The Dark Visitor

Just posted one of the breaking stories in China and now another is moving up the list of top searches in China.   A man in Guangzhou was killed when his cellphone exploded.  This was the 9th such incident reported since 2002.

From: 022net.com

Do you send text messages to your friends, colleagues and customers wishing them well or a Happy New Year?  The answer for the majority of people is, definitely.  Recently, I’ve received many text messages, all in regards to wishing me well and Happy New Year.

With the New Year approaching, the cell phone virus has entered a period of “extreme danger,” so remind your friends to be on the lookout for spam text messages.

Fortunately all you have to do with spam text messages is delete them but they are no joke.  A viral outbreak can cause the cell phone to stop working,  data loss, spread junk mail and dial out to other phones.  It can also destroy hardware such as the SIM card and chip.

(In here how to defend against viral text messages, not translated.  Skipped to more interesting portion of the article)

Capital media reports that cell phone user Mr. Zhang received a pornographic text message from an unknown number, after opening the text, his cell phone continuously sent messages to people stored in his contact list.  The text message harmed the reputation of over 700 people.  Victims sent their cell phones to the service center in order to remove the virus, costing over 200 yuan.  A security expert said the virus contained a website address and transmitter virus.   After the virus is installed, there is no immediate abnormal behavior but after 30 minutes the virus links to the net and transmits text messages every 10 seconds.  Sending out text messages at this high rate can run up user fees.  It is possible the virus is also able to subscribe users to certain unwanted services, driving up charges.

According to China Mobile, the company blocked over 4 billion pieces of junk mail in the first half of 2008.

Good article on the trinity that makes up China’s censorship system.

Man gave names to all the animals, and let’s give clear names to these ones too so that we can avoid further confusion. China’s Censorship system is composed of: the Net Nanny, the Great Firewall (GFW), and the Search Engines Manipulation (SEM). Note the important difference between the three, which can be summarized as follows:

cont…

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 »

A large number of Chinese discussion forums were thrown into chaos when the Rising Anti-Virus company forced an automatic upgrade from their free 2008 edition to the fee-charged 2009 edition. From most reports, the upgrade took place in the middle of the night without permission, causing computers and Out Look Express to freeze up.

By the afternoon of the 6th, a large number of Chinese users found that they were unable to post comments on their normal website forums. Some users reported that the forum webpages simply appeared blank. Not only were large forums such as NetEase and Taobao effected, business website forums also suffered from the same problems.

According to reports, the accident was compounded by the large number of people using Rising Anti-Virus and the large percentage of discussion forums powered by the Discuz system.

Investigation showed that there were many online complaints about Rising’s new 2009 edition causing problems with e-mail, freezing up, blue screen..etc. According to IT experts, there was a problem with the new 2009 edition allowing Java Script applications to run.

I wish they would just release the whole CNNIC report (in English) all at once, this daily stat count is getting a little tiring.  If you are wondering where all these numbers are coming from it is CNNIC’s 23rd Annual Report.  The report is 128 pages long, so I’m not about to attempt to translate it.  If you want the Chinese, I’ve provided the links to the PDF and Word documents:

CNNIC PDF

CNNIC Word

From ZDnet Asia:

Released Wednesday, the MessageLabs Intelligence: 2008 Annual Security Report noted that Brazil had the world’s biggest share of global bots, at nearly 10 percent. Turkey and China were ranked No. 2 and No. 3, with respective shares of about 9 percent, and over 7 percent. Russia and India were also among the top five.

Taobao’s transaction volume reached 99 billion in 2008, that is approximately 80 yuan for every man, woman and child in China.  This was an increase of 131% over Taobao’s 2007 figures and accounted for 1% of the national retail sales volume.

Analyst Zhang Yanping said that China’s internet purchases had expanded rapidly in 2008 with a total sales volume of 120 billion yuan. Taobao claimed 80% of the overall online market.

The new benchmark for any Chinese internet enterprise now seems to be when the number of users surpasses the total US population.  QQ has now accomplished that with 350 million registered members.

Funny thing too, the last report on the Chinese online population put it at 290 million.  So, everybody in China uses QQ and another 60 million from outside the country?  Pretty sure Jumper registered a couple of hundred QQ accounts himself, so that narrows the numbers a bit.   At one point, QQ had 1/2 billion registered users primarily due to people gathering special numbers:

In some places, special QQ account numbers, such as 88888 or 66666 (6 and 8 are lucky numbers in China) were sold, or stolen and then sold, at a high price in the black-market. Some users even registered tens of QQ accounts in one day in order to get their favorite account numbers. In 2002, register users increased almost 1 million every day.

This is actually a very good article from China Daily on the history of QQ and Pony Ma, the founder.

As most of you know, if you want to contact a Chinese hacker for a DDoS attack or any other nefarious reason, you have to do it via his or her QQ number.

Asking for a little help here.  China releases a White Paper on National Defense every two years in December.  The last one was in 2006 and I haven’t seen the new one yet.  If anyone notices it, please leave a comment or drop me a line.  Thanks!