Lee Dunn's List: CHINA

• Cold snap spurs power rationing in China
• Chris Buckley

   

  BEIJING

   

  Wed Jan 6, 2010
• BEIJING (Reuters) - Cities across eastern and central China are rationing power for industry and urging residents to limit gas use after a wave of icy weather sent energy demand soaring while straining supplies of coal that were already tight.
• Much of China's manufacturing and farming heartland shivered on Wednesday under snow, sleet and unusual cold that drove south after dumping big snowfalls on Beijing and much of the country's north in past days.
• Daytime temperatures in Shanghai and across the nearby coastal provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang skidded close to 0 degrees Celsius (32 F), and many areas inland were hit by snow or sleet, according to meteorological departments.
• The harsh weather has pushed energy demand to new peaks, while transport snarls have slowed coal supplies, already low as power and coal companies haggle over prices.
• The confluence of soaring demand, transport snarls and brinkmanship over coal prices could force power cuts and upset production in some big economic provinces, if conditions worsen.
• "Conditions for thermal coal supply and shipment do not allow for optimism," said the China Electric Power News, mouthpiece of the State Electricity Regulatory Commission.
• "In central and eastern China, power plants' inventories of thermal coal remain as tight as they were at the end of last year, and already strained shipment of coal has suffered more hardships after being hit by the snow storms."
• Even with these worries, the cold snap is unlikely to seriously slow China's economic momentum. Much larger power and transport disruption after icy cold hit parts of southern China in early 2008 barely registered in GDP numbers.
• Power authorities have said they should be able to surmount the strains by expanding transmission between regions rationing the power and gas use by thousands of factories, with limited disruption to the broader economy.
• Shandong, a coastal province, limited power going to industry after the cold pushed power generating capacity to its limit.
• Eastern Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces were also straining to meet power demand, and some cities imposed rations for industry.
• The inland province of Hubei has also been rationing power, after some power plants shut for lack of coal, local media said.
• But China's top exporting province, Guangdong in the south, has enough power to ensure "normal operations", the China News Service reported, citing a provincial electricity grid official.
• China's coal mining is concentrated inland while demand is concentrated on the coast, resulting in long hauls that are often slowed by transport capacity strains and weather.
• China imports about 5 percent of its natural gas in the form of LNG, but imports are set to grow after the opening of a pipeline from central Asia.
• While most residents in northern cities, such as Beijing, enjoy centralized heating, cities south of the Yangtze River do not, leaving many to endure the cold or buy their own heaters.
• But even the Chinese capital, which normally enjoys priority treatment in everything from energy to food, curbed heating to government buildings, shopping malls, office buildings and industry to ensure supplies to residents, the Beijing Daily said.
• The energy strains are only partly a consequence of the recent cold snap. Demand for power was already running high as quickening economic growth pushed up factory production.

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• Google threatens to leave China after attacks on activists' e-mail
• By Ellen Nakashima, Steven Mufson and John Pomfret
   Washington Post Staff Writers
   Wednesday, January 13, 2010; A01
• Google said Tuesday that it may pull out of China because of a sophisticated computer network attack originating there and targeting its e-mail service and corporate infrastructure, a threat that could rattle U.S.-China relations, as well as China's business community.
• The company said it has evidence to suggest that "a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists,"
• but it said that at least 20 other large companies, including finance, media and chemical firms, have been the targets of similar attacks.

  • Yeah..bust on my gmail account, you freaking Chinks!!! I don't like your Communist, slant eyed asses anyway!! Eaten any aborted fetuses lately?!..Savages!!
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• Google said it discovered the attack in December.
• "It's clear that this attack was so pervasive and so essential to the core of Google's intellectual property that only in such a situation would they contemplate pulling the plug on their entire business model in China," said James Mulvenon, a China cyber expert with Defense Group Inc.
• Congressional sources said the other companies include Adobe and possibly Northrop Grumman and Dow Chemical.
• Industry sources said the attacks were even broader, affecting 34 firms.
• The hackers directed the attacks on the companies through six Internet addresses linked to servers in Taiwan, which sent commands to targeted computers in the firms, said Eli Jellenc, head of international cyberintelligence for the Silicon Valley-based cybersecurity research and forensics firm Verisign iDefense, which is helping companies investigate the penetrations.
• The hackers were sending the data to a large Internet data center in San Antonio called Rackspace, he said.
• They appeared to be after information on weapons systems from defense firms and were seeking companies' "source code," the most valuable form of intellectual property because it underlies the firms' computer applications, he said.
• U.S. authorities, including the National Security Agency, are involved in investigating the attacks.
• Several of the Internet addresses correspond to those used in malicious attacks against the defense industry last year and that are thought to be linked in some fashion to the Chinese government or proxies, Jellenc said.
• "We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China," he said.
• David Drummond, Google's senior vice president and chief legal officer, said the attacks had led the company to conclude that it should "review the feasibility" of its Chinese operations.
• Over the next few weeks, he said, the company will discuss with the Beijing government how it may operate "an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all."
• Drummond also said that the company has decided to stop censoring its search results on Chinese Google sites.
• Google's threat to pull out of China follows years of tension over the company's service, which is designed to provide quick, unfettered access to information, and over the Chinese government, which wants to restrict its citizens' access to politically sensitive topics and to monitor their activity.
• The confrontation also comes just before a Jan. 21 policy speech on Internet freedom by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who dined last week with a handful of top technology executives, including Google's chief executive, Eric Schmidt.
• Clinton said Google had briefed her on the issue, but in a statement late Tuesday she demanded an explanation from China.
• "The ability to operate with confidence in cyberspace is critical in a modern society and economy," she said.
• Based on its investigation to date, Google said, it does not believe the cyberattack on its accounts succeeded.
• "Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves," the company said in a blog posting.
• Chinese writers have accused it of copyright infringement.

  • They've got some balls..however very tiny ones..taking affront at what they say are "copyright infringement" after hacking emails..!! Damned Mongoloids!
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• Google has also been embroiled recently in a dispute over the copyrights of Chinese authors whose works it had published in its online library Google Books
• The company apologized to Chinese writers this week.
• Privacy advocates applauded Google's move to disclose the cyberattacks and reverse its stand on censorship of its China search engine results.
• "Google has taken a bold and difficult step for Internet freedom in support of fundamental human rights," said Leslie Harris, president of the Center for Democracy and Technology.
• "No company should be forced to operate under government threat to its core values or to the rights and safety of its users."
• In China, reaction on the Web was critical of both the Chinese government and Google.
• One blogger, identified only as "Crossing the river with eyes closed," said, "They'd better cut the cable under the sea so that they don't have to worry at all."

  • Sounds good to me...
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• Others worried that the potential loss of access to Google would make it harder to obtain technical information.
• "Of course, as a business they have the right to make this decision," Ran Yunfei, a dissident writer based in Sichuan province, said on Twitter, which is blocked in China but which many Chinese reach through proxies. But, he added, even censored, Google is "much better than Baidu," a popular Chinese-owned search engine.
• In a phone interview, he said Google should "not abandon" China but rather apply pressure through the World Trade Organization and U.S. government.
• Google officials said the company found that the Gmail accounts of dozens of China human rights advocates in the United States, China and Europe "appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties."
• The hacking most likely occurred through phishing scams -- luring users to download malicious software by opening innocent-looking e-mails -- or malware placed on users' computers, rather than by breaking into Google's corporate infrastructure, the company said.
• The implications for U.S. businesses in general loom large.
• "Google is an extreme example, but this action is consistent with the sentiment among many foreign companies that doing business in China is increasingly difficult as the country becomes more wealthy and powerful," said James McGregor, senior counselor for Apco Worldwide in China.
• but U.S. officials have refrained from publicly accusing the country because of the difficulty of determining with certainty who is behind an attack.

  • Pussys...!
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• China is among a handful of countries considered to have impressive cyber-offensive capabilities,
• Attacks on China rights activists have been growing, however, and suspicion has fallen on the Beijing government.
• China -- or its broad army of proxies -- has been the suspected aggressor behind a series of attacks on U.S. and other countries' computer systems dating from the late 1990s.
• Those events include Titan Rain, a campaign of cyberattacks against the Pentagon, nuclear weapons labs, NASA and defense contractors from 2003 to 2005; penetrations of the Commerce and State department networks in 2006; and GhostNet, a widespread spying operation targeting supporters of Tibetan independence in 2008.
• When Google set up a subsidiary in China in 2005 and purchased servers hosted in the country, it agreed to censor its search results. But the company and the government officials trolling the Internet have continued to clash over what content should be blocked.
• The conflicts escalated in June when Beijing blamed Google for smut on the Internet, saying that some search results could be considered pornographic. China temporarily blocked Google.com and Gmail in what was believed to be a punishment.
• The State Department has set aside funds to help companies get around Internet firewalls put up by China and other countries.
• One potential recipient is run by the Falun Gong sect, which is banned in China, but it has yet to receive any such funding. "The Chinese would go ballistic if we did that," said one U.S. official.

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• Chinese soldiers headed to Middle East?
• Chinese soldiers headed to Middle East?
• Plans for bases, deployment under consideration
• Posted: January 12, 2010
  10:21 pm Eastern
  
    <!--- copywrite only show on NON commentary pages as per joseph meeting 8/23/06 ------>   <!-- copyright --> © 2010 WorldNetDaily 
• China is considering setting up military bases and possibly deploying forces in the Middle East over the next decade as a means of protecting its access to strategic materials, especially oil, and sizeable investments in various Arab countries, according to a report from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.
• Middle East expert Patrick Seale said the Chinese influence in the Middle East is rising and its trade with Arab countries, which totaled $132 billion in 2008, will increase.
• The growing cooperation between China and Iran in energy and trade is seen as leading to the prospect of increased military cooperation.
• That would come at a time when the West is considering increased sanctions against Iran, and Israel is threatening open military attack on Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities.
• 
   Chinese army
• "For sure, Iran's willingness to show a greater willingness than hitherto to embrace China's naval vessels making port calls to Iran is now in the cards,
• this as a prelude to more extensive agreements up to and including provisions for a small Chinese naval outpost on one of Iran's Persian Gulf islands," according to Iranian expert Kaveh L. Afrasiabi.
• "Again, such a scenario, sure to raise the serious ire of Washington, depends on a number of intervening variables," Afrasiabi said.
• "These include future U.S. moves in the Persian Gulf, for example, whether or not the U.S. military will end up utilizing some of the man-made artificial islands set up by the (United Arab Emirates). If so, thus enhancing the U.S.'s power projection capability with regard to Iran, Tehran may be more inclined to try to offset the U.S.'s leaning so heavy on it by playing the 'China card.'"
• Until now, the role of China and its influence in the region has received little public attention, even though Beijing's influence is growing, especially toward Iran.
• It plans to invest some $43 billion in Iran's oil industry, despite the fact that U.S. policymakers are adamantly opposed to this development.
• China, for example, is Iran's main customer for oil.
• In the case of China, however, unilateral U.S. sanctions would be fruitless and would create further tensions between Beijing and Washington.
• Policymakers view Tehran's offer to give China access to its massive oil and natural gas reserves as a way of deflecting the possibility of increased sanctions for its uranium enrichment program.
• As the U.N. Security Council shortly will consider such sanctions, there are growing indications that neither China nor Russia will support the move.
• A good reason for that is China's heavy reliance on oil shipments from the Middle East, particularly from Iran and Saudi Arabia.
• Security experts say the strategy that China is developing for the Middle East is referred to as the "string of pearls."
• The strategy is designed to protect sea lanes from the oil-rich area of the Middle East to China.
• In addition to military, the strategy includes diplomatic and economic activities.
• As part of the "string of pearls" strategy, China is to develop commercial seaports that also can handle Chinese warships and provide support for alliances from Gwadar in Pakistan through the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia.

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• China’s Cyber Army is Preparing to March on America, Says Pentagon
• November 21, 2007
    Tim Reid in Washington
    UK Times
  
• Chinese military hackers have prepared a detailed plan to disable America’s aircraft battle carrier fleet with a devastating cyber attack, according to a Pentagon report obtained by The Times.
• The blueprint for such an assault, drawn up by two hackers working for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), is part of an aggressive push by Beijing to achieve “electronic dominance” over each of its global rivals by 2050, particularly the US, Britain, Russia and South Korea.
• China’s ambitions extend to crippling an enemy’s financial, military and communications capabilities early in a conflict, according to military documents and generals’ speeches that are being analysed by US intelligence officials.
• Describing what is in effect a new arms race, a Pentagon assessment states that China’s military regards offensive computer operations as “critical to seize the initiative” in the first stage of a war.

  • Yea, and the slant eyed bastards have been practising on our grid since!
• The plan to cripple the US aircraft carrier battle groups was authored by two PLA air force officials, Sun Yiming and Yang Liping.
• It also emerged this week that the Chinese military hacked into the US Defence Secretary’s computer system in June; have regularly penetrated computers in at least 10 Whitehall departments, including military files, and infiltrated German government systems this year.
• Cyber attacks by China have become so frequent and aggressive that President Bush, without referring directly to Beijing, said this week that “a lot of our systems are vulnerable to attack”. He indicated that he would raise the subject with Hu Jintao, the Chinese President, when they met in Sydney at the Apec summit.
• Mr Hu denied that China was responsible for the attack on Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary.
• Larry M. Wortzel, the author of the US Army War College report, said: “The thing that should give us pause is that in many Chinese military manuals they identify the US as the country they are most likely to go to war with.
• The two PLA hackers produced a “virtual guidebook for electronic warfare and jamming” after studying dozens of US and Nato manuals on military tactics, according to the document.
• They are moving very rapidly to master this new form of warfare.”
• The Pentagon logged more than 79,000 attempted intrusions in 2005. About 1,300 were successful, including the penetration of computers linked to the Army’s 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions and the 4th Infantry Division.
• In August and September of that year Chinese hackers penetrated US State Department computers in several parts of the world.
• Chinese hackers also disrupted the US Naval War College’s network in November, forcing the college to shut down its computer systems for several weeks.
• Hundreds of computers had to be replaced or taken offline for months.
• The Pentagon uses more than 5 million computers on 100,000 networks in 65 countries.
• Jim Melnick, a recently retired Pentagon computer network analyst, told The Times that the Chinese military holds hacking competitions to identify and recruit talented members for its cyber army.
  
• He described a competition held two years ago in Sichuan province, southwest China. The winner now uses a cyber nom de guerre, Wicked Rose.
• He went on to set up a hacking business that penetrated computers at a defence contractor for US aerospace.
• Mr Melnick said that the PLA probably outsourced its hacking efforts to such individuals. “These guys are very good,” he said. “We don’t know for sure that Wicked Rose and people like him work for the PLA. But it seems logical. And it also allows the Chinese leadership to have plausible deniability.”
• In February a massive cyber attack on Estonia by Russian hackers demonstrated how potentially catastrophic a preemptive strike could be on a developed nation.
• Pro-Russian hackers attacked numerous sites to protest against the controversial removal in Estonia of a Russian memorial to victims of the Second World War. The attacks brought down government websites, a major bank and telephone networks.
• Linton Wells, the chief computer networks official at the Pentagon, said that the Estonia attacks “may well turn out to be a watershed in terms of widespread awareness of the vulnerability of modern society”.
   
    After the attacks, computer security experts from Nato, the EU, US and Israel arrived in the capital, Tallinn, to study its effects.
• Sami Saydjari, who has been working on cyber defence systems for the Pentagon since the 1980s, told Congress in testimony on April 25 that a mass cyber attack could leave 70 per cent of the US without electrical power for six months.
  
• He told The Times that all major nations – including China – were scrambling to defend against, and working out ways to cause, “maximum strategic damage” by taking out banking systems, power grids and communications networks.
• He said that there were at least a thousand attempted attacks every hour on American computers. “China is aggressive in this,” he said.
• Programmed to attack
• Malware: a “Trojan horse” programme, which hides a “malicious code” behind an innocent document, can collect usernames and passwords for e-mail accounts. It can download programmes and relay attacks against other computers. An infected computer can be controlled by the attacker and directed to carry out functions normally available only to the system owner.
• Hacking: increasingly a method of attack used by countries determined to use electronic means to gain access to secrets. Government computers in Britain have a network intrusion detection system, which monitors traffic and alerts officials to “misuse or anomalous behaviour”.
• Botnets: compromised networks that an attacker can exploit. Deliberate programming errors in software can easily pass undetected. Attackers can exploit the errors to take control of a computer. Botnets can be used for stealing information or to collect credit card numbers by “sniffing” or logging the strokes of a victim’s keyboard.
• Keystroke loggers: they record the sequence of key strokes that a user types in. Logging devices can be fitted inside the computer itself.
• Denial of service attacks: overloading a computer system so that it can no longer function. This is the method allegedly used by the Russians to disrupt the Estonian government computers in May.
• Phishing and spoofing: designed to trick an organisation’s customers into imparting confidential information such as passwords, personal data or banking details. Those using this method impersonate a “trusted source” such as a bank or IT helpdesk to persuade the victim to hand over confidential information. (Michael Evans)
• http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article2409865.ece

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• What a Cyber Attack Means to You
• related: Al-Qaeda Attack on US Soil within Months
    ...Attack 'Certain'
    Intel Chief: U.S. at Risk of Crippling Cyber Attack
• February 4, 2010
    By Holly Deyo

• How clever is cutting border security when:
   

   

   

  1. We already have millions of illegal immigrants pouring through the borders
    2. History shows terrorists do enter through both U.S. borders and
    3. In the last three days, headlines scream that it's a 'certainty" we will be hit with a new terrorist attack in '3-6 months'
   
• They climb fences, swim the Rio Grande, walk through open-fence border areas and pay coyotes to truck them across. Some crawl through southern border tunnels, some use water routes and others, as in the case of Ahmed Ressam, simply drive into Washington through Canada.
• Can opting for security laxness be anything but a deliberate act of letting down of the guard? Surely 20 million illegal aliens is evidence enough that we need more border security – not cuts.

  • Exactly...
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• Government can find big $$ to send Congress to Copenhagen and waste millions on pork barrel issues and countless other spendthrift endeavors.
• Money consideration is a poor trade-off for national security.
• Surely in Obama's trillion-dollar budget, he could find a few million to beef up border security.
• It seems like the administration is trying to facilitate disaster instead prevent it. Not all, but some in positions of authority are treating our futures with thumb-to-nose disregard.
• This should put a clear face on what's been elected to office.
• It's yet another reason – on an already lengthy list – to vote the bums out.
• Transparency – for a Change
• Have you noticed prior to Saturday's revelation how government officials danced around news of another terrorist attack? It's months or years later we hear about numerous thwarted attempts.
• Today is different. There is no minimizing the threat. No brush-off of information. Even as prepared as Stan and I are, goosebumps pricked my body in trepidation.
• IF terrorists perpetrate a cyber attack, you might feel like you'd be better off than in a WMD strike.
• Thoughts of an unknown bug contaminating our food supply, contracting some horrible disease or being paralyzed by a nerve agent is scary enough. Frankly, a nuclear detonation would be more tolerable than a "crippling" cyber attack. A nuke's painful effects would be more manageable and less enduring, ground zero aside. Fact.
  
• Probed Like Tender Meat
• Hackers have tested utilities and caused blackouts in Central and South American and Mexico.
• For years now, we've had warning that a cyber attack might one day morph into reality.
• As expected, China and Russia are at the heart of U.S. power grid probes.

  • "Mongol" Cousins...
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• They've already embedded malicious code in our power grid and trial runs have plagued foreign utilities.
• In other arenas, China has detailed plans to disable the U.S. aircraft battle carrier fleet.
• Countless millions have been stolen in banking hacks along with personal records. Part of this problem stems from people using too easy passwords like "12345" or "password".
• Two years ago the Pentagon was penetrated resulting in the banning of using external hard drives and the White House suffered an "unprecedented" cyber attack.
• Last July the New York Stock Exchange and White House were targeted with malware.
• China has already hacked Google's email accounts – not quite as big a drama as infrastructure, but this company is savvy to what hacking can do.

  • Dog eating monkeys
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• And today, Google enlisted the NSA to fight cyber attacks.
• We've had more than ample warning. A cyber attack is our "unprotected back door".
• We've already experienced just the tip of the 'berg with denial of service (DNS) attacks and very slow internet traffic. (Part of this traffic may be attributed to heavier Net usage since more people are unemployed.)
• Any of the above scenarios paints a horrible scenario, but taken together in a "crippling attack"... it's unthinkable.
• What This Means to You
• Nearly everything you do and use each day has some connection to computers and cyberspace. Computers run all facets of banking, store inventories, check approvals. Without computers every purchase would be cash only transactions WHILE product was still available.
• This assumes clerks can make change without the aid of a cash register.
• People depending on monthly social security or dividend checks would have a very difficult time. If you think unemployment numbers are rough now, just wait.
• Internet business would be crushed. So would many brick-and-mortar establishments. No power, no product, no business.
• Gas and diesel from source to station would cease.
• ALL utilities - zapped. You'd have no lighting, no heat, no air conditioning, no water.
• Most treatment plants only have enough chlorine to purify water for 5-7 days. Its automated chlorination system would shut down.
• Hospitals would be severely handicapped. How long would it be until medications and antibiotics were unavailable?
• Police forces would be overrun with criminals and panicked people alike. Without question, martial law would be enacted immediately.
• If you haven't purchased a firearm, it would be too late. Gun sales are all predicated on computer-driven background checks.
• You wouldn't know what happened because there'd be no TV, no radio. Maybe there's a power outage? you wonder.
• The penny drops as military troops invade every city. What's wrong? Wondering changes to dread. Something horrible has happened.
  
• The most dependable source of information is ham operators with battery- or generator-powered units. Information would pass neighborhood to neighborhood, from other individuals that had workable receivers.
• Heed the Warning
• This is just a quick overview of the misery involved in a "crippling" cyber attack. Repercussions were glossed over by media in these recent announcements, lumped together under "infrastructure" targets. No one outlined how all-encompassing and devastating this is.
• For your own safety and well-being, these are things you must consider . You've got a few months to get ready. This is one of these rare disasters when you get advance notice. Make the most of it.
• http://standeyo.com/NEWS/09_Sci_Tech/100204.what a.cyber.attack.means.html

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