Yes, well I thought it didn't make a lot of sense either, given the lack of reporting around "major power outages", but there it was, in black and white.
I still think that the actual "target" was the response.
Printable View
Example of the impact of geopolitical tensions on commercial transactions in Aust...
Beverages group Lion abandons $600 million China dairy sale
https://www.theage.com.au/business/c...25-p55p1p.html
Following on from the above:
China warns of 'shadow' over ties with Australia, tells it to stop whining
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-c...-idUSKBN25M0MH
China flexes at US in four seas show of force
China conducts near-simultaneous massive naval drills for first time in a tit-for-tat response to perceived US provocations
by Richard Javad Heydarian
https://asiatimes.com/2020/08/china-...show-of-force/
South Korea's predicament:
Moon risks U.S. rift with China policy, top South Korean opposition lawmaker says
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/20...lawmaker-says/
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Excerpt:
South Korea is caught between maintaining strong ties with China — its biggest trading partner — and the U.S., its main military ally and a key market for the exports that power its economy. The pressure has only picked up as the U.S. has sought help to block China’s push into regional waters and Moon’s progressives have been criticized for keeping silent about Beijing’s moves seen as suppressing democracy in Hong Kong.
China’s expansionism enters dangerous phase
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion...-expansionism/
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Longtime Japan Times contributor Brahma Chellaney is a geostrategist and the author of nine books,
including the award-winning “Water: Asia’s New Battleground.”
Excerpt:
"Recently, Chinese state media suddenly discovered that Tajikistan’s Pamir Mountains historically “belong to China.” Earlier in May, the state-run media claimed that Mount Everest, the world’s tallest peak on the Nepal-Tibet border that symbolizes Nepalese sovereignty, was wholly in China."
I think you guys might be on track tbh. I have a sneaking suspicion this little episode we're going through is just a probing exercise while at the same time a little reminder. Having a crack at the NZX gets noticed by enough people and it is a piece of NZ's infrastructure that should have a certain amount of controls in place to help mitigate against this to an extent. Potentially Spark could have better controls at the front gate too that could use automation to block this stuff closer to real time, but it would be a dangerous trade off between having a fairly open Internet here versus a great firewall of China approach, and it probably lies outside of Spark's mandate currently. But this attack my have implications on that front and we may find some moves by the government to strengthen their powers on the control of our global Internet gateways (cue the civil libertarians).
With IOT, convergence of what was traditionally the instrument and electrical realm with the IT realm, the need for remote access via the Internet for this that and everything else, particularly for provisioning of new globally sourced equipment sans the overseas specialists in a travel constrained world atm, I'm afraid there are heaps of back doors just waiting to be exploited.
Yes, I find it very concerning that in the fast developing IOT world, there is a lack of standardisation of security and firmware / software updating requirements able to be mandated for the end-point devices / sensors on the network. With 5G enabling IOT on the network, this standardising of protocols is extremely urgent, and is an example of where China & the US need to cooperate to ensure unified standards regimes. Typically this work would be carried out by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) as for other TCP/IP protocols.
Thing is, you can put all sorts of controls in place, and then no sooner your back is turned, someone who just doesn't understand the risks has tethered their laptop off their mobile and run up TeamViewer or the likes while patched into a process control network, thereby circumventing all your hard work. I'm really not sure what the answer is.
Agreed - My point is that there's no evidence that this attack resulted in or was brought about by the compromisation of the NZX core network, as others have eluded to.
Yes, this is a huge & very quickly emerging issue with some very significant issues surrounding national security. The public for the most part don't understand (who would want to compromise my fridge anyway?) and don't care (I don't want to pay more for my devices, or it's not my problem). It will certainly require an international multipronged approach to solve. The current geopolitical troubles with the chief manufacturer of these devices, may actually help this situation in some respects.