Lords of Death Forums Lords of Death Forums LoD General Discussion Sony Pictures hacked by North Korea?

I was referring to the Chinese government there (ie the party), not China in the broader sense. The question here is whether Chinese involvement in North Korean cyber attacks is state sponsored. The article equates the inaction of the Chinese government in not stopping North Korean activities as an endorsement of those activities. I wouldn't necessarily make that assumption. Unfortunately for that position, it's perfectly consistent with the Chinese government's response to hacking in general. They plausibly deny it to cloak their own state sponsored industrial espionage.

The reason I doubt the Chinese government is actively helping North Korean hacking is because they have nothing to gain, and a lot to lose, from North Korea being able to project any power.

This is nothing new. In case you guys missed it, a matter of weeks ago, China had an airshow where they demo'd their new fighter jet that's nearly identical to the F-35, the blueprints for which they hacked from Lockheed Martin's computers.

Sadly, here in the U.S., a private company like Sony (or any other company) is pretty heavily outmatched when paired against an entire hostile government's worth of state funded and educated hackers. If Sony had the backing of the U.S. government, it would have been a different story.

That's kind of the danger of a communist or dictator state. Unlike capitalism where it's survival of the economic fittest, those regimes have an entire nation's worth of resources to devote strictly to industrial espionage.

I wouldn't worry about it too much. China's ruling party spends most of its time and energy trying not to look irrelevant, and punishing people who question its relevance. Their continued survival is predicated on taking credit for economic growth, but they're hampered in that objective by the basic nuts and bolts of a one-party state inhibiting a lot of the freedoms necessary to maximize that economic growth. As a result, they're perfectly willing to give irresponsible amounts of leeway in manufacturing, but they don't provide companies the legal protections companies demand to incorporate and do business there. One threatens the regime, the other doesn't. There's really no particular benefit to their system of government. The practical result is that their domestic industries are left well behind the cutting edge, hence the enormous emphasis on stealing trade secrets.

The J-31 is a particularly good example of this, because copying the JSF airframe makes no sense unless you have the specific doctrinal needs of the US military. The whole point of the JSF is uniformity between service branches, the airframe itself is just housing for a features list designed by committee, and a particularly good electronics package and interface.

Unsurprisingly, when the Chinese tried to copy it, they actually improved the airframe in ways you logically would if you didn't care about the features the airframe was specifically designed for, which just shows how little sense there is in copying the design in the first place. They're not stupid though, the whole point is "look what we can do", not to ever use the damn thing. They just want you to think they have a 5th gen fighter, even though it's probably 4th gen under the hood. Now if they could copy the electronics package, that would be interesting. I know they haven't though, because it's not done, because we've spent hundreds of billions of dollars utterly failing to finish it.

The one thing they have going for them is the ability to throw tens of thousands of people at the project and still spend way less than we do. don't be surprised if they manage to get at least 90% of the electronic capabilities of the JSF. The people they throw at this are very smart and very good at what they do. they don't innovate because they dont have to, they let us do all the hard work of dreaming, designing, building then they swoop in and steal it because it's much cheaper to do so. then they reverse engineer it and do it their own way on the cheap.

This x100

Evidence is so circumspect putting it on NK. Media circus ensues.

For the wider scheme of industrial espionage, you're completely right. There's very little advantage to being on the cutting edge if you can't effectively copyright what you make or secure trade secrets. The problem with that strategy is it's also why all these big companies are still here, and not in China.

As far as the military stuff goes, making knockoffs of stuff specifically designed for US military doctrine looks a lot more like showmanship than a serious attempt at contributing to a larger warfighting doctrine. They copy Russian shit too (In fact you can see the smokey hallmarks of old Russian MIG engines in videos of the J-31), and Russia's military doctrine is almost the polar opposite of US doctrine.

That didnt take long:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/23/world/...apses.html?_r=0

Only 1024 addresses. That's super small

That's because N. Korean's don't need the internet. Their Dear Leader gives them all the knowledge they need. They leave the interwebz to the American Imperialist Bastards.

Most of the country is staring and without power most of the year, they will never notice.