Re: [Marxism] Fw: Chinese Govt. Attacks Marxist Internet Archives

[Einde O'Callaghan <einde@xxxxxx>]

Louis Proyect schrieb:
> > January 18: After three days of debate, MIA votes 14 to 4 to include
> > notice indicating that the source of the attacks was likely the
> > Chinese government.
>
>
> I'd certainly like to hear more about this debate. Although I have no 
> use for the Chinese "Communist" Party and have to accept on first blush 
> the IP addresses that indicate Chinese state origins, it does not make 
> any *political sense*. Why would the Chinese government attack a 
> scholarly website like MIA? I can see it going after that Chinese labor 
> site whose material I crosspost from time to time, but why go after MIA? 
> You really can't find anything there that is of immediate danger to the 
> Chinese ruling class. I imagine that ultimately it will be of use to 
> those fighting to restore socialism, but there's no threat of that for a 
> while.
First of all, I'd like to point out that the headline isn't ours. 
However, we have had problems with the Chinese authorities before. One 
of our original volunteers from the PRC was forced to give up due to 
harrassment. Also for a long time access to MIA from the PRC was blocked.

The overwhelming majority of the DOS attacks originate from IPs in the 
PRC. These attacks have been going on continuously for several months. 
We can draw two con clusions from this: either Chinese computer security 
is so bad that hackers are able at will to crack major Chinese networks 
at will or some elements within the Chinese state apparatus are 
organising (or are at least prepared to sanction) this continuous attack 
on MIA.

The people who look after our security presented us with enough evidence 
for us to go with the second interpretation. As to motives, we can't at 
the moment do more than speculate. We are investigating using our 
contacts within the PRC.

If people want to find out more contact me off-list and I'll forward the 
queries to our security people.

At the moment only our mirrors are on-line - this means that it's very 
difficult for us to update the log, since we have to do so manually 
through the mirror administrators. The current log is over a week old - 
the attacks are continuing on our mirrors (still coming from Chinese 
IPs), but so far their security has been able to repel the DOS attacks. 
We hope to put an update online in the next few days.

Einde O'Callaghan (MIA Administrator - non-technical)


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