August 3rd, 2007
China's golden cyber shield? Not.
On my recent travels in China I had an opportunity to experience first hand China’s so called “Golden Wall”. In each hotel I would try
to get to several sites. For some reason this security blog is censored throughout China. How does that make you feel Mr. Hoff? And a Google search on “Tibet” will have the usual results but you cannot click through to any of the links on the first page of results. I did not search on Falun Gong for fear of really setting off the alarms and reprisals. Next time I think I will set up GoToMyPC at home and use it as a poor man’s proxy.
There is a good article at Forbes.com that postulates that China’s control over Internet access will be a benefit if they ever go to cyber war. I find myself agreeing with Schneier and Ranum when they say -not likely-. While the Chinese government might have a pretty good strangle hold on freedom of expression the network is still full of holes, ones that are easy enough to punch through.
On the eventuality of cyber war with China the article says:
The first shots may have already been fired: In August and September 2006, Chinese computers penetrated the State Department and the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security. The attack, known as “Titan Rain,” forced the government to replace hundreds of computers and take others offline for a month.
All this talk of cyber war makes one think that the US has a command and control center somewhere where they are monitoring and responding to malicious forays from nation states. You wish. At least from funding levels that have been made public the US is not prepared to defend itself in the event of a cyber attack. Scenes from Die Hard 4.0 that showed the FBI’s SOC (Secure Operations Center) are pure fiction today.
Richard Stiennon is an industry consultant. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
