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Comment by JohnTHaller | Hacker News Reader

One concern would be if this provides a larger userbase to Baidu to be used by the Chinese government for attacks against folks like github again.

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-> One concern would be if this provides a larger userbase to Baidu to be used by the Chinese government for attacks against folks like github again.

You are talking about 3 separate issues here:

a larger userbase to Baidu - most likely

Baidu being used by the Chinese government - maybe

Chinese government for attacks against folks like github again - some serious assumptions here, accusations != facts

You do realize that there was a well-documented case of the Chinese government setting the Great Firewall of China to send a altered Baidu javascript to users outside of China to engage in a massive DDoS of github in an attempt to pressure github into removing two projects that the Chinese government disapproves of earlier this year, right? It took github offline entirely and they didn't even have most of the attack deflected until 3.5 days in. Google the words github baidu ddos and you'll have your pick of legitimate sources. It's well known and well documented within the tech community. The mainstream media mostly ignored it.

This comment shows ignorance at its best. Show me one source that has proof that (1)Chinese government was behind the attack, (2) Baidu was behind the attack.

Here's the paper[1] from the University of Toronto showing that the attack originated from the Great Firewall. Given the firewall is operated by the Ministry of Public Security that points the finger pretty clearly at the government. The way the attack was orchestrated implies however that Baidu was an unwitting victim.

[1]https://citizenlab.org/2015/04/chinas-great-cannon/

This article seems to be a legitimate source.

It terms the system that carried out the attack as "the Great Cannon" and then moves on to attribute "the Great Cannon" to the Chinese government in Section 4.

As "compelling" as it sounds, the "attribution" in Section 4 seems rather short and lacking technical details and proper references as compared to other sections (Also I would not consider references from GreatFire as legitimate). So I am not fully convinced about that section.

Anyway thanks for sharing this. I definitely picked up a lot from this article.

Who needs proof when repeating a story enough means people assume it is true?

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