China’s Google Hack Raises Issues In World Wide Web Security Enforcement

With evidence that Chinese hackers where behind Google attack and China denying involvement in the attack and important question is raised about security enforcement on the world-wide-web when computers are connected through an open standard, but that countries do not adhere to political standards!

Law enforcement for international cyber-crimes

Lets say some guy attacks Yahoo website from a MIT computer lab and that cybersecurity professionals trace the origin of the attack and find the perpetrator. What happens is that since the crime was committed in the US, law enforcement officers simply proceed with prescribed measures. This is a simple case where computers in a geographical region are connected and that the region is governed by the same legislation.

However, when cybercrimes are committed in geographical regions that are governed by different laws, then there needs to be protocol between those two countries to exchange proper information so that cyber-criminals get proper reprimand for their actions. This protocol is very much implicitly accepted between countries who’s computers are connected through open protocols. That’s because the protocol is designed to guarantee security, or at least guarantees that the origin of an attack can be traced. So when two people connect their computers together, they are saying: “We’ll do the necessary when someone uses one of our computers to attack the other computer”.

Now, if a cyber-crime happens and that the country from which it happened refuses to cooperate with the other country, then it is somehow saying that it does not want to have its computers connected with the other country anymore! So if we take the case of China here, it is saying that it cannot guarantee that proper measure will be taken to punish those who attacked Google. The funny thing is that by acting this way, China is somehow confessing that it has orchestrated the attack!

So why does China want to unplug from the World Wide Web?

If we take a look at the historical events that led to Google’s attack, it all started with China asking Google to filter-out improper content to which Google has complied. But it seems that Google’s compliance policies had its limits which was followed by a hack that was targeted at obtaining information about Chinese dissidents. Of course, Google has so much information that it is the target for those who want to terrorize populations.

Political reasons

Now, the situation has gone to the point where these computers connected through the HTTP protocols can be the bearers of ideological battles. People exchanging freely on the Internet could lead to people asking each others questions which could lead to people asking questions about themselves. And everybody knows what happens when a population becomes self-aware: revolution.

So the natural thing to do for China is to cut itself out from the Internet. Well, not the whole Internet, just the outside-of-China Internet. So the plan is to have a Nation Wide Web or Chinese Wide Web, which amazingly has the potential of having more surfers that the other World Wide Web!

Economic reasons

The other aim of the Chinese government in cutting itself from the Internet is in an attempt to slow down the growth of American web firms. American firms have a lead in Internet products and services. So as Chinese consumers get access to Internet connections, they will be better using American services like Facebook and Twitter because those are the platforms on which most people are connecting to.

But if China cuts itself off, then it can have a nation-wide program of services similar to Facebook and Twitter and wait that they get as big. So the idea is to not give business to the US and keep that business to itself. This makes a lot of sense for a country that has known tremendous growth from exports and that is struck with a global crisis that is leading to protectionist policies from its once major clients. China has to learn to have growth from within and it is taking draconian measure to achieve that.

At first sight, it seems that social media in China might have an adverse effect on Chinese people’s opinion about socialism, but the truth is that Chinese government is going to hire tons of ’social media gurus’ who in reality are going to push for socialist ideals. Instead of having bloggers praise Apple iPads and Google Android, they are going to have bloggers praise China’s greatness. After all, marketing is not only a matter of capitalism.