Is Anyone Buying China's Trojan Horse Sob Story?
Is Anyone Buying China's Trojan Horse Sob Story?
Posted 08/10/2011 at 7:21am
| by Paul Lilly
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It's common practice to point the finger at China every time there's a major cyber attack, just as many security analysts did following McAfee's recent report detailing a five-year run of cyber high jinks "by one specific actor." The Chinese government usually throws up its arms in disbelief and says, "Who, me!?," only now China officials are claiming that it too is a victim.
According to figures released by China's National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team (CNCERT from here on out), China was the target of 480,000 Trojan attacks in 2010, PCWorld.com reports. CNCERT pegs the number of outside attacks at 221,000, adding that 14.7 percent originated from the U.S., and 8.8 percent from India.
How exactly CNCERT arrived at those figures is unknown, and so is the purpose behind those attacks. CNCERT did, however, bring up a report from earlier this year in which the organization noted over 10 million PCs in China were found to contain a Trojan horse in 2010, a nearly 275 percent increase over 2009.
Image Credit: icanhascheezburger.com
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SYL808
August 10, 2011 at 11:00am
How exactly CNCERT arrived at those figures? Probably the same way McAfee arrived at it's report which it took (conveniently) from it's server logs.
TerribleToaster
August 10, 2011 at 12:09pm
Unfortunately for CNCERT, they aren't a 3rd party like McAfee, so their word is no better than if the US's DoD had published figures implicating China (this is also made worse by China's reputation of fabricating cover stories). Once CNCERT get's a third party to verify their findings, people will give them some credibility. However, this is doubtful to ever happen (not just because there is a chance that it's all a lie, but because China would never let a 3rd party in to verify even if the reports were true).
TerribleToaster
August 10, 2011 at 8:42am
Nope, not feeling it.
Maybe if they lost a petabyte of data. Maybe. But most likely not.
It kinda feels like they are saying:
"He may have lost an arm and a leg, but I broke a nail!"
Eoraptor
August 10, 2011 at 8:23am
I wonder if these figures include the millions of trojans they installed on their own citizen's computers?
Oh sorry, did I ask that out loud?
yeah, sorry, anything coming out of China's state run media I take with about a metric tonne of salt.
stradric
August 10, 2011 at 7:06pm
Nice. I came here to write just that. They know how many trojans are infected because they're the ones who are controlling the 10-million strong botnet.
std error
August 10, 2011 at 7:44am
Not really surprising. It is foolish to think that the pentagon doesn't have any "offensive" cyber capabilities. It is just that Chinese or Iranian authorities which control their media outlets don't publish breaches like Western media outlets do.
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