contradictory it can’t possibly be serious.

The author then offers us an example from a report by NPR. It names China as one of two great threats to business information in the U.S.:

The report is explicit: “Chinese actors are the world’s most active and persistent perpetrators of economic espionage,” it concluded, while “Russia’s intelligence services are conducting a range of activities to collect economic information and technology from U.S. targets.”

The author’s example in the article thus contradicts his complaint about naming names. The fact is China has been explicitly named in security reports for a long time, as I have written about before. Here is what I found in just a few seconds of searching:

So naming names is hardly a problem for “many others in security, industry and government” and should be set aside. China is obviously getting named both officially, unofficially and even when there is only suspicion.

Burden of proof

What if we accept the author’s argument, setting aside the naming names complaint, that “China is Voldemort”? Now we face a problem of proof.

I’m not talking about proof that China meets the Dictionary definition of Voldemort. I mean why doesn’t the author drop in a couple examples to show that China, even under any other name, is the “greatest threat to international cybersecurity on the planet”. Incidentally, I have to wonder what is the greatest threat off the planet but I’ll leave that alone for now.

Let’s look again at the one example provided.

The report is explicit: “Chinese actors are the world’s most active and persistent perpetrators of economic espionage,” it concluded, while “Russia’s intelligence services are conducting a range of activities to collect economic information and technology from U.S. targets.”

This report fails to say that China is the greatest threat to international cybersecurity. Is China a threat to U.S. economic interests? Obviously, as mentioned in CSO before in an article on “Byzantine Hades” (coincidental name, no?). There are many, many examples. One of the economic and social conflict areas between China and the U.S. most interesting to me is the Sudan, as I have written about before. Does anyone think it is a coincidence that the successful American effort to split a country in Africa into separate nations with a clear border was led by a U.S. General?

I see border dispute, tension, and conflict as a very tangible and long-standing indicator of threat. Take as another example the 2009 prediction in the Indian Defense Review.

China will launch an attack on India before 2012.

There are multiple reasons for a desperate Beijing to teach India the final lesson, thereby ensuring Chinese supremacy in Asia in this century. The recession that shut the Chinese exports shop is creating an unprecedented internal social unrest. In turn, the vice-like grip of the communists over the society stands severely threatened.

The arguments made were interesting because they actually went so far as to try and prove the foundation of Chinese aggression and thereby predict an escalation. Even more interesting was the response and attempt to disprove the arguments for aggression, as illustrated by an article in ChinaStakes.

Mr Verma’s reasoning rests on a lack of documentation. Looking into the past 60 years, China has no record of launching a war to divert public attention from anything. Moreover, while Mr. Verma supposes the Chinese Communist Party has no cards to play other than “invading India,” the Party, widely experienced in dealing with domestic disputes, will hardly in only three years have run out of all options facing potential social instability. Moreover, even if Chinese leaders considered such an option, they would certainly be aware that an external war would severely jeopardize domestic affairs.

After review of those two sides of the argument I neither believe that China will invade India before 2012 (easy to say now) nor that a lack of a record launching attacks prevents China from changing policy and taking a more aggressive stance. And while I discount both I find myself reviewing the arguments and contemplating a third option.

What if 60 years of American past is what China is actively studying to weigh strategic options? What if they are drawing lessons from the American long-range missile pre-emptive strike doctrine as well as the deterrence doctrine? I have no doubts that there are hawks in the Chinese government studying a history of similarly hawkish plans abroad and trying to find a best-fit for their own country. Whether they can achieve a fit or even emulate/fake one is another story.

Now I’m off talking about awesomely scary missile and invasion conspiracy theories. How did I get here? Oh, right, the Chinese get blamed in name. At least in border disputes, strike plans and missile-tests, there is an effort to provide evidence by authors to prove their point. Before I get too far into reality, let’s pull back to the the CSO article.

The author offers the reader nothing even remotely resembling an argument and thus ends up just name-calling in an article against name-calling. Greatest threat to cybersecurity on the planet? Let’s see some evidence or at least an argument to back that up. I’m not asking for predictions, just something Paulus might have approved — something that we can actually argue for or against.

History, Security

Quoted in Inc.

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A writer for IncInc. has quoted me in an article called “New Ways to Keep Hackers Out of Your Business”

While you might think of encryption as something we’ve been using only since the advent of computers, it’s really a rather old practice. “Encryption is based upon a secret,” says Davi Ottenheimer, expert on the Focus network and founder of San Francisco-based security consulting firm flyingpenguin, who likes to cite Julius Caesar and Thomas Jefferson as examples of historical figures who have hidden things by using cryptography.

Caesar used a substitution cipher to communicate with his generals that involved replacing the letters in a message with a shifted alphabet. For instance, a shift of three would make all the As in message Ds; Bs would become Es, and so forth.

Jefferson used a type of wheel cipher during the Revolutionary War that involved 36 disks stacked on an axle, each with a different version of a scrambled alphabet on the outer edge. When both the sender and receiver had the numbered disks in the same order and rotated them in the right way, an understandable message would appear.

“People have historically improved encryption during times of conflict or war,” Ottenheimer says. “It’s all about secrecy, really, confidentiality. It doesn’t require super-sophisticated technology as much as it requires people being fairly intelligent about how they can keep a secret.”