Monday 6 December 2010

Signs of vast hacking by a Web-wary China

From The International Herald Tribune:

Signs of vast hacking by a Web-wary China

As China ratcheted up the pressure on Google to censor its Internet searches last year, the U.S. Embassy sent a secret cable to Washington detailing one reason top Chinese leaders had become so obsessed with the Internet search company: They were Googling themselves.

The May 18, 2009, cable, titled ''Google China Paying Price for Resisting Censorship,'' quoted a well-placed source as saying that Li Changchun, a member of China's top ruling body, the Politburo Standing Committee, and the country's senior propaganda official, was taken aback to discover that he could conduct Chinese-language searches on Google's main international Web site. When Mr. Li typed his name into the search engine at google.com, he found ''results critical of him.''

That cable from U.S. diplomats was one of many made public by WikiLeaks that portray China's leadership as nearly obsessed with the threat posed by the Internet to their grip on power — and, the reverse, by the opportunities it offered them, through hacking, to obtain secrets stored in computers of its rivals, especially the United States.

Extensive hacking operations suspected of originating in China, including one leveled at Google, are a central theme in the cables. The operations began earlier and were aimed at a wider array of U.S. government and military data than generally known, including on the computers of U.S. diplomats involved in climate change talks with China.



http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/world/asia/05wikileaks-china.html


Will not time reveal the lasting importance of friends and mutual respect?   Be kind to those who think well of you and those you know and try to add positive elements to your world.   Promote peace in your heart and sunshine in the minds of those around you by your own good works.    Elevate the level of discussion by thinking less of the issues and more of how you can reduce the tension of stress that arises with honest disagreement.   Relax by breathing more deeply and consciously.     
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