Upon a rather unexpected discovery, CNN's Fareed Zakaria reported that 15% of all global web traffic was redirected through China on April 8th, 2010. Although this may seem like an esoteric concern at first, this breach is analogous to all of the mail of 15% of the world's zip codes going to China, being copied there, and then being redirected to their intended destinations. The chief Chinese telecommunications company has records of 15% of the world's emails, web history, text messages, video calls, etc. from that day. Zakaria further amplified concerns by asserting that the redirected web traffic included American .gov and .mil domains, potentially jeopardizing national security.
Although there is no indication of Chinese maleficence (for all we know, this redirection of private information could have simply been an accident), there is significant reason to be concerned about the general lack of web security around the globe. Personally, I don't believe that China had any premeditated ill-intentions, but we must be wary of future breaches. Much of life today is controlled by computers (including power grids, missiles, water supply, etc.) and no one can afford classified information falling into the wrong hands. In this technological day and age, the fortification of our web activity is as important as the fortification of our borders and stronger steps must be taken to assure the security of our electronic infrastructure.
4 comments:
This to me is no coincidence. While we don't know what exactly happened, I have a feeling that this was an intentional hacking by Chinese individuals. In a 2005 study, 43% of elementary school children in China said they admired hackers (Popsci.com) and many aspired to be hackers in their lives. Hacking organizations have risen up in the country as well, and in one instance in 2001 when a Chinese fighter and a U.S. reconnaissance plane collided, leaving the Chinese pilot dead, a large number of Chinese hackers lashed out at America in a large-scale "Hacker War" which caused a whole lot of grief for both the White House and other private owners of the hacked sites. But given that a whole %15 of the world's web traffic was redirected through China, an action this big would be no easy feat, but to me this is the cause of hackers.
I completely disagree with Michael. There is no evidence that hacking occurred and I think it's wrong to make such assumptions. As for the article, I agree that we should take necessary precautions to protect classified information. It's better to be safe than sorry. Would it be possible to choose another location to redirect global web traffic?
I think Michael has an excellent point and possible explanation for what is truly behind these new source of attacks. There has been a lot of evidence of Chinese students encouraged to perform these actions against American/Western websites and businesses in general. In fact, the Chinese government targeted Carrefour after the Paris incident with the torch, then later on Japanese goods were also targeted as a result of the Japanese arresting one of their ships. Most recently, the Chinese even threatened to disrupt the safe flow of trading goods between Norway and China for the awarding of Liu Xiaobo for the Nobel Peace Prize. These activities of course can lead to a possibility of such actions.
Furthermore, China has been the main suspected culprit according the new Wikileaks and news sources back then behind the attacks on Google traced through various proxies, including countries such as Taiwan and the United States. China has been actively pursing American intelligence for years in fact many of their products look identical to their European counterpart. China has always had that urge to see through some things. There is of course reason to suspect that this 15% could be adding to that final value.
In response to Shorhon's question, I feel the only likely alternative if another place needs to be found if this was actually "clean" it would be India, which has a fairly massive ground telecommunication infrastructure combined with inexpensive labor. I feel the main "clean" reason for moving data through China would be inexpensive and ability to easily redirect server traffic for much less money. A such location in the United States would be much more expensive. It also takes a great deal of broadband data to monitor these connections, which would be unfeasible.
As China strives to be the top superpower, I am not surprised to hear that they are hacking into our classified information. I think, as Shorhon said, we do need to take precautions to keep our information safe and to keep out any unwanted visitors. We certainly do not want any information to be leaked. On a less serious note (though on a personal level, it is rather serious), I could not help thinking that this was a total invasion of privacy! I know that that is a rather childish way to look at it all, but that is technically where all of it stems from: the invasion of privacy leads to the revealing of classified information that is meant, of course, to remain classified. I myself cannot make any assertions about the matter since I do not know much other than what is mentioned in Amrit's post, but I sincerely hope that China is not planning to use any of the information that they found to gain an unfair advantage.
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