Chinese hackers used same back door as US govt 'wiretaps' + Cyberwar Hype

Following up on Clouds over Google in China? is this, via bldgblog -- Bruce Schneier's editorial on CNN, U.S. enables Chinese hacking of Google:

"In order to comply with government search warrants on user data, Google created a backdoor access system into Gmail accounts. This feature is what the Chinese hackers exploited to gain access.

Google's system isn't unique. Democratic governments around the world -- in Sweden, Canada and the UK, for example -- are rushing to pass laws giving their police new powers of Internet surveillance, in many cases requiring communications system providers to redesign products and services they sell.

Many are also passing data retention laws, forcing companies to retain information on their customers. In the U.S., the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act required phone companies to facilitate FBI eavesdropping, and since 2001, the National Security Agency has built substantial eavesdropping systems with the help of those phone companies.

Systems like these invite misuse: criminal appropriation, government abuse and stretching by everyone possible to apply to situations that are applicable only by the most tortuous logic. The FBI illegally wiretapped the phones of Americans, often falsely invoking terrorism emergencies, 3,500 times between 2002 and 2006 without a warrant. Internet surveillance and control will be no different."

Read more...

Update: there's more from Wired in 2 articles. First see Cyberwar Hype Intended to Destroy the Open Internet for a reminder about claims from self-interested government contractors like The Carlyle Group.

Then there's ‘Google’ Hackers Had Ability to Alter Source Code,

"A white paper released by security firm McAfee during this week’s RSA security conference in San Francisco provides a couple of new details about the Operation Aurora attacks (.pdf) that affected 34 U.S. companies, including Google and Adobe, beginning last July. McAfee helped Adobe investigate the attack on its system and provided information to Google about malware used in the attacks. [...]

As previously reported, the attackers gained initial access by conducting a spear-phishing attack against specific targets within the company. The targets received an e-mail or instant message that appeared to come from someone they knew and trusted. The communication contained a link to a website hosted in Taiwan that downloaded and executed a malicious JavaScript, with a zero-day exploit that attacked a vulnerability in the user’s Internet Explorer browser.

A binary disguised as a JPEG file then downloaded to the user’s system and opened a backdoor onto the computer and set up a connection to the attackers’ command-and-control servers, also hosted in Taiwan.

From that initial access point, the attackers obtained access to the source-code management system or burrowed deeper into the corporate network to gain a persistent hold."

Clouds over Google in China? [updated]

In The Great Google Coverup? Douglas Rushkoff ponders the mysteries of the Chinese breaks-in at Google's Texas servers (and perhaps 33 others including Adobe). This case does not pose the usual false choice of privacy versus security:

"At least a conspiracy theory, in which Google willingly gave the Chinese authority over its clients' communications, offers the comfort of there being some human agency in all this. Just as we prefer to find out that a single pilot was drunk than that there's a problem with every plane in the sky, it is easier to contend with the notion that Google's young executives made a stupid decision by engaging with dictators than to consider the alternative: that the cloud being entrusted with an increasing amount of our banking, business, and everything else, is the for the taking."

For more on this see the Techmeme cluster headed by the McAfee Security Insights, which according to Arstechnica has found evidence that a vulnerability in Internet Explorer -- not Acrobat Reader as in recent attacks on the Dalai Lama’s computers -- was exploited in the attacks on individuals and corporate infrastructure.

Update: Techie Buzz says that "Reuters is claiming that the attackers were aided from the inside. According to its sources, one or more Google China employees colluded with the attackers. Local media has been reporting that, Google China employees were denied access to internal networks after January 13th, while several staff members were transferred or put on leave."

Also, Glenn Greenwald makes a good point, "It goes without saying that countries like China and Iran -- along with many of our closest allies -- are far more repressive of internal dissent than is the U.S. But the role of the American Congress is supposed to be to check surveillance abuses by the U.S. Government and to safeguard the privacy of American citizens inside the U.S. Instead, they do the opposite: flamboyantly condemn transgressions by other governments (at least the ones we don't like) while enabling, empowering and protecting our own government officials and private telecoms who illegally spy within our own country."

Update 2: as background, note that China and the US have been conduction trade negotiations, as well as relations on climate change and loan and other financial matters.

Update 3: Hackers target friends of Google, Adobe and other workers, and from the Christian Science Monitor (January 25), "At least three US oil companies were the target of a series of previously undisclosed cyberattacks that may have originated in China and that experts say highlight a new level of sophistication in the growing global war of Internet espionage." Read more in US oil industry hit by cyberattacks: Was China involved?

Aaron Koblin on data visualization

Aaron Koblin, a young designer doing data visualization, hit big with Flight Pattern (composited with After Effects) while at UCLA and bigger when he was tech director for the Radiohead music video House of Cards. Now he's Technology Lead of Google Creative Lab in San Francisco, a newer marketing unit that promotes the Google brand and products (see video below). Here are 2 recent interviews, and 2 videos:

• At Processing.org, Aaron Koblin Interview: This email interview, with questions from Casey Reas, took place from 1 – 21 Apr 2009.

• At BBH Labs, “I’ve always been interested in microscopes”: an interview with Aaron Koblin

Flight Paths over the southwest US from Aaron on Vimeo.

Google Creative Sandbox '09 - New York (caution: bad music & hard sell)

Gmail to get HD video & it's not Flash

Google Operating System notes a CNET report in Upcoming Gmail Features: Contact Deduplicator, Better Video Chat. CNET spoke with Google which said to expect:

"video chat [that] is capable of HD... Gmail got video chat last year. However, instead of using Adobe's Flash to serve up the video, Google went with a small 2MB plug-in that had to be installed on your machine.

Jackson says the team had gone back and forth between doing the add-on and Flash, but in the end, what mattered was quality, which the plug-in delivered. Going forward, Jackson says the plug-in route will be able to provide even higher-quality video as people's connections improve, going to Video Graphics Array (640x480 pixels) all the way up to high definition."

Update: Mozilla is looking for more open alternatives (to h.264 licensing and proprietary developer tools), and willing to throw a very modest amount of cash at the problem to beef up the Theora codec; see Chris Blizzard's why open video?

Google Search Tricks

Among the most useful of Lifehacker's Most Popular Top 10's of 2008 is the Top 10 Obscure Google Search Tricks -- if you want to go beyond Google's handy (and redesigned) Advanced Search and Language Tools (translations & more).

To go even further, check out Google Guide, an online interactive tutorial and reference for experienced users, novices, and everyone in between. See especially the Google Guide Quick Reference "Google Advanced Operators (Cheat Sheet)."

Also interesting for real-world visualization with video is Analytics, AdWords, and Big Spenders and Motion Charts at the Google Analytics Blog.

For Google in general, see Official Google Blog, Google Operating System, Search Engine Watch, and Google Blogoscoped (as well as their view of current posts at all Google blogs). A useful overview of Web 2.0 blog feeds can be found at Original Signal.

Update: And as Todd Kopriva reminds us in comments below, "The After Effects Community Help search engine is just a custom Google search engine, so all of these tips work there, too."

http://community.adobe.com/help/search.html?l=aftereffects_product_adobel

Update 2: Technology Review collects its reports on search in Special Reports Next-Generation Search and in Special Reports IT: Next-Generation Search.

50 Cool Things You Can Do with Google Charts API

Via andydickinson.net is 50 Cool Things You Can Do with Google Charts API by Jessica Merritt:

"Chartophiles, have you heard that Google has made it incredibly easy to generate your own slick-looking charts? It’s true, and all it takes to make one is the ability to read and edit a URL. This has made it possible for lots of people to get creative with charts. Read on to see what’s been done, and how you can do it yourself."

Plus, here's some nice advice on chart resources from Jorge Camoes:

"No book had more influence in the way we think about information visualization than Edward Tufte’s The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (Tufte’s books are a pleasure for the eyes so you can leave them in the living room…). Tufte combines a minimalistic approach with easily digestible concepts (like chartjunk, data-ink ratio, data density) to create a strong framework. Use that framework to validate your design. Discover other authors like Stephen Few, Jacques Bertin, William Cleveland, John Tukey, Stephen Kosslyn or Colin Ware.

Edward Tufte maintains a discussion forum. In Stephen Few’s site you’ll also find a discussion forum and some before/after examples of chart design. It is difficult to find great examples of information visualization in the media, but the NYT is a good reference. A list of online resources can be found here."

Google AdWords adds video

John Dowdell, longtime multimedia guru at Macromedia, comments on the news that Google AdWords adds video ads.
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Google SketchUp

Awhile back Google bought SketchUp, 3D modeling program, and has now released Google SketchUp for free download along with hooks for insertions into Google Earth.

SketchUp is simple but powerful -- enough so that a UI guru at Adobe called it his favorite tool. There are several video tutorials available to get started quickly with SketchUp, or SketchUp 4 and 5 for commercial work.
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