Last
April 20 at precisely 2.20 am the University of the Philippines website was
hacked by so called China based hackers. Reports said that the Hackers defaced
the school’s website and adding the captions “We come from China! Huangyan Island is
Ours!” The school was quick to add that no valuable information or no
vital data in the server was compromised.
A
day after the hacking, supposed Filipino Hacktivist fought back by attacking
the China University Media Union site and also defacing its homepage with an
image of Guy Fawkes mask and a caption “Chinese government is clearly retarded.
Scarborough Shoal is ours!” 15 more websites were said to be attacked by the
said Filipino Hacktivist.
Retaliations
between the two camps are expected and the Philippine Government are now
studying and closely guarding all other websites and their own servers.
China
based hackers may have started the so called cyber war between China and the
Philippines yet China is not only known in defacing of websites. Companies
around the world are already clamoring on the so called hacking of Intellectual
property data by this China based hackers.
Countries
like the United States, Germany and other Asian Countries are saying that China
based hackers are stealing company secrets and using those data to create their
own version. This could completely explain why China made products sold in
Divisoria are almost so identical and of course they only vary due to the
material used yet the design and feature is almost the same.
Recently
an article from Bloomberg written by Michael Riley and John Walcott explains
the conflict done by China in its target to be ahead against its competitors
globally. (link below)
The
article titled “China-Based Hacking of 760 Companies Shows Cyber Cold War”
showcases how China-based hackers are targeting the intellectual property data
stored in the computers of Big Companies like Google Inc. and Research in
Motion Ltd. (makers of Blackberry Smartphones) to the niche innovators in other
industries like the aerospace, semiconductors, pharmaceuticals and
biotechnology.
It
wasn’t still clear what the hackers do with the information they gather and
most of them could be speculations but some of them are clear already like in
some industries wherein the china made copy cats had used the feature already
before it is being deployed by the author company. We could show a lot of
examples but just going to malls like the one in Divisoria wherein a lot of
products are copy cat and are against copyright or patent infringement.
The
most troubling part in this article is hackers targeting the database of
pharmaceutical companies like Abbott and Wyeth and gathering information of
drug trials, chemical formulas and other such data. Counterfeiting of merchandise
may have an economic impact on companies but I think it is different if you
counterfeit medicines, it not only destroys company or products but surely destroy
health which I think is over crossing the line. Furthermore let us also
consider these hackers who could get the information out of weapons of mass
destructions or nuclear weapons. It simply states that war in the modern era is
not only done with guns and missiles but also by computers and hackers who
could get massive amount of data from the enemy.
In
another article by The World.org titled US and China prepare cyber defenses in
face of increased hacking threat. Link below
The
mindset of the Hackers in these economic hacking phenomena was showcase and that
is they want the information over the web to be free and they are mainly
targeting the lawyers of the companies for they do usually have the playbook of
the company. They don’t really care about the legality of intellectual
copyright and other protection for the author of such products. Yet coming from
their actions it seems that for the country to get ahead with its competitors
it had used even the dirty tricks in the book and that is by hacking the
servers of company to get valuable information about other companies abroad and
try to emulate that product.
Just
recently the Senate had approved for the final reading of the cybercrime bill
or SB 2796. The bill aims to penalize the following offenses online namely,
hacking, cyber squatting, cybersex, online child pornography and selling products
without the consent of the recipient. To implement these said regulations, a
new agency is then made named the National Cybersecurity Coordinating council
which will be under the Office of the President.
China
may have started a trend of hacking companies for its trade secrets yet it
seems that it had incurred a lot of illegal activities mainly with intellectual
property infringement and hacking violations. With its recent attacks on our
land, it would be safe to assume that they may have also targeted trade secrets
within companies registered within our country. At the very least I am secured
that the National Broadband deal wasn’t awarded to ZTE corporation of China,
just how easy it would then for China based hackers to go into our government
and other institutions to gather not only valuable information about our
leaders but also on the trade secrets we have specially that one of the
greatest traits of Filipinos is creativity which China based hackers seem to be
targeting the most.
Disclaimer:
This blog contains my personal commentary on issues that interest me. The views expressed here are mine alone and not part of any entity.
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