Cursisten van Linuxleren: Security hole in Gmail used by Chinese hackers was created by U.S. law enforcement

Security hole in Gmail used by Chinese hackers was created by U.S. law enforcement: "

In a breath of fresh, rarefied (but no doubt contested) air, China states that it was not involved in the attacks on Google and other Silicon Valley corporations. They have even gone as far as to defend their regime of censorship and firewalling! The 'accusation that the Chinese government participated in (any) cyberattack, either in an explicit or inexplicit way, is groundless and aims to denigrate China,' a spokesman from the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology told the Xinhua Chinese news agency.

If China isn't behind these sophisticated, masterful attacks... who -- or what -- is?

In further news, there's a brilliant (but very opinionated) piece over on CNN by Bruce Schneier. We didn't cover it here on Download Squad yet, but it seems that the hackers used a backdoor in Gmail to gain access -- a backdoor required by U.S. law enforcement agencies. It's not uncommon for such rear entries to exist -- they started to appear in Western nations around the same time as anti-terrorism laws -- but the fact that such backdoors are easy to hack is a concern.

Basically, all major online services have such backdoors programmed into them. It's not crazy to assume that similar attacks were used on the other 30 Silicon Valley businesses. It's not such a problem that these backdoors exist -- it's a problem that once in place, someone will discover them -- they will be hacked.

Schneier finishes his CNN Opinion pieces with a poignant and chilling thought about the current state of technology and the things to come:

'The problem is that such control makes us all less safe. Whether the eavesdroppers are the good guys or the bad guys, these systems put us all at greater risk. Communications systems that have no inherent eavesdropping capabilities are more secure than systems with those capabilities built in. And it's bad civic hygiene to build technologies that could someday be used to facilitate a police state.'

Security hole in Gmail used by Chinese hackers was created by U.S. law enforcement originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 26 Jan 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.