The Daily Mail's Distracting ChinaHack Theory

onDec 29, 2009 @ 10:15 PST

The Daily Mail is reporting that it might be, “Chinese hackers linked to ‘Warmergate’ climate change leaked emails controversy.”

The Mail’s revelation came about after they tracked a convoluted trail of IP (internet Protocols) addresses, through to a, ” Chinese environmental institute, the Research Institute of Forest Ecology and Environment Protection, based near Beijing.”

While it would be very cool if this was an actual break in the case of the stolen emails, the story in the Mail seems to be based on some pretty loose assumptions. The biggest hole in the Chinahack theory is pointed out in the Daily Mail story itself. A spokesperson for a Malaysian internet service company where the hackers were traced through said:

“‘Because this is an open relay mail server, the emails could have been sent through it from anywhere in the world. It is just as likely to be someone outside Malaysia as someone within the country.”

What the spokesperson is pointing out is that in the global network of online web services it is very difficult to trace someone’s activities. Especially if that person knows how to cover their footprints. A packet of online information can easily be made to bounce around the world before arriving at its final destination.

I can be sitting here in Vancouver and route my internet actions and email through open proxy servers around the world. And it really doesn’t take a master-hacker to do such things. For example, anyone can easily use an internet cloaking service to navigate anonymously around the internet, and upload files to a Russian FTP server like the one used to publicly release the stolen East Anglia University emails.

While it is definitely a useful line of investigation for the Daily Mail to trace the internet pathways behind the stolen emails, it has led to some pretty strange hypotheses by the newspaper, like: “The evidence passed to The Mail on Sunday now raises questions about whether Chinese hackers, backed by the communist regime, are the source of the emails.”

Plots by the Russians in league with the Chinese makes for great headlines, but they do run the risk of drawing attention away from much more plausible theories about who is behind these criminal acts.

By Kevin Grandia

Kevin is a contributor and strategic adviser to DeSmog. He runs the digital marketing agency Spake Media House. Named a “Green Hero” by Rolling Stone Magazine and one of the “Top 50 Tweeters” on climate change and environment issues, Kevin has appeared in major news media outlets around the world for his work on digital campaigning. Kevin has been involved in the public policy arena in both the United States and Canada for more than a decade. For five years he was the managing editor of DeSmogBlog.com. In this role, Kevin’s research into the “climate denial industry” and the right-wing think tank networks was featured in news media articles around the world. He is most well known for his ground-breaking research into David and Charles Koch’s massive financial investments in the Republican and tea party networks. Kevin is the first person to be designated a “Certified Expert” on the political and community organizing platform NationBuilder. Prior to DeSmog, Kevin worked in various political and government roles. He was Senior Advisor to the Minister of State for Multiculturalism and a Special Assistant to the Minister of State for Asia Pacific, Foreign Affairs for the Government of Canada. Kevin also worked in various roles in the British Columbia provincial government in the Office of the Premier and the Ministry of Health. In 2008 Kevin co-founded a groundbreaking new online election tool called Vote for Environment which was later nominated for a World Summit Award in recognition of the world’s best e-Content and innovative ICT applications. Kevin moved to Washington, DC in 2010 where he worked for two years as the Director of Online Strategy for Greenpeace USA and has since returned to his hometown of Vancouver, Canada.

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