back to article FBI says more cyber attacks come from China than everywhere else combined

US Federal Bureau of Investigation director Christopher Wray has named China as the source of more cyber-attacks on the USA than all other nations combined. In a Monday speech titled Countering Threats Posed by the Chinese Government Inside the US, Wray said the FBI is probing over 2,000 investigations of incidents assessed as …

  1. W.S.Gosset

    Well, that came completely out of the blue

    I am shocked, shocked.

    1. W60

      Re: Well, that came completely out of the blue

      ....and in other news they have worked out where bear defecate

      1. seven of five

        Re: Well, that came completely out of the blue

        Easy, right in my driveway, the bastard. I would have shot it, but it wasn't black...

  2. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    "the USA and its allies have had some wins"

    And the only "win" you can provide is Huawei.

    You needed a racist President and an entire Government to get that "win".

    I don't think your other actions are as useful as you want people to think.

    It would be better if you directed infrastructure companies to harden access to their innards, like by not allowing it from the Internet in the first place.

    1. ThatOne Silver badge
      Devil

      Re: "the USA and its allies have had some wins"

      > It would be better if you directed infrastructure companies to harden access to their innards, like by not allowing it from the Internet in the first place.

      Or by banning the use of encryption! That would show them!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "the USA and its allies have had some wins"

        "Or by banning the use of encryption! That would show them!" LOL yep, since they don't follow any rules they agreed to, we should make more - governments are so full of incompetent people.

    2. naive

      Re: "the USA and its allies have had some wins"

      Oh the fifty cent army is here again, playing the "racist" card.

      One would nearly believe China is this great open nation where Western telecom and tech companies have full access to markets with equal rights as their Chinese counter parts.

      It would actually be funny if it wasn't so sad we still live in a world where a fascist regime rules 1.4 billion people.

      1. W.S.Gosset

        Re: "the USA and its allies have had some wins"

        > fascist regime

        Actually, the princely class in China use "feudal" rather than "fascist". E.g., Mao's #2 was on record as describing China as a "feudal dynasty disguised as a socialist country".

        1. Allan George Dyer
          Windows

          Re: "the USA and its allies have had some wins"

          @W.S.Gosset - Which of Mao's subordinates said that? Liu Shaoqi was executed in the Cultural Revolution.

          Mao himself died in 1976, remarks from the age of Harold Wilson and Gerald Ford might not be entirely descriptive of the situation today, especially in a country where GDP has grown over 100 times.

          1. The Man Who Fell To Earth Silver badge
            WTF?

            Re: "the USA and its allies have had some wins"

            What's your point? That China is facist rather than feudal? They are not mutually exclusive, and China, like North Korea, is both.

            1. Allan George Dyer

              Re: "the USA and its allies have had some wins"

              @The Man Who Fell To Earth - My point was that tagging a current regime based on a remark at least 46 years old is likely to be misleading. China was still very much an agricultural nation in Mao's time, held back further by the Great Leap Forwards. I would accept that a feudal label could be appropriate at that time (with certain reservations... there is an implied European and religious context). Fascist might be a more relevant term today, with strong industrialisation in many cities, militarism and nationalism. In between, there was a period of opening up and (relative) liberalisation, where both terms were less applicable. It's complicated.

          2. W.S.Gosset

            Re: "the USA and its allies have had some wins"

            Lin Biao.

            Formally tagged by Mao as his successor.

            > might not be entirely descriptive of the situation today, especially in a country where GDP has grown over 100 times.

            Cultures don't change that fast -- even communism is just a changing of the guard on the previous ur-structure (that's communism's goal, after all, and how it's always used), but with even less individual freedom allowed. And you might be surprised to learn that every Chinese person you've ever met or seen in the West would be described in an English context as --at the very minimum-- lower-upper class or upper-middle class.

            Consider that in June 2020, China's Premier proudly announced to China and the World that now only 40% of China earns less than $4 per day. Median salary has been subsequently estimated in the West at IIRC something like $4.20/day, $1533/yr. Australia's median salary May 2021 was A$172.71/day,A$62,868/yr or at today's FXrate ~$123/day, ~$44,900/yr. Food IS cheaper, to be fair, but not to that extent: if you freezeframe and examine food market prices in the very rare back-country(ish) China TV travel documentaries, you'll notice food is approximately 1/3 UK prices for fruit&vegetables, although only about half-price for meat.

            If you buy Chinese-made goods, then by modern Western definitions, you're mostly buying the product of slave labour.

            1. W.S.Gosset
              1. Allan George Dyer

                Re: "the USA and its allies have had some wins"

                @W.S.Gosset - "the (ex)Prince who said something similar" Wei Jingsheng has some interesting ideas. However, I would suggest that both feudalism and the elitism of the Chinese Communist regime are both examples of a broader phenomena: the rich and powerful think up rules so that they stay rich and powerful.

            2. Allan George Dyer

              Re: "the USA and its allies have had some wins"

              @W.S.Gosset - "Lin Biao" Thanks for the reference.

              "Cultures don't change that fast" Sometimes they do. Something that was unthinkable (e.g. votes for women) can become normal in a generation. Perhaps there are aspects of culture that are more fixed, but some of it could be the group that is loosing power formulating a strategy to re-establish the attitudes that benefit themselves.

              "And you might be surprised to learn that every Chinese person you've ever met or seen in the West would be described in an English context as --at the very minimum-- lower-upper class or upper-middle class." Perhaps I should mention that I live in Hong Kong? I'm quite well aware that recent Chinese expatriates are very well-off, but any regular reader of TheReg may have noticed the reports of poor conditions in Chinese tech factories.

      2. Sub 20 Pilot

        Re: "the USA and its allies have had some wins"

        It is no more or less open than the US. Look to see how many other nations have massive human rights abuses but which supply the US with oil or whatever else it needs. These are coincidentally never castigated by the US or the UK. Saudi, UAE, Qatar to name but a few. Human rights abuse at the highest level, but, hey, never mind we get cheap oil from them. Let us fuck China instead. Short sighted moronic view of the world.

        1. W.S.Gosset

          "Sub 20"

          Hey look, someone who can't even make it into the 50 cent army.

    3. elaar

      Re: "the USA and its allies have had some wins"

      So your argument is that we should allow foreign state subsidised networking hardware with potential backdoors, and tell national companies they should have no access from the internet in the 21st century?

    4. Yes Me Silver badge

      Re: "the USA and its allies have had some wins"

      Upvote, not because of gratuitous "racist" insult but because the US policy of a trade war with China, including the unjustified attack on Huawei, is the worst possible way of dealing with what should be America's largest trading partner. International trade is not a zero-sum game, as tRump clearly believed, and Biden seems to have some of the same infection. Neither will a self-defeating trade war have the slightest impact on the humanitarian issues of concern (any more than boycotting the Olympics will). Try to actually understand the Chinese world view and then you might be able to influence the humanitarian issues.

      1. W.S.Gosset

        Re: "the USA and its allies have had some wins"

        > US policy of a trade war with China

        Errr... over here in the real world, China declared a trade war on the West many decades ago.

        They were quite explicit about this internally -- just from the documents I've seen, it was well-established policy by the '80s, and they were stating that as at least a goal going back to at least the '50s. Nothing new there -- this has been a standard pattern for China going back well over a thousand years. Converting imminently-tributary states from "Raw food" to "Cooked noodles", in their princes&mandarins' parlance of a few hundred years ago.

        Self-defence vs unprovoked attack seems to offend you. Or possibly you were unaware of what's been going on.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Not hacking

    Cultural awareness through information sharing

  4. herman
    Big Brother

    Pin the tail on the donkey

    The big question is how to pin that on a US politician.

    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Trollface

      Re: Pin the tail on the donkey

      or, his son

  5. _LC_
    Paris Hilton

    Is that THE same FBI that

    Is that the same FBI that has been involved into almost every terror-attack on US soil?

    The same FBI that has been involved into almost every murder of good-hearted political figures on US soil?

    Well, blimey! We should listen, as they are surely telling us the truth.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Is that THE same FBI that

      Your tin foil hat is on too tight.

  6. Omnipresent Bronze badge

    Trumpeters always say CHINa

    You mean Florida man's man? It's pronounced with a very long I.

    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      WTF?

      Re: Trumpeters always say CHINa

      a very long I.

      Strangely, the font rendering the capital 'I' looks the same for 'l' and l was initially confused...

  7. en.es
    FAIL

    With the biggest population in the world (and 5 or 6 times higher than the US), would we not expect 5 or 6 times more hacking from the Middle Kingdom? Pretty sure the US does not have clean hands in this fight... Sounds like a bid for budget dollars for the FBI...

    1. Paul Crawford Silver badge

      That is making a big assumption about the uniform distribution of tools and motivation per head of population.

    2. Cuddles

      "With the biggest population in the world (and 5 or 6 times higher than the US), would we not expect 5 or 6 times more hacking from the Middle Kingdom?"

      Well firstly, no, obviously not, because hacking capabilties and motivation are not a simple function of population size. But even assuming they actually were, how would that be relevant? The article says that attacks from China are more than every other nation combined. You may well expect 5 or 6 times as much hacking from China; the whole point of the article is that it's actually much more than that.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Seriously

    I have issues with the FBI credibility as an org, but they arn't wrong on this. Most of the malicious content we have to deal with is from Xi's digital armies.

    However, there are good methods to deny at least 50% of the attacks. As our business is not international we are able to block Email from China by blacklisting IP ranges. This has cut emails detected as malicious by about half per month. Many companies can't do this, but the ones that can - I recommend it.

    If we get an Email from out of country that is spam/phishing/malicious - I block the entire subnet :) (less goog/MS) but I would really like to block off goog as it is now the most common platform for criminals to use - both for malicious Emails and links to malicious files in their Docs. Never allow access to unsecured public storage from your companies network. If the file is important - they can send it with our secure portal.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Seriously

      Dang, if only those Chinese guys knew about source IP geolocation...

      Wait a sec, yes they do...

      So does pretty much everyone from people who use Iplayer to people with torrents.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Redacted......why am I not surprised?

    Quote: "FBI says more cyber attacks come from China than everywhere else combined"

    .....except for all the activity sourced in Cheltenham or sourced in Fort Meade.

    They conveniently dropped those numbers from the report!!!

    1. hottuberrol

      Re: Redacted......why am I not surprised?

      I dont know how many hackers are in Chelts but think about this. The UK standing army is less than 100000 troops for a population of 60M. China has a population of 1.4B and its more militarised that the UK. Its no stretch at all to suggest there are 23x as many hackers on the chinese payroll than the UK has in Chelts; and China has been making a living off industrial espionage for decades, its central to their ethos, so 23x is probably a bit light. So even if they added the chelts numbers to appease your strawman argument, it wouldnt matter.

      Hope for your sake your pay isnt dependant on a business that doesnt take this seriously.

      1. Martin J Hooper

        Re: Redacted......why am I not surprised?

        I think the Anon Poster is talking about GCHQ - Isn't that based in Cheltenham???

  10. Death Boffin
    FAIL

    Surprise Surprise

    What really bothers me is that Wray was surprised by the extent of Chinese hacking and industrial espionage. The military has seen China as our primary adversary since the 2000's. Better late than neve, I guess...

    1. Paul Smith

      Re: Surprise Surprise

      The American political system requires a 'them' to give the people someone to be afraid of. It happens to be the turn of the Chinese to fill that role. Do you not think that if they had any actual evidence of wrong doing, it would be splashed all over the front page of the NYT and the lead story on FOX and CNN?

      1. Toe Knee

        Re: Surprise Surprise

        It’s a bit of political theater, but:

        https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdpa/pr/us-charges-five-chinese-military-hackers-cyber-espionage-against-us-corporations-and

        “U.S. Charges Five Chinese Military Hackers For Cyber Espionage Against U.S. Corporations And A Labor Organization For Commercial Advantage”

        That’s from 2014, and there are plenty more since then. This isn’t new, and it has been splashed all over the media time and time again.

        In regards to the FBI, broken clocks and all that…

    2. Paul Smith

      Re: Surprise Surprise

      Here are the official lists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_alleged_Chinese_spy_cases_persecuted_in_the_United_States

      To me, the majority of these crimes look like pretty straightforward theft, greed and ego rather than anything state sponsored.

      1. W.S.Gosset

        Re: Surprise Surprise

        A/ "persecuted" rather than the correct "prosecuted" reads as an amusing Freudian "slip" by the article's original creator 7yrs ago (Liao)

        B/ Your assessment suggests you are thinking of a VERY different article than the one you linked to.

        4% != "majority".

        Out of 57 cases, I count:

        * Definite greed/ego/etc: 1 (one) case (stealing tech and selling its services on the commercial Chinese market from their own company) (guy taking money to attempt to get himself into position to steal for govt but caught too soon, and explicitly claiming just greed, was explicitly state sponsored regardless of his motivation to comply. And boy did he comply)

        * Probable greed etc: 1 (one) case (the SICO Micro boys -- dodgy but possibly true)

        * Cockups or Bullshit: 4

        * Massive govt-theft-divisions links but only convicted of hiding them while rorting research grants: 4 (iirc -- not going to reread that mass to make sure it's not 5)

        Everything else: state sponsored.

        That's 47 of 57: 82.5% state sponsored. More realistically including the science guys hiding their state service while operating deep inside the research system: 51 of 57 = 89.5%. Or most sensibly 51 out of 53 if we eliminate the cockups as being cockups that shouldn't have even been started = 96%

        You say that: 17.5% or 10.5% or most sensibly 4% = majority.

      2. W.S.Gosset
  11. Paul Smith
    Joke

    I wonder?

    My mate uses a VPN to watch American shows on Netflix, I wonder if the FBI is counting that as a Chinese hack?

    1. W.S.Gosset

      Re: I wonder?

      Free option: I used to use Tor for that sort of thing. To nail me into ONE particular country, I "inverted" the parameter for excluding countries: copy in a complete country-list then delete my target-country.

      Good for keeping up on BBC iplayer when you're out of the country -- it IP-blocks all non-UK access.

  12. Mobster

    I often suspect that abuse our systems endure from hosts on DigitalOcean might actually surpass what China can output.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Help! We are being oppressed!

    Shock and horror that dictators like to oppress free-speech and subvert trust-bsed open forums like the internet.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Gee, well, China only has 1/3 of the world's population, so this is a surprise? More people = more miscreants.

    1. W.S.Gosset

      You're out by ~ a factor of 2 : you say ~33%, real number's ~18%.

      This chap above makes a good point, provides perspective. i.e., @>50% world, = ~3x what your thesis would suggest.

  15. Sub 20 Pilot

    Nothing to do with the fact that the US, primarily Trump and his fuckwitted followers, have done nothing except demonise China and his successor seems to be not much better. Look to see how much the US break into systems, spy on others - as attested by whilsteblowers - not just demonised by the land of the fuckwit.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      As you can tell from the downvotes, Americans HATE the truth...

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like