Rooting Taiwan

According to the Taipei Times, Taiwan is the victim of a large scale, systematic hack attack launched from mainland China. I have trouble seeing the point of this, though… all it does is alert the Taiwanese government to existing security holes—holes that it might actually be useful to exploit in concert with a physical attack—and make people wary of contracting wtih Chinese software firms. (Via /.)

Comments

[Ray]

If the net effect were to make Taiwan's computer infrastructure less efficient and thus a drag on their economy. . . not knowing when an opportune time for a physical attack may come around.

[StMack]

As someone who has witnessed firsthand the cost in dollars and resources required by a large organization in dealing with the security holes in Microsoft Windows without being under attack it is perfectly understandable. Before we put troops on the ground in Iraq and afganistan we spent some time trying to "soften" the enemy. we could do it with smart bombs because no one was really going to try to stop us. If you are China and the target you want to soften is Taiwan you probably don't want to start by dropping bombs. You want to start by doing small - non lethal things to foce them to expend resources. If you are China and your target is Taiwan you are probably not planning on anything close to the U.S. two week sprint to bagdad. You will be patient. you will slowly and subtly chip away at your enemy in ways that will not cause much global alarm.

[Warren]

StMack,
But the point is that after a couple of weeks, this will leave Taiwan even stronger than before.

[StMack]

Warren,

Three points: 1 Yes. They will be stronger against this particular attack. 2. They will have been forced to expend an amount of resources fighting it off. 3. If you have email, you get spam. Everytime you get a new or upgraded spam filter, the spammers quickly find a tactic to beat it. Once Taiwan beats back this attack - China will attack in a different way. More resurces will be expended fighting that attack and setting up systems to monitor for future attacks. It is not going to bring down the country. It's not going to crash their economy. It's just going burden it a little. That's all it needs to do.

The more resources China can force Tiawan to expend in cyber attacks the less resources they have to expend elseware.

[Ray]

Key factors to remember;

1) There is no shortage of security loopholes, assuming they are using a lot of Windows products.

2) The daily economic drag of the tactic would have wide spread effects on the economy. A microcosm example would be inner-city retail stores and their extra security costs.

3) We have all assumed that China does have plans for an eventual physical attack though they probably don't have a rock solid timeline. Lacking such a deadline, they'll continue to drip on them.

[Warren]

StMack,
They need to be expending those resources anyway. It's as though, your local bank turned out the lights and closed the door at night. Then some criminals broke in one night and sprayed graffiti all over (but didn't take any money). Now you're saying "The bank has to repaint the walls, and now they have to put bars on the windows, install cameras etc. etc. Because of these guys they got to expend all these resources."

I say they did them a favor by exposing their vulnerability and motivating them to do what they should have been doing all along.

[Zathras]

Yes, NH, but all we have is the moment. As the Klingons say, "let us post, for tomorrow we all may die!"

In the real world, I sincerely hope we have very good people assigned to learn what they can about Chinese methods in this area from the Taiwanese. We may need the knowledge later.

[Stmack]

Warren,

Suppose the bank does that and the next day the vandals spray paint the outside of the bank. And the bank cleans that up. Ant the next day they shoot out the windows, so the bank replaces all of the windows with bullet proof glass. And so on. Eventually the bank has to have security to rival Fort Knox. And resourc es it could have used for other purposes are gone.

[Stmack]

Nigh,

I'm sure there is a blog over on the Teen People site that will satisfy your needs.

[Plutarck]

Maybe the Chinese just don't like the Taiwanese, and just wanted to screw around with them a little - show 'em who's boss, and whatnot.

Quote:

""National intelligence has indicated that an army of hackers based in China's Hubei and Fujian provinces has successfully spread 23 different Trojan horse programs to the networks 10 private high-tech companies here to use them as a springboard to break into at least 30 different government agencies and 50 private companies," Cabinet Spokesman Lin Chia-lung (???) said yesterday."

Haven't we had bigger attacks than that in America, launched by 'private' groups of hackers?

[GaryM]

One possibility is that the attacks are designed to implant code which will send back information at a later date. Another is that it's a test of how good the systems' defenses are.

[Conry Ben]

EMAIL: [e-mail]
IP: 62.213.67.122
URL:
DATE: 01/25/2004 06:29:06
Everyone is born with genius, but most people only keep it a few minutes.