Google wouldn't be human if it weren't relieved that the latest Chinese hacking incident targeted not a hole in Google's defenses but a gullibility of its customers. The proper term is "spear phishing" for the use of email cons to scam a specific, chosen individual into revealing his or her password, allowing unauthorized access to inboxes and online accounts.
In a blog post this week, Google announced that the latest attacks seem to come from Jinan, China. The targets were the Gmail accounts of "senior U.S. government officials, Chinese political activists, officials in several Asian countries (predominantly South Korea), military personnel and journalists." The bait: an attachment that opened an imitation of Google's Gmail log-in page, inviting users to enter passwords so they could be zipped off to spies or criminals in China.
On Thursday, the White House acknowledged some of its own personnel were among those whose Gmail accounts were targeted.
The FBI is investigating, but what might really help is Google's example catching on. Dozens of firms are known to have been similarly mugged, including GE, Morgan Stanley and Disney. But most remain mum, fearing to antagonize China. Nothing could be better calculated to make sure the problem gets worse—as the world should have learned from a highly relevant precedent, the epidemic of high seas piracy in and around Southern China in the mid-1990s.
Were profiteering Chinese military officials behind the sea raids? Did they merely turn a blind eye? Was the central government abetting piracy as a way to assert Chinese sovereignty in international waters? Had it merely lost control? These questions were inconclusively debated just as we now discreetly debate Beijing's role in the hacking outbreak. What actually improved matters was the world's shipowners and their governments shedding timidity and loudly rubbing China's face in the evidence.
An unsung hero was Eric Ellen, then-head of the International Maritime Bureau, who went public in an interview with Reuters in early 1994: "There is no doubt that these moves against ships operating in international waters were government-inspired," he said.
Mr. Ellen's comments appeared to break the dam of silence. Hong Kong, then a British colony, had amassed the evidence but had been reluctant to publicize it in the run-up to the colony's fraught return to mainland sovereignty. Now it wasn't, detailing nearly 50 cases in an 18-month period, right down to the serial numbers of the Chinese military vessels involved in piracy attacks.
Some of the attacks were so brazen—like the Alicia Star, whose cargo of cigarettes was unloaded on Hainan Island and the ship itself sold for the benefit of the Hainan government—that Beijing tried to pass them off as legitimate "anti-smuggling exercises." Others hinted frightfully at a mainland bordering on anarchy. A missing Australian freighter was eventually tracked to a Chinese salvage yard after a wrecking crew discovered, in a sealed storage locker, the remains of 10 seamen who had been doused with gasoline and burned alive.
Name-and-shame prevailed not because Beijing craved to be seen as a good citizen. Beijing craved to be seen as in control. The lesson was being drawn all over Southeast Asia that China's central government no longer had the power to discipline local elites who were damaging China's national interests in the wider world.
In early 2000, the government finally made a show of executing 13 Chinese pirates who, in military uniforms, had hijacked the cargo ship Cheung Son in 1998, murdering 23 crew members. Ever since, even as piracy has remained a plague particularly in the Indian Ocean, Chinese government-sponsored piracy no longer is a conspicuous source of trouble.
Smart people in China know such things aren't in China's interest. For the Chinese no less than anyone else, ugly to contemplate is a world in which any ship can be hijacked and its crew murdered with impunity—or, for that matter, a world in which corporate research is routinely stolen, or in which nobody can confidently engage in online transactions for fear of state-sponsored hacking.
Roughly speaking, however, Beijing's governing principle in the modern era has been: Where is it most necessary for us to be seen reasserting control at the moment?
The way to move Internet hacking up Beijing's priority list is by rudely and relentlessly drawing attention to China's role in international hacking incidents.
In a blog post this week, Google announced that the latest attacks seem to come from Jinan, China. The targets were the Gmail accounts of "senior U.S. government officials, Chinese political activists, officials in several Asian countries (predominantly South Korea), military personnel and journalists." The bait: an attachment that opened an imitation of Google's Gmail log-in page, inviting users to enter passwords so they could be zipped off to spies or criminals in China.
On Thursday, the White House acknowledged some of its own personnel were among those whose Gmail accounts were targeted.
The FBI is investigating, but what might really help is Google's example catching on. Dozens of firms are known to have been similarly mugged, including GE, Morgan Stanley and Disney. But most remain mum, fearing to antagonize China. Nothing could be better calculated to make sure the problem gets worse—as the world should have learned from a highly relevant precedent, the epidemic of high seas piracy in and around Southern China in the mid-1990s.
Were profiteering Chinese military officials behind the sea raids? Did they merely turn a blind eye? Was the central government abetting piracy as a way to assert Chinese sovereignty in international waters? Had it merely lost control? These questions were inconclusively debated just as we now discreetly debate Beijing's role in the hacking outbreak. What actually improved matters was the world's shipowners and their governments shedding timidity and loudly rubbing China's face in the evidence.
An unsung hero was Eric Ellen, then-head of the International Maritime Bureau, who went public in an interview with Reuters in early 1994: "There is no doubt that these moves against ships operating in international waters were government-inspired," he said.
Mr. Ellen's comments appeared to break the dam of silence. Hong Kong, then a British colony, had amassed the evidence but had been reluctant to publicize it in the run-up to the colony's fraught return to mainland sovereignty. Now it wasn't, detailing nearly 50 cases in an 18-month period, right down to the serial numbers of the Chinese military vessels involved in piracy attacks.
Some of the attacks were so brazen—like the Alicia Star, whose cargo of cigarettes was unloaded on Hainan Island and the ship itself sold for the benefit of the Hainan government—that Beijing tried to pass them off as legitimate "anti-smuggling exercises." Others hinted frightfully at a mainland bordering on anarchy. A missing Australian freighter was eventually tracked to a Chinese salvage yard after a wrecking crew discovered, in a sealed storage locker, the remains of 10 seamen who had been doused with gasoline and burned alive.
Name-and-shame prevailed not because Beijing craved to be seen as a good citizen. Beijing craved to be seen as in control. The lesson was being drawn all over Southeast Asia that China's central government no longer had the power to discipline local elites who were damaging China's national interests in the wider world.
In early 2000, the government finally made a show of executing 13 Chinese pirates who, in military uniforms, had hijacked the cargo ship Cheung Son in 1998, murdering 23 crew members. Ever since, even as piracy has remained a plague particularly in the Indian Ocean, Chinese government-sponsored piracy no longer is a conspicuous source of trouble.
Smart people in China know such things aren't in China's interest. For the Chinese no less than anyone else, ugly to contemplate is a world in which any ship can be hijacked and its crew murdered with impunity—or, for that matter, a world in which corporate research is routinely stolen, or in which nobody can confidently engage in online transactions for fear of state-sponsored hacking.
Roughly speaking, however, Beijing's governing principle in the modern era has been: Where is it most necessary for us to be seen reasserting control at the moment?
The way to move Internet hacking up Beijing's priority list is by rudely and relentlessly drawing attention to China's role in international hacking incidents.
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