A Digital Epistle from One PRC to Another
Posted on June 26, 2008
Filed Under Beijing Olympics, China Hackers, China Internet, Malware, Security |
Stopbadware (hat tip Computer Crime Research Center) reports:
The majority of the Internet’s malware-infected websites are located on Chinese networks, finds a new report released today by StopBadware.org, the university-based research initiative aimed at protecting users from dangerous software. The report also identifies the 10 network blocks that contain the largest number of badware sites. Six of the 10 are located in China.
“Sites that infect visiting PCs represent some of the worst of digital pollution,” said Jonathan Zittrain, StopBadware.org co-director and Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. “Malware is a global problem that requires cooperation across industries and across national borders.”
As China strives to hone its image in preparation for the Beijing Olympics, fifty-two percent of the more than 200,000 infected sites StopBadware.org analyzed in late May were hosted by Chinese networks. U.S.-based networks accounted for 21 percent of bad sites. The data were provided by Google’s Safe Browsing team and are searchable by URL in the StopBadware.org Badware Website Clearinghouse.
This is pretty much consistent with every other study of infected websites on the internet. China always wins, hands down. It’s a combination of poor administration, an active hacking community, and utter indifference from the information industry. Chinese internet users really suffer for it, with their online banking, gaming, and messaging accounts the primary targets. Part of what drives this is the rapid growth of internet adoption in China. There’s a lot of people and companies who don’t understand the nature of the risks on the internet. They’re easy pickings and become a platform or a vector to attack others.
The folks at stopbadware, according to their report, have made a real effort to explain to the providers hosting these sites where the problems lie. That’s super, bravo.
However, in China they said that they had no “success in contacting these companies”. Hmmm, I wonder if: 1) they might have thought to ask in Chinese. Maybe they did, which leads to: 2) maybe they shouldn’t have used the words “pollution” (er, digital blue sky day, anyone?) and “across national borders” (um, how about digital internal affairs?). And: 3) definitely a gratuitous slap at the Beijing Olympics won’t get them any candy and a hongbao next CNY.
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Cyber crime rampant in China, a highly controlled, authoritarian police state?
Give me a break. Crime in China is very low and cybercrime is no different. If there’s shenanigans going on then it’s officially-sanctioned shenanigans.
I completely disagree.
I live in China and, in my limited experience, it is anything but a police state. The state here is pervasive, and even perhaps invasive, but there is no control of people’s actions as you suppose.
While I don’t believe that the internet is a measure or a vehicle of freedom, it is a venue of expression and a tool to be used. In China, as in the rest of the world, it is both. There are limitations on what people can say, but there really are few limitations on what people can do.
Porn, gambling, discussions on politically sensitive topics, it all happens on the internet in China. And don’t get me started on hacking and malware, there is a lot of talent out there that really is up to no good.
But to think that the 250 million-odd (which is a lowball number, I believe) internet users in China are all in lockstep with some imagined central committee agenda is ridiculous.
The government here may find the internet a poisoned chalice. It promises a communications platform that benefits business and government. A grail of instant, fairly resilient, communications to be used as they see fit.
But then there’s the poison. That same platform is used by such a tremendous volume of people that any effort to control it is preventative on its best days and a-day-late-yi-kwai-short the rest of the time.
As in their daily lives, the Chinese are blogging, hacking, shopping, searching, reading, hooking up, and bullshitting on the internet. They may get in trouble for doing it too much, but by and large they’re doing it anyways.
China is changing at a pace, and to a degree, that I can’t even pretend to understand. I don’t think anyone else really does either. To a small extent the internet in China reflects that.
To write the whole experience off as some kind of government program is not racist, it’s not bigoted, it’s not paranoid, it’s not some kind of silly conspiracy.
It’s just stupid.