China's Internet Hijacking Uncovered

[ajaidev]

"Cybercrime experts have found proof that China hijacked the Internet for 18 minutes last April. China absorbed 15% of the traffic from US military and civilian networks, as well as from other Western countries—a massive chunk. Nobody knows why."

http://gizmodo.com/5692217/chinas-se...king-uncovered

omg 18min means a lot lot of data, , maybe they used SSD with RAID

EDIT: Update

"
China has denied US allegations it ''hijacked'' highly sensitive internet traffic earlier this year.

Yesterday the US claimed that a state-owned telecoms company in China had access to 15 per cent of global internet traffic, including confidential emails from NASA and the US Army, for 18 minutes. The state-owned company accused of ''hijacking'' the encrypted information, China Telecom, yesterday denied ''any hijack of internet traffic" and the Government has also claimed it was not involved."

http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/20...nternet-hijack

[haylui]

Since the traffic routing is based on trust between the world's telecommunication providers, other Internet routers redirected their traffic through China's network.

traffic routing is based on trust?

[MpG]

traffic routing is based on trust?

Well, if there's torrenting involved, that's OBVIOUSLY a different story entirely.

[zalbard]

So how much data is that?
Why would they do that?

China absorbed 15% of the traffic from US military and civilian networks

How would they know it?
This article opens up more questions than it answers.

Also,

[madman2233]

anyone have any info on how this could have happened? I thought correct BGP configurations require passwords and neighbor's ip addresses to establish trust. In addition with route-maps, properly configured routers should not be able to establish trusts with untrusted neighbors. Or is it just that top level service providers dont have any sort of regulations on their backbone routers? I image it would get pretty difficult to keep BGP networks and prefix lists updated.

Also, i know there are some counterfeit cisco devices floating around some places that could have back doors built in.

[Sparky]

And some people ask me why I don't trust China.

I'm not talking about the people there as much as the government.

[XSAlliN]

And some people ask me why I don't trust China.

I'm not talking about the people there as much as the government.

Would be a real irony if you posted this by using "Google Chrome".

...Google those similar things on daily basis, if somebody else those it for few minutes "it's not ok anymore"...


I bet Google h.q. would have been nuked by now or at least their project shut down after being threaten - if Google was owned by Chinese Government and did the same thing that's being done for years until now..

Seriously, why does Google get away with this? - besides being part of U.S. and the fact that many people are so ignorant, that they agree with their terms without reading the content...

[kuroikenshi]

I'm linking from another forum... but here it is..

[prava]

And some people ask me why I don't trust China.

I'm not talking about the people there as much as the government.

Like in so many other things, China is untouchable We depend total and absolutely on them, because we buy their products and they buy our debt.

As long as it remains as it is nobody will ever say anything about them violating human rights, hijacking internet and so on because we NEED them.

[Sparky]

Like in so many other things, China is untouchable We depend total and absolutely on them, because we buy their products and they buy our debt.

As long as it remains as it is nobody will ever say anything about them violating human rights, hijacking internet and so on because we NEED them.

And that kind of crap needs to stop... because it's gonna blow up on us sooner or later. Borrow money to then buy stuff from the guys you borrowed is a recipe for disaster. We need to be making more of our own stuff here, but there are certain things in place that make it prohibitively expensive in several ways...

but that could be leaning into political talk, potentially, so I'll stop there before I get myself in trouble

[kuroikenshi]

And that kind of crap needs to stop... because it's gonna blow up on us sooner or later. Borrow money to then buy stuff from the guys you borrowed is a recipe for disaster. We need to be making more of our own stuff here, but there are certain things in place that make it prohibitively expensive in several ways...

but that could be leaning into political talk, potentially, so I'll stop there before I get myself in trouble

Mate, a lot of that did happen as a long consequence when Nixon decided to stock backing the US currency with gold (brenton woods system), and so princes US bills like mad during the following decades.

China has got a lot of US due to the fact that US MNC's saw convenient to use China's comparative advantage to export to america, however the problem doesn't just lie there, since the 70's the US has had a trade deficit whilst they're a nation rich in Capital goods.... well the story is so long I will stop there, but in a nutshell China has money and power because the US was one of the major facilitators for it.

[lkiller123]

Big deal, guys.

I bet the US government does this all the time. They can wiretap people, why can't they hijack the Internet?

[vinister]

"Just have the Mongols build a Great Firewall."

stolen comment from the linked article, made me lol

[kuroikenshi]

it is very inconsequential, governments all around the world usually do actions "flexing some power" not as an offence, but to provide an indicator of capabilities (lobby groups) use this technique quite alot, unless they're so influential that there is no need to lobby, a simple phone-call becomes sufficient

[kadozer]

That explains the hundreds of China based blocked IPs on my router log.

[Sn0wm@n]

Well, if there's torrenting involved, that's OBVIOUSLY a different story entirely.

huh .... Oo


btw how does the internet work??? is it trust based on major internet routers of the worlds??? and if so did china only had to access the chinese router and give it some code to reroute packets for a short interval ???? if so there's a major flaw in our system ...

[aintz]

more american propaganda, man it never gets old

[Serpentarius]

The best voyeur in the world complaining others of voyeurism .... even hypocrisies must have a limit

next they might complaint these chinese are breathing 1500% more air than US military

[Greg83]

I can hear it already. Network IT commits suicide when he figures out it was him who accidentally the Internet for 18 minutes.
Either that or an execution.

[Origin_Unknown]

The best voyeur in the world complaining others of voyeurism .... even hypocrisies must have a limit

next they might complaint these chinese are breathing 1500% more air than US military

That reminds me of when Jose Mourinho said Arsene Wenger was a voyeur

[Serra]

anyone have any info on how this could have happened? I thought correct BGP configurations require passwords and neighbor's ip addresses to establish trust. In addition with route-maps, properly configured routers should not be able to establish trusts with untrusted neighbors. Or is it just that top level service providers dont have any sort of regulations on their backbone routers? I image it would get pretty difficult to keep BGP networks and prefix lists updated.

Also, i know there are some counterfeit cisco devices floating around some places that could have back doors built in.

It's really a more of a house of cards than it should be, half intentionally and have by design constraints.

First - Yes, neighbors should require passwords - unique passwords - and route everything properly... but often that's not the case. Third world ISP's are particularly bad for it, they basically run their ISP like a small business (that is to say, they cut corners and don't have the expertise needed to do the job right). ISP's also have a truly nasty habit of using the same passwords across large geographic areas, which allows session hijacking and tampering.

Second - Design issues. Internet address space just wasn't handed out properly and insufficient mechanisms exist to make the kludge that we do have work properly. If someone gets into router A and advertises routes 1, 2, and 3, router B really has no way to know whether it should see those addresses.


As to the article - I suspect that was either an accident or a quick muscle flex, just to remind people that they "could" do it. The reality of the situation is that doing that is maybe the worst possible way to gather data... the amount of sifting that would be required is almost unthinkable, and you may not even get anything for all the effort. Contrasting that to simply using espionage and trained hackers (which China does have more of than anyone else) who are both able to - with considerable accuracy - get exactly whatever data they want, it's just not worth doing.

[Razrback16]

China...booo!!!!!!!

[nullface]

China...booo!!!!!!!

... *sigh*

[DeadlyFire]

And that kind of crap needs to stop... because it's gonna blow up on us sooner or later. Borrow money to then buy stuff from the guys you borrowed is a recipe for disaster. We need to be making more of our own stuff here, but there are certain things in place that make it prohibitively expensive in several ways...

Things produced in China that are sold here are WAY cheaper than things made and sold in the U.S. It's just a fact of life. If you strictly choose to stop buying Chinese-made goods your cost of living will go up. Most people don't want to face that and thus the status quo continues.

[Hornet331]

Things produced in China that are sold here are WAY cheaper than things made and sold in the U.S. It's just a fact of life. If you strictly choose to stop buying Chinese-made goods your cost of living will go up. Most people don't want to face that and thus the status quo continues.

Indeed, but thats true for pretty much everything. Same for the food industry, when you show people how our daily food is made (factory farming) they are disgusted, yet they are not willing to pay more for food that is made in a more traditional way.