Continuing Attempts to Thwart FluTrackers

[Lizw]

Re: Continuing Attempts to Thwart FluTrackers

2 points to note:
1. orchestrating DNS attacks and continually modifying the method of attack to bypass obstacles takes a reaonable degree of technical savvy.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of sophisticated tools available on the net to people who don't have that much technical savvy. All it takes is a couple of teenagers with too much time on their hands to cause real havoc. But I'm inclined myself to think it's coming from people who don't like the good work the site is doing.

I haven't been active here lately (my housemate is still in the hospital on a ventilator from the complications of swine flu). But I'll count myself with the "we."

Sharon, hang in there. Even if the attacks on the site are pure mischief, the fact that it hasn't been taken down yet is testimony to your hard work and persistence.

[sharon sanders]

Re: Continuing Attempts to Thwart FluTrackers

All the best to you, your housemate, and all of your near ones.

[Corn]

Re: Continuing Attempts to Thwart FluTrackers

There is real EVIL out there. I see it rarely from time to time when engaged in the public.

[Lizw]

Re: Continuing Attempts to Thwart FluTrackers

All the best to you, your housemate, and all of your near ones.

Thank you. He's out of the ICU finally, but still not breathing on his own, and the doctors say he may be permanently vent-dependent. We're just dealing with one day at a time.

[tropical]

Re: Continuing Attempts to Thwart FluTrackers

Thank you. He's out of the ICU finally, but still not breathing on his own, and the doctors say he may be permanently vent-dependent. We're just dealing with one day at a time.

My best health wishes of fast recovering to him, Liz.
Hopefully he will prevail without the vent.

Best health wishes in a future to all, also.

[sharon sanders]

Re: Continuing Attempts to Thwart FluTrackers

Sino-US foreign ministers meet to talk about China's Internet



2010-01-30

Yang expressed China's management of the Internet in line with common practice in the world

据新华社电外交部发言人马朝旭29日就杨洁篪部长会见美国国务卿克林顿有关问题回答记者提问。

According to Xinhua News Agency, Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Jiang Yu's 29, Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi Meets with U.S. Secretary of State on issues related to Clinton answering questions from reporters.

有记者问：杨洁篪外长在出席伦敦阿富汗问题国际会议会见美国国务卿希拉里·克林顿时，是否谈到谷 歌问题？

A reporter asked: Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi attended the international conference on Afghanistan in London meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is talking about Google problems?

马朝旭说，杨洁篪外长在与克林顿国务卿会见时阐述了中国在互联网管理政策方面的立场，强调中国互联网是开放 的，也是十分活跃的。

Jiang Yu, said Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi met with Clinton's secretary of state, elaborated China's position on Internet governance policy, stressing China's Internet is open, is also very active.

中国人民依法充分享有言论自由，及时掌握各方面的信息，这也是中国人民坚定地走中国特色社会主义道路的重要 原因之一。

The Chinese people fully enjoy freedom of expression, grasp all aspects of information, which is the Chinese people and firmly take the socialist road with Chinese characteristics, one of the important reasons.

马朝旭说，杨外长指出，推动互联网发展是我们的一贯政策。

Jiang Yu, said Foreign Minister Yang noted that to promote the development of the Internet is our consistent policy.

中国有自己的国情和文化传统，中国对互联网坚持依法管理，符合世界通行做法。

China has its own national conditions and cultural tradition, China's management of the Internet adhere to the law in line with common practice in the world.

中国是世界上主要的“黑客”攻击受害国之一，中国主张通过加强国际合作，共同严厉打击网络“黑客”行为，依 法保护公民个人隐私，维护网络安全。

China is the world's major "hacker" attack victim, one of China stands for closer international cooperation to jointly crack down on Internet "hackers" behavior, according to the law to protect citizens privacy and safeguarding network security.

http://news.bjnews.com.cn/2010/0130/60309.shtml

[Roehl_JC]

Re: Continuing Attempts to Thwart FluTrackers

Just wanting to wish all our fellow flutrackers the best of luck in keeping online these days.....after my computer was hackattacked and wiped clean such that I lost my investment in the darn machine, I've lucked out and one of my neighbors is going to give me his 2nd computer as he's bought a new laptop, so within a month or so I should return.
Til then I'm using the local library computers 1-2X per week to keep up with developments.
Thanks for all your great efforts

[sharon sanders]

Re: Continuing Attempts to Thwart FluTrackers

Accusation of govt involvement in cyber attacks refuted

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-02-09 19:41




BEIJING: The Chinese government neither gets involved in nor supports any cyber attack, a high-ranking official with the State Council Information Office said Tuesday, refuting recent western accusations of the government and military's involvement in hacking.
"The government has never supported or been involved in cyber attacks, and it will never do so. Those remarks are sheer nonsense," said Peng Bo, official with the Internet bureau under the Information Office.

Some US experts recently said Chinese military or government agencies might be breaking into computers to steal technology and trade secrets to help state companies. "The remarks are groundless. In fact, China is the country worst hit by worldwide hackers," Peng told Xinhua.
But Peng stressed that even if an attack was traced to China, it was very likely that the attack was controlled by people from other countries.
"There are tens of thousands of computers in China hijacked by people outside the country," Peng said.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-02/09/content_9452998.htm

[Shannon Bennett]

Re: Continuing Attempts to Thwart FluTrackers

I remain convinced the hackers are Chinese. A teenager bored or not, would probably move on to something either more lucrative or, more 'fun'. The Chinese may have a vested interest in preventing any news leaking out or, dissemination of news regarding the flu within their country. Today's raid by the military to shut down quasi-illegal hacking schools in China may prove interesting.

[Pathfinder]

Re: Continuing Attempts to Thwart FluTrackers

China pulls plug on net hacker college that signed up 180,000

Published Date: 09 February 2010
By GILLIAN WONG in BEIJING

Excerpts:

<!-- google_ad_section_start --><!-- Article Start -->
POLICE in central China have shut down a hacker training operation that openly recruited thousands of members online and provided them with cyber attack lessons and malicious software.

The crackdown comes amid growing concern that China is a centre for internet crime and industrial espionage.

Search giant Google said last month its e-mail accounts were hacked from China in an assault that also hit at least 20 other companies.

Police in Hubei province arrested three people suspected of running the hacker site known as the Black Hawk Safety Net that disseminated hacking techniques and Trojan software, the China Daily newspaper said yesterday. Trojans, which can allow outside access to a computer when implanted, are used by hackers to control computers illegally.

Black Hawk Safety Net recruited more than 12,000 paying subscribers and collected seven million yuan (?640,000) in membership fees, while another 170,000 people had signed up for free membership, the paper said.

The report said police seized nine servers, five computers and a car, and shut down all websites involved in the case. Authorities also froze 1.7 million yuan in assets.

The shutdown of the site followed an investigation involving 50 police officers in three other provinces.
-------------------------
"The scale, operation and logistics of conducting these attacks ? against the government, commercial and private sectors ? indicates that they are state-sponsored," security firm Mandiant Corp said in a report last month.

"The Chinese government may authorise this activity, but there's no way to determine the extent of its involvement."


Read more at:
http://news.scotsman.com/world/China-pulls-plug-on-net.6053693.jp

[tropical]

Re: Continuing Attempts to Thwart FluTrackers

Apart the actual 2 countries diatribe,
and the various cyberXfiles,

on the post #46 text, we could frankly added that:

#46: "There are tens of thousands"
/milions/...
#46: "of computers in"
/the world
#46: "hijacked by people outside the country"/-es

[Kavoom]

Re: Continuing Attempts to Thwart FluTrackers

Google went to the NSA for help... This is a unique niche site. I bet there is a chance that they would be very interested in helping as a challenge if nothing else. They rule sigint in the U.S. and have tricks and tradecraft that can turn tables in murky worlds we dont' even know exist. Masters of indirection in a direct way...

NPR had an excellent interview yesterday with the author of the report given to the President after his inauguaration on cyber security. He had some very interesting insights into things like this. They usually keep these programs for re-play.

I have been thinking about motive and one simple variant I came with was...

What if this site was a thorn in the side to some in the world? What if some heavy hitters in the world of genomic sequencing were stating their minds here when in their "official" roles they may be more proscribed in what they say? What if knowledge of their identities was unto itself of value?

And not necessarily attacks from those who feel the thorn. In fact, probably not.. But others who would like to...(let's throw out one hypothesis) blackmail them? Have information on them?

Let me assure you these things occur. I had an engineer XXXXXX with a large XXXX manufacturer involved in XXXX who had to have a security overseer with him and his peers when out of country or in certain company and was required to wear a white noise generator on his person when overseas at all times (about 15 yrs ago). Special phones etc. It was pre-emptive in nature...

I am simply speculating in one direction aimlessly... The possibilities are myriad. It is not a pretty world we live in... Someone with special knowledge is potentially valuable.

Interesting... Did you know that simply saying the above could affect attacks as now a new wrinkle gets thrown into play. Depending upon the attackers, it is one thing for NSA to chase down something that happened in the past. It is another to catch it in real time...isn't it?

Who is the cat and who is the mouse? Who is predator and who is prey? What if you did contact NSA and got their attention. What if you already have? I wonder if the attackers would want to tangle with that, or even the thought of that? Perhaps better to run away...

Ahh but alas this game works both ways and those who might have felt confident to speak here, may not in the future and so perhaps the others have their way... Ugly Ugly world...

Perhaps mother nature should win...and put all our machinations to rest... LOL...

[sharon sanders]

Re: Continuing Attempts to Thwart FluTrackers

These are our stats for January. Many visitors from many countries.


<table class="aws_border" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" width="100&#37;"><tbody><tr><td class="aws_title" width="70%">Summary </td><td class="aws_blank">
</td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2"> <table class="aws_data" border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr bgcolor="#ececec"><td class="aws">Reported period</td><td class="aws" colspan="5"> Month Jan 2010</td></tr> <tr bgcolor="#ececec"><td class="aws">First visit</td> <td class="aws" colspan="5">01 Jan 2010 - 00:00</td></tr> <tr bgcolor="#ececec"><td class="aws">Last visit</td> <td class="aws" colspan="5">31 Jan 2010 - 23:59</td> </tr> <tr><td bgcolor="#ccccdd">
</td><td bgcolor="#ff9933" width="17%">Unique visitors</td><td bgcolor="#f3f300" width="17%">Number of visits</td><td bgcolor="#4477dd" width="17%">Pages</td><td bgcolor="#66f0ff" width="17%">Hits</td><td bgcolor="#339944" width="17%">
</td></tr> <tr><td class="aws">Viewed traffic *</td><td>123573
</td><td>184258
(1.49 visits/visitor)</td><td>1107478
(6.01 Pages/Visit)</td><td>5901062
(32.02 Hits/Visit)</td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table>

[sharon sanders]

Re: Continuing Attempts to Thwart FluTrackers

My comment - *** ** ***

We are not going to stop posting....

For example, from today -

Feb 11 02:24:28 server sshd: refused connect from ::ffff:58.61.149.213 (::ffff:58.61.149.213)
Feb 11 02:24:28 server sshd: refused connect from ::ffff:58.61.149.213 (::ffff:58.61.149.213)
Feb 11 05:46:04 server sshd: refused connect from ::ffff:222.247.37.141 (::ffff:222.247.37.141)
Feb 11 05:46:09 server sshd: refused connect from ::ffff:222.247.37.141 (::ffff:222.247.37.141)
Feb 11 07:33:42 server sshd: refused connect from ::ffff:118.129.153.43 (::ffff:118.129.153.43)
Feb 11 07:33:42 server sshd: refused connect from ::ffff:118.129.153.43 (::ffff:118.129.153.43)
Feb 11 09:27:11 server sshd: refused connect from ::ffff:222.247.37.141 (::ffff:222.247.37.141)
Feb 11 09:27:11 server sshd: refused connect from ::ffff:222.247.37.141 (::ffff:222.247.37.141)
Feb 11 13:04:02 server sshd: refused connect from ::ffff:222.247.37.141 (::ffff:222.247.37.141)
Feb 11 13:04:04 server sshd: refused connect from ::ffff:222.247.37.141 (::ffff:222.247.37.141)

[AlaskaDenise]

Re: Continuing Attempts to Thwart FluTrackers

2 from China (Shenzhe, Guangdong & Changsha, Hunan) and 1 from South Korea (Seoul).....interesting.

How many have come from Korea?

.