<story><title>China&apos;s Man-On-the-Side Attack on GitHub</title><url>http://www.netresec.com/?page=Blog&amp;month=2015-03&amp;post=China%27s-Man-on-the-Side-Attack-on-GitHub</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mraison</author><text>I still don&amp;#x27;t really get it. What&amp;#x27;s the actual goal behind the attack? When the Chinese government decides to block a website, I can at least understand their motivations, as bad as they may be. But DDOSing Github just seems to be pissing the whole world off for a few hours without any actual long term consequences.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>j42</author><text>Actually, someone here (who I cannot remember) said quite eloquently yesterday that our biggest export--and &amp;quot;influence&amp;quot; on the world--is culture.&lt;p&gt;For the first time I realized that pissing people off may, in fact be the objective as the other reply stated.&lt;p&gt;China and Russia are both (quite unique) examples of countries with an unfathomable degree of control over their citizens.  It can be hard to grasp occasionally, coming from a western mindset but for the vast majority within said countries, the &lt;i&gt;entire&lt;/i&gt; reality they see and what they believe to be true is heavily distorted--in that, it is defined by the vision of the oligarchy and information is carefully controlled to produce a desired set of beliefs.  North Korea is an extreme caricature of this pattern.&lt;p&gt;Technology is naturally subversive to this as it lets people interact directly with other cultures and ideologies which may provide contrasting philosophies and--terrifyingly--the opportunity for free thought.&lt;p&gt;Restrict access to technology and you&amp;#x27;ll have a revolution.  Instead, you become the &amp;quot;troll,&amp;quot; or the &amp;quot;problem,&amp;quot; and quietly become isolated from large areas of the network, all while reducing the amount of information you have to sift through before passing it along to the populace, in the name of security.&lt;p&gt;And while the effect on actual traffic may be minimal, it does make for a very cold perception which generally makes cross-cultural integration unlikely.  How many western consumer-technology companies do you see integrating with Asia-based API&amp;#x27;s&amp;#x2F;demand, compared to other industry, let alone academics?</text></comment>
<story><title>China&apos;s Man-On-the-Side Attack on GitHub</title><url>http://www.netresec.com/?page=Blog&amp;month=2015-03&amp;post=China%27s-Man-on-the-Side-Attack-on-GitHub</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mraison</author><text>I still don&amp;#x27;t really get it. What&amp;#x27;s the actual goal behind the attack? When the Chinese government decides to block a website, I can at least understand their motivations, as bad as they may be. But DDOSing Github just seems to be pissing the whole world off for a few hours without any actual long term consequences.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>igammarays</author><text>Who said this would only be for a few hours? DDOSing Github drives up their hosting costs massively, creating a financial incentive to comply with China&amp;#x27;s demands.&lt;p&gt;Aside from that, it&amp;#x27;s just Eastern politics, which works by a whole lot of bullying and childish tactics when they don&amp;#x27;t get their way. Not to say that it doesn&amp;#x27;t happen in Western politics, just much more subtly. And it doesn&amp;#x27;t seem so bad since we&amp;#x27;re the good guys.</text></comment>