Information Security Blog

U.S. enables Chinese hacking of Google
(CNN) — Google made headlines when it went public with the fact that Chinese hackers had penetrated some of its services, such as Gmail, in a politically motivated attempt at intelligence gathering. The news here isn’t that Chinese hackers engage in these activities or that their attempts are technically sophisticated — we knew that already — it’s that the U.S. government inadvertently aided the hackers.

In order to comply with government search warrants on user data, Google created a backdoor access system into Gmail accounts. This feature is what the Chinese hackers exploited to gain access.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/23/schneier.google.hacking/index.html?hpt=T2

China to US: shut up about “so-called Internet freedom”
In the wake of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s major speech yesterday on Internet freedom, a speech in which she called out countries like Egypt, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Iran, and China, most governments have yet to respond. China, however, was quick to reply after dealing with the Google issue for a week already.

Here’s what has happened in 24 turbulent hours.

Wide open. It didn’t take China long to respond to Clinton’s call to tear down the Great Firewall. China’s official news agency Xinhua summed up the government response in its headline: “China urges US to stop accusations on so-called Internet freedom.”

Why “so-called”? Because the Chinese Internet is open. Wide open.

“China urged the United States to respect facts and stop unreasonable accusations on China in the name of so-called Internet freedom,” said the article. It then quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesperson as saying, “The US side had criticized China’s policies on Internet administration, alluding that China restricts Internet freedom. We firmly oppose such words and deeds, which were against the facts and would harm the China-US relations.”

It’s constitutional. The Chinese constitution protects freedom of speech, he added—which it does, along with freedom of the press, of association, of religion, of demonstration, and freedom to criticize the government. The constitution also notes that “work is the glorious duty of every able-bodied citizen.”

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/01/china-to-us-stop-accusations-on-so-called-internet-freedom.ars