Comments on: Watching, waiting (part 2)

By: …My heart’s in Accra » China, bias, misunderstanding

…My heart’s in Accra » China, bias, misunderstanding — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 15:12:31 +0000

[...] news than they were by his congregants… and this almost cost Obama the democratic nomination. Comments made by Jack Cafferty on CNN led to a law suit from Chinese citizens… it’s unlikely that Cafferty thought of himself speaking to a Chinese audience while [...]

By: Ethan

Ethan — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 17:52:07 +0000

Some interesting evidence that hackers managed to take down a supplier of information to CNN’s sports coverage, though not CNN proper – http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/21/chinese-hackers-take-down-sportsnetwork/

By: Ethan

Ethan — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 19:51:46 +0000

I think they don’t want the current upset to erupt into widespread protest. And I think the last thing the government wants, heading into the Olympics, are accusations that they’re allowing “cyberwarfare” to take place agains the US. It’s a balancing act for the government – nationalism, for the most part, is very helpful for them. But the fear is that it starts having “real-world” manifestations and causing real damage to US/China relationships.

(Keep in mind that China benefits a great deal from the current structure of US/China trade, and that governments as a whole are waking up to the power of virtual attacks, as in Russian attacks on Estonia.)

See also Mark Magnier in the LA Times making a similar argument: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-backlash19apr19,1,4240600.story

By: anon

anon — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 09:28:16 +0000

The Chinese government has proved more than once that they often react capriciously. What do you think would be the reason for them to protect CNN servers?

Do they fear a quid pro quo American attack on Xinhua? They only need more reasons to shut off China from the outside world.

By: DJB Rizalist

DJB Rizalist — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 08:24:59 +0000

Is this the shape of things to come? International cyberwarfare. Botnets! Shades of the Terminator. Thanks for this analysis though Ethan. it’s more than interesting. It’s scary, really.

By: Andrew Lih

Andrew Lih — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 09:48:29 +0000

Ethan, each time I tested CNN “loadability” I also tested it from a shell account within the US. While CNN was slow and spotty, when it was not loadable in China it was also “unloadable” as well in the US, which led me to believe that it was a DDOS attack on CNN’s servers. Also, of the four IPs that it round robin resolved to, one of them hung for a few hours, while three of them worked. Later on they added more addresses so it round robins to eight IPs, all of them working as of now.

This seems to coincide with the later updates of Shanghaiist who reported similar phenomena.

It is certainly possible CNN did some pre-emptive blocking from certain IP ranges, but it’s something hard for an individual to check.

By: Peter Rock

Peter Rock — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 04:09:49 +0000

“if the Chinese government were worried about the implications of an attack by Chinese hackers on cnn.com”

Why would the Chinese government be worried if cnn.com was attacked?