Today I read a disturbing account of how a software developer became the target of Chinese hackers after he sued China for pirating his software. The hackers nearly destroyed the man’s business:
An independent analysis later found that four of the five active filters were copied almost verbatim from CYBERsitter and that Green Dam could not operate correctly when those filters were disabled. It’s possible the code was stolen in an earlier hack, but Milburn believes the thieves simply bought a copy and broke the encryption protecting the code.
In interviews with reporters, he said he was considering a lawsuit and vowed to pursue an injunction.
On June 24 — 12 days after Milburn went public with his legal intentions — the hackers made their first appearance. Working from her home office 150 miles south of Santa Barbara in Orange County, Jenna DiPasquale, 39, who is Milburn’s daughter and Solid Oak’s one-woman marketing department, received a carefully forged e-mail containing hidden spyware.
On Saturday I went to the Lenovo Public Warehouse Sale and picked up a laptop and a tablet that were on sale. Upon setting up the laptop, I found a partition on the drive that had a single file in it named “tracking.log.” I could not find any reference to it on the Internet and have no idea why it’s there. The file is binary and has a date of sometime last year. It’s quite possible it’s benign – perhaps a record of the manufacturing process or something. Frankly it would be outrageously stupid to name a super-secret tracking log “tracking log” but it’s not like I needed any more reasons to be paranoid about Chinese companies, anyway.
During my wait to get into Saturday’s sale, I struck up a conversation with a Lenovo employee. I asked about the consumer products Lenovo makes in China that I’d seen on my visit there. The employee indicated that those items aren’t likely to be sold here anytime soon due to “copyright issues.” In other words, they contain pilfered code. Sheesh, if even Lenovo can’t keep its hands clean who can?
It all serves as a reminder that the line separating some Chinese companies from the People’s Liberation Army is a very, very blurry one indeed. It also makes me wonder at the apparent lack of ethics in Chinese culture. I’ve long wondered if the value China puts on face might be enough shame people into doing the right thing. Now I wonder if it just means that anything goes as long as one doesn’t get caught.
Maybe the retired FBI agent in the above story is right. Maybe the PLA is more like a mafia than I thought.
Any scholars of Chinese culture who might wander by this post are welcome to share their thoughts.