Le grand bluff de Google L'annonce fracassante de Google, dont des secrets industriels auraient été volés par des hackers chinois, fait énormément de bruit aujourd'hui, et relance l'arlésienne de l'espionnage économique venu de Chine. En réalité, très peu de détails ont été révélés sur cette attaque : Google parle d'une part d'une intrusion qui aurait également affecté d'autres entreprises, puis dans un deuxième temps, mentionne des vols de comptes d'opposants au gouvernement chinois par phishing ou par malware. Ce mélange de modes opératoires très différents rend difficile d'estimer la réalité et l'ampleur de ces attaques. Aucun moyen donc d'analyser sérieusement cette annonce sous l'angle de la sécurité. Pierre Caron - Cert-Lexsi Gathering Clouds Google’s reasons for leaving China aren’t as pure as they seem. Google is being widely hailed for its announcement yesterday that it will stop censoring its search results in China, even if it means having to abandon that vast market. After years of compromising its own ideals on the free flow of information, the company is at last, it seems, putting its principles ahead of its business interests. But Google’s motivations are not as pure as they may seem. Google's overriding business goal is to encourage us to devote more of our time and entrust more of our personal information to the Internet, particularly to the online "computing cloud" that is displacing the PC hard drive as the center of personal computing. Just as the early operators of passenger trains and airlines had, above all else, to convince the public that their services were safe, so Google has to convince the public that the Net is safe. 1) "America's Debt to Playboy," by Tom Bissell
Google Backs Down Further From China Exit We knew it would be one of the big stories of the year, and today the ‘Google vs the Chinese government’ story has taken another twist. Back in January, Google won praise from many in the west by making a stand against alleged hacking of the Gmail accounts of human rights activists in China, an action possibily carried out by the Chinese government itself. The company considered pulling out of the Chinese market all together if it was not allowed to operate censorship free in the communist state. Instead, Google ended up taking a ‘half way house’ approach by simply redirected its search traffic to Google Hong Kong, thereby allowing Google users in China to see information about the 1989 Tianenmen Square massacre among other banned topics. In a post just published over at the comapny’s official blog, Google appears to be backing down even further over its threatened exit from China.
Analysis: More than just Great Firewall awaits Facebook in China Research Blog - Research - SecureWorks With the recently disclosed hacking incident inside Google and other major companies, much of the world has begun to wake up to what the infosec community has known for some time ? there is a persistent campaign of “espionage-by-malware” emanating from the People?s Republic of China (PRC). “Operation Aurora” is the latest in a series of attacks originating out of Mainland China. Although the code behind Operation Aurora has only recently been discovered, and the known samples of the main backdoor trojan (called Hydraq by antivirus companies) appear to be no older than 2009. The compiler often offers other clues to a malware sample? There is one interesting clue in the Hydraq binary that points back to mainland China, however. The first thing that is unusual about this CRC algorithm is the size of the table of constants (the incrementing values in the left pane of the assembly listing).
Pékin, big brother mondial Le gouvernement chinois mondialise depuis 2009 sa censure, et la France ne fait pas exception. A au moins deux reprises l’an dernier, Pékin a tenté d’interdire la diffusion sur des chaînes françaises de documentaires sur la Chine, révèlent des sources françaises fiables et concordantes. L’un d’eux évoquait la répression de Tiananmen (1989), l’autre le Tibet. Au printemps 2009, alors que l’un de ces sujets était en tournage en Chine, la police chinoise a été surprise en train de cambrioler le siège de la maison de production française, qui est basée à Pékin, où elle a dérobé une copie d’un de ces films, au montage à peine achevé. «A grande échelle». «Pékin déploie des efforts considérables pour influencer la perception internationale de la Chine, par la propagande à grande échelle et la dissémination d’informations sélectives», s’inquiétait en novembre un rapport annuel du Congrès américain. Pékin prend de moins en moins de gants pour tenter d’imposer sa vision au monde. «Leçons».
Everything You Want To Know About The Most Secretive Startup In In the annals of stealth startups, Next Jump deserves its own chapter. It’s not often that a company can build a large and successful business for 15 years, raise $45 million in venture capital, hire 225 people, and sign up 60 percent of the Fortune 500 as customers without anybody ever hearing about it. Yet that is exactly what Next Jump did until the first story ever written about the company appeared in the New York Times last month. The $45 million came over the course of 8 rounds and all from angel investors, including early Google investor Ram Shriram and Deutsche Bank asset management chief Kevin Parker (who are both board members). The company is now coming out of its shell, partly because it is so big that it can no longer hide. Next Jump connects 28,000 retailers and manufacturers to these consumers, typically getting the merchants to offer deep discounts to its members. It is about the Data, and building the data model is what takes time.
An update on China Update July 9: We are very pleased that the government has renewed our ICP license and we look forward to continuing to provide web search and local products to our users in China. (original post)Ever since we launched Google.cn, our search engine for mainland Chinese users, we have done our best to increase access to information while abiding by Chinese law. This has not always been an easy balance to strike, especially since our January announcement that we were no longer willing to censor results on Google.cn. We currently automatically redirect everyone using Google.cn to Google.com.hk, our Hong Kong search engine. That’s a prospect dreaded by many of our Chinese users, who have been vocal about their desire to keep Google.cn alive. Over the next few days we’ll end the redirect entirely, taking all our Chinese users to our new landing page—and today we re-submitted our ICP license renewal application based on this approach.
U.S. Internet Providers and the 'Great Firewall of China' Authors: Robert McMahon, Editor, and Isabella Bennett, Program Coordinator, International Institutions and Global Governance Updated: February 23, 2011 Introduction The operations of U.S. What is the crux of the issue? Media watchdog groups accuse many major U.S. technology companies of assisting the Chinese censors. How does China control its Internet? Experts say the Chinese government deploys at least twelve agencies to enforce a wide array of Internet regulations directed at service and content providers. China's Ministry of Public Security reportedly employs tens of thousands of human monitors to screen Internet content. To avoid penalty, websites in China practice self-censorship by blocking out banned keywords (PDF), of which there were between four and five hundred, according to this October 2007 report. Do U.S. firms assist in this process? China relied on two U.S. companies--Cisco Systems and Juniper Networks--to help carry out its network upgrade, known as "CN2," in 2004.
Spacecraft stats and insights by Claude LafleurMonday, April 5, 2010 Piloted spaceships, planetary probes, and space telescopes fascinate people. That’s easy to understand since these spacecraft make the discoveries of our time. Nevertheless, this is only the proverbial “tip of the iceberg” since they account for less than 10% of all spacecraft ever launched. Answering these questions tells us a lot about what’s going on in space. Here is an overview of space activities from the standpoint of spacecraft launched. Who launches what? First of all, how many spacecraft have been launched since Sputnik in 1957? Separately, I counted as two spacecraft a Space Shuttle orbiter that delivers a payload into orbit. So, I’ve developed a logic to count the number of spacecraft, but whatever logic you could design, there’ll always be some exceptions. Now the answer: as of December 31, 2009, there were 6,854 spacecraft launched. Of those spacecraft, 3,543 are Russian and 1,811 are American. Come fly with… whom? The Chinese myth
Google, un cheval de Troie derrière la Grande muraille numérique Un véritable coup d'éclat! Le 12 janvier dernier, le géant d'Internet Google a annoncé être prêt à mettre la clé sous la porte en Chine. Ses dirigeants refusent désormais de censurer la version chinoise de leur moteur de recherche, Google.cn, quitte à devoir se retirer du marché. Une décision sans appel, prise à la suite de plusieurs cyber-attaques «hautement sophistiquées» contre l'entreprise américaine et une vingtaine d'autres sociétés, visant des militants des droits de l'homme. Google adopte une position courageuse en défiant ouvertement les autorités chinoises. publicité Google est subitement devenu le champion de la lutte contre la censure. Contrôle accru depuis quelques mois Google n'a pourtant pas toujours été le porte-étendard des avocats d'un Internet libre. Le retrait du «green dam» Le «Great FireWall» va-t-il donc s'effondrer suite à l'offensive de Google? Google crée un précédent de taille en tapant du poing sur la table. Les conseils de Google pour contourner la censure
Man arrested after Twitter joke about bombing airport under Terr By Chris Brooke Updated: 01:01 GMT, 19 January 2010 A man was arrested and held in police cells for seven hours as a suspected terrorist after making a joke on Twitter about blowing his local airport sky high. Paul Chambers, 26, tapped out the comment to amuse friends because his planned trip to Ireland was under threat due to heavy snow at Robin Hood Airport in Doncaster. ‘C**p! Enlarge Paul Chambers made the comment on January 6 after snowfall threatened to delay his plans to travel to Ireland 'Bomb hoax': Paul had written he was going to blow the aiport 'sky-high' But a week later, police arrived at the finance superviser’s office to arrest him under the Terrorism Act – after an apparent anonymous tip-off. ‘My first thought upon hearing it was the police was that perhaps a member of my family had been in an accident,’ he said. ‘They said I was being arrested under the Terrorism Act and produced a piece of paper. 'The lead investigator kept asking, "Do you understand why this is happening?"
Google preparing for possibility that its site could go dark in Google said today in a blog post that its attempt to strike a balance between providing free information and abiding by Chinese law isn’t working. Since it decided not to censor results on Google.cn in January, the company has been automatically redirecting Chinese users to Google.com.hk, the company’s Hong Kong search engine. The redirect has worked well from Google’s point of view and from the point of view of its users. But not for the authorities. “It’s clear from our conversations we have had with the Chinese government that they find the redirect unacceptable — and that if we continue redirecting users our Internet Content Provider license will not be renewed. The license is up for renewal on June 30. “This new approach is consistent with our commitment not to self censor and, we believe, with local law,” Drummond said.