(Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
Recent months have brought a flood of stories about cyber attacks originating in China, many of them state-backed. But, according to the New York Times, it's not just the military. While you get scary letters from lawyers if you so much as expose an existing security hole here in the U.S., hacking is apparently no big deal in China.
Hacking thrives across official, corporate and criminal worlds. Whether it is used to break into private networks, track online dissent back to its source or steal trade secrets, hacking is openly discussed and even promoted at trade shows, inside university classrooms and on Internet forums.
But, of course, with mainstream acceptance comes a certain...lackadaisical attitude. Attacks are often limited to 9 to 5 Beijing time, and hackers aren't especially diligent about secrecy. According to one American cybersecurity expert:
“They’re using the least amount of sophistication necessary to accomplish their mission,” Mr. Kindlund said. “They have a lot of manpower available, but not necessarily a lot of intelligent manpower to conduct these operations stealthily.”
Guess everybody's working for the weekend.
