Oh no, the US has its delicate sensibilities hurt by cyber espionage! Come on China, why would you spy on us? It's so mean and unfair, why would anyone do it?<p>Despicable.<p>Why not host Defcon in Canada, or somewhere else? If Chinese hackers cannot attend industry events because of the US's imperialistic tendencies, it's our responsibility to modify our events so that they can.
The indictments against the five charged Chinese citizens are not for espionage, they are for theft of trade secrets and associated IP law violations. The Chinese government, so far, has denied the allegations. This happens between countries, the French, for example, also have been known to use their intelligence agencies to steal information from other countries to help their domestic industries.<p>China is alleged to have done the same, so the US is upping the ante to try to get China to stop. This is just one more way countries do this to each other. Don't get sucked in by the click bait on this. This is pure economics between commercial competitors, and the use of government resources to steal IP to help their domestic industries, it's not anything else.
This benefits no one. No real Chinese hackers or security professionals would ever risk coming to the USA in the first place. And Chinese government officials involved in cyber security would never come without a diplomatic passport. So really all this hurts are academics.<p>This is a dog and pony show.
Oh no, not Defcon! The world's premier mohawk-and-utilikilt cosplay event!<p>When I used to go, it would have really livened things up to hang out with some PLA guys at the bars on the main casino floor...
If they do this, Defcon 23 will be in Mexico or Canada, I suspect. (I'm speaking AT DC22, but I can't speak <i>for</i> Defcon, but I've been going since DC7 and I'm pretty familiar with how they think.) Montreal would rock.<p>BTW, there's an awesome conference in Beijing I'm going to submit to -- <a href="http://xcon.xfocus.org/" rel="nofollow">http://xcon.xfocus.org/</a>
>Federal prosecutors said the suspects targeted companies including Alcoa Inc, Allegheny Technologies Inc, United States Steel Corp, Toshiba Corp unit Westinghouse Electric Co, the U.S. subsidiary of SolarWorld AG, and a steel workers' union.<p>These are all Pittsburgh-based companies. Why?
Stifle security events held on your own turf...right. Its almost like they are trying to intentionally lose.<p>Honestly US politics and policy are a mystery to me...
Now the Chinese hackers will have no choice but to go to the security conferences in Asia. All of them are way better than Defcon though, so who is really losing?
Are they also going to force participants not to blog, talk about, or otherwise disseminate the information they gleaned there?<p>Otherwise, this childishness is just another act by the clueless to try grabbing some attention for themselves, while doing something of no practical value. While simultaneously flaunting how little they know, about how the world really works.
It's interesting that the US regards as criminal and prosecutable the same actions that the NSA conduct against foreign telcos and others. I would have thought that there might be caution about bringing indictments in such cases.
Seems like a silly idea. Why not send some NSA or CIA people to DEFCON, find the Chinese nationals in question, and then pwn their devices with one of what I'm sure must be many 0days that NSA have in their pockets?
So who's going to block US govt officials from Defcon due to their cyber espionage acts?<p>What's good for the goose is good for the gander and all that...