The Sydney Morning Herald has a front-page story detailing apparent Chinese redirection and interception of Australian internet traffic.
Internet traffic heading to Australia was diverted via mainland China over a six-day period last year. The diverted traffic from Europe and North America was logged as a routing error by the state-owned China Telecom, according to data released for the first time by researchers at Tel Aviv University and the Naval War College in the US.
The targeting of data bound for Australia comes amid revelations China's peak security agency has overseen a surge in cyber attacks on Australian companies over the past year, breaching a bilateral agreement to not steal each other's commercial secrets.
The re-directions happened between the 7th and 13th of June last year and resulted in a small portion of the total internet traffic coming into Australia taking up to six times longer to arrive as it went via China. One of the researchers, says he believes the target of the attack was a UK cyber-security company with offices in Australia.
The data diversions were possible as China Telecom has 10 Points of Presence (PoPs) in North America. Foreign carries have no comparable infrastructure across mainland China.
China Telecom has long been regarded as a passive service provider, despite being state-owned, and therefore has attracted none of the suspicion of Chinese telecommunications providers like Huawei or ZTE.
In the research paper quoted in the article, three other examples of such diversions over the past two years are highlighted, including traffic from Scandinavia to the Japanese office of a major US media outlet being diverted via China.
(Score: 3, Disagree) by driverless on Wednesday November 21 2018, @05:10AM (3 children)
You also need to look into the context. BGP fuckups that cause this type of thing happen constantly, the only reason this one got noticed is because the evil Chinese were involved. If it'd been an ISP in France, no-one would have batted an eyelid. And look at the level of the "attack": easily traceable and visible so not exactly a secret, affected a small fraction of Australia's traffic, and all that to do what, intercept Norm Gunston videos? It was a router config fuckup, like a million other router config fuckups, the only problem was that the Chinese did it this time and they're everyone's favourite bogeyman.
(Score: 3, Informative) by MostCynical on Wednesday November 21 2018, @05:49AM (2 children)
From TFA:
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 3, Insightful) by driverless on Wednesday November 21 2018, @05:51AM (1 child)
Anyone can believe anything they want. Pick a conspiracy theory and go with it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 21 2018, @08:03PM
This time? Maybe or maybe not; but if a country's strategic intent is to crush you, see you driven before them, and hear the lamentations of your women, maybe it's OK to be a little extra skeptical about their 'mistakes'