There are several well-kept secrets in the world. For example, the presence of Nuclear bombs before they were dropped on Japan in 1945 ending WWII and thereby paving the way for the US to become a superpower.
But in this ever changing world, the center of power shifts with time and emerging powers keep trying to question the status quo in “novel” ways. While some may use military or technological might others could possibly use just a human virus. But what if you could use all of these together to make a greater impact? Somehow, the problem with such an approach is that the cat jumps out of the bag in broad daylight. And so it has but still many people refuse to talk of it. Why?
Because the ecosystem doesn’t support them. The system tries to shut, shadow bans such people, or deletes their content outright to support the mighty.
Let’s talk about such a case. Imagine you are taking on an organization that has the world’s second-largest defense budget which doesn’t permit Freedom of Expression in their territory and tries to enforce the same on others.
Where it began….
So in Jun 2020, I wrote this
It uncovers many of their strategies and so it instantly came to their notice. A day after it got published, there have been several random comments on it. Most of them were just honeytraps to lure me into accepting them so they can take over the website.
How they come to know of it
This will give you the idea that they have their web crawler possibly as large as the one the modern search engine uses, however, this one is to track and monitor content written against the regime.
For ones unfamiliar with it, a Web crawler is like a bot that browses through all the pages of WWW. Essentially, going over ExaBytes (1018 bytes) of data every day requires the usage of complex algorithms and massive hardware to scale operations in near realtime.
Brute Force Attacks
This is one of their preliminary attacks. They try to take access of the admin account of your website by trying random passwords from several different locations.
So, the article was published on 28th June within less than 48 hours, I could compile the list of Chinese attackers.
User IP: 60.161.187.161 User hostname: 60.161.187.161 User location: Lincang, China User IP: 61.160.121.146 User hostname: 61.160.121.146 User location: Wuxi, China User IP: 111.21.72.18 User hostname: 111.21.72.18 User location: Zhangjiakou, China User IP: 183.89.211.251 User hostname: 183.89.211.251 User location: Bangkok, Thailand User IP: 113.160.185.101 User hostname: 113.160.185.101 User location: Thanh Hóa, Vietnam
Notice the fact that attack is also being instigated from nearby countries. Of course, they could be using proxy as well to hide actual location. After trying multiple times, they got locked out and left unsuccessfully.
Fun fact:
https://www.govtech.com/security/204318661.html
Let’s see a screenshot from the above website which says China accounts for 41% percent of global hack attacks and it was analyzed by Akamai.
You will be surprised to know Bloomberg.com has no such article now. Even Akamai which published the data in 2012 has removed it, if you go by the above website. I am not sure. why? But I fell on this news of 2016…
Nevermind… let’s continue.
Diwali begins…
It’s a known fact amongst security experts that many of the coordinated attacks happen during festivals. Indian govt banned Chinese items so they decided to take revenge by using their sophisticated machinery. Nov 14 was Diwali and since Nov 13th they started their hardwork by posting random comments.
Interestingly, this time they used their brains and none of them originated in China!! That’s quite an improvisation, I must admit 😊. But all of these comments are on the same article which is against the authoritarian govt. It’s so difficult to know the attackers isn’t? 😀
Trying to crack into the website
When the comments don’t get accepted then this is the new thing they try. Change the config files for the website to get access. And look at the attack rate 255 in 10 minutes and thousands of them. This gives you an idea into their scalable operations.
Dear CCP paid hackers,
Jai Shree Ram
Can you stop wasting time on a photography and travel blog? That’s just a waste of resources.
Come on, focus on targeting Coronavirus researches (i.e. if some of them are still left to be attacked). There is just one article I wrote to show about your art of war and even that pissed you off. With all your attempts like these, you will make me and your unsuccessful efforts famous.
Happy Diwali anyway
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