The Dark Visitor

January 20th, 2009

On Tuesday, China released its new White Paper on National Defense in 2008.  The full text in English can be viewed at china.org.cn and the full text Chinese version can be viewed at the State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China.

We will be posting more on this after we have a chance to review.

Quick Update: Here are few snipets on information operations

…Regarding RMA with Chinese characteristics as the only way to modernize the military, it put forward the strategic goal of building an informationized military and winning informationized wars.

…It has accelerated the composite development of mechanization and informationization, vigorously conducts military training in conditions of informationization, and boosts innovation in military theory, technology, organization and management, to continuously increase the core military capability of winning local wars in conditions of informationization and the capability of conducting MOOTW.

…and create a scientific system for military training in conditions of informationization.

Continue Reading »

Just finished reading an article at News.cn on the growing number of phishing sites and trojans related to train ticket sales in China.  Train ticket sales soar just before the start of the Chinese New Year, as people use the week-long holiday to visit family and friends.

According to the report, the hackers are setting up sites based on keyword searches and then using search engine optimization techniques to push those websites to the top of the search engine results.  They are also finding the most popular websites associated with train ticket sales and looking for cracks to install trojans.

So, if you were a Chinese hacker, how would you find the hottest trends?  What are people in China searching for at this moment?  What are the most lucrative targets to generate the highest number of compromises?

Top Baidu – Lists all of the most popular Chinese searches in numerous categories (auto xlation version).

Google Insight – You can get a list of the top searches and rising searches covering the last seven days in China.

Google Trends China – Check the popularity of a search term over time such as train ticket.

Knowing where influence takes place is an important aspect in understanding the virtual environment.

-Some dude in a bar

[poll id="3"]

Didn’t even know there was a Doodle4Google contest for kids, but apparently there was one.  The picture above was the Chinese winner submitted by Zhang Bo, from Beijing’s Chaoyang District Middle School.  The picture is “Lotus Flower in Ink” and appeared on the Chinese Google homepage from 16-17 Jan 09.

The US winner was Grace Moon, from Canyon Middle School in California titled, “Up in the Clouds.”

Guilty as charged, I stole that title line from Samantha Hunt at TGdaily.  It gave me a chuckle, so I “borrowed it.” That will teach her to be humorous.

Good article on a Chinese researcher from the Chinese Academy of Science predicting the evolution of the internet following a form of Moore’s Law:

The researchers observed the Internet as nodes representing autonomous system – rather than a collection of websites. The team also calculated how the core of the Internet was formed. It was determined that the Internet’s core and the periphery were controlled by different evolutionary mechanisms.

With the Chinese New Year fast approaching, it is time once again for train ticket scalpers to hit the internet.  With thousands of people trying to make their way home for the week-long holiday, train tickets are at a premium and it is a lucrative market for scalpers.

China has launched operation “Blue Shield” to crackdown on the trade:

Police launched the “Blue Shield” campaign against scalpers on December 15, and to date had arrested more than 2,300 people and recovered 78,000 scalped train tickets, including 60,000 fake tickets, with a face value of 2.46 million yuan (US$360,000).

Rising Anti-Virus has just announced its new trojan monitoring site that tracks malicious websites throughout the country.

The website displays the top-5 malicious sites:

A malicious website distribution chart:

Also a malicious website intercept line and impact chart.

I’ve provided a link to the English translation by Google so you get an idea of what the website does.  While the intercept chart still works in the translated version, you have to switch back to the Chinese version to make the distribution chart function.

Yeepay (Easy Pay), the leading e-payment service in China, confirmed that starting at 4:20 pm on January 14th, it had been under a large-scale hacker attack that had a volume rate of over 10G.

Customers first began noticing a slow down on the 14th and by the afternoon of the 15th, they were unable to access the site.

The attack was reported to the Beijing Public Security Bureau and a suspect is currently in custody.

Background:

YeePay developed technology that allows cell-phone users to pay for products and services over their mobile phones via micropayments. The Chinese, like us, are attached to their cell phones, only more so; they can download or consume numerous services using the devices. The challenge is that many of them don’t have traditional bank accounts or credit cards, so monetizing mobile broadband services without such a financial infrastructure poses a serious barrier to the development of this market.

Because YeePay was a tiny startup, going to market with us gave them the credibility it needed to close deals with large banks or large wireless providers. So IBM stepped in, giving it access to the largest banks and telecom players—all of whom happened to be our customers. We took YeePay’s business application to our financial customers in China and throughout Asia. Through the partnership, YeePay increased the value of its financial transactions 10 times to $1.2 million.

Two different source for some of the hottest Chinese internet slang on the web:

1. Don’t be too CNN | zuò rén bùnéng tài CNN | 做人不能太CNN

Meaning: A synonym for a malicious frame up and blurring of the line between right and wrong.
Background: During the smashing, looting, and arson this March in Lhasa (known now as ‘3-14’ after the date), a news report by CNN used a photo cropped so it appeared Chinese military officers in a truck were attacking protestors. The undoctored picture, in fact, shows a group of protestors lobbing rocks at said vehicle. Upset by CNN’s distortion of the incident Chinese people from all over the world signed a petition demanding CNN’s apology and protested in China and abroad.

During the Olympic Torch Relay in the US, CNN commentator Jack Cafferty made this remark about China: “I think they’re basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they’ve been for the last 50 years.” To describe Chinese citizens as outraged by these remarks is to put it far too lightly. Petitions, boycotts, and an array of anti-CNN merchandise popped up and “don’t be too CNN” became a popular phrase online – even popping up in rap videos made by infuriated netizens.

More internet slang at echinacities.com

打酱油

Buy Soy Sauce

Definition: Expressing that one has no knowledge of some thing, or have no comments, an attitude of minding one’s own business.

Origin: From TV news, when a correspondent was interviewing a Guangzhou citizen about the Edison Chen Photo Scandal, the man said: “It’s none of my fxxking business, I just get out to buy soy sauce.”

Later, the phrase was widely used in reply posts and other things, adaptation became fashionable for a time, even derived Soy Sauce Group and other internet slangs.

e.g.: I know nothing about it, I’m a professional soy sauce buyer.

More Chinese internet slang at Chai-Le Part I

Even more internet slang at Chai-Le Part II