I’m just back from a short holiday in Wales, the first time I’ve been to the UK in 3.5 years. This business about Chinese hackers attacking political and military systems in the West was still all over the British papers, and airwaves. It’s all seemed a bit unlikely; I know from living there that China is full of computers running pirate versions of Windows, whose owners have less than no clue about security, firewalls, or keeping anti-malware systems up to date. The Beijing Newspeak blog put me on to a couple of well-thought pieces by Mutant Palm (hitherto unknown to me, but now on the RSS feeds) that put the ‘threat’ into perspective (ie: let’s worry more about bad reporting than PLA hackers):
- The Return of Fu Manchu – Chapter One: Heinous Hackers
- The Return of Fu Manchu – Chapter 1.5: Hackers and Spies
There are lots of good reasons to support China’s rise – amongst them: which would we rather see, China becoming a world power (and engaging in the kind of activities that world powers all do), or China failing to become a world power (and likely collapsing into chaos)? I know which one I’m rooting for…
