Why is this not in the mainstream news? Even if it's not the Chinese government directly it's a group with significant power inside China -- so why isn't this being considered a foreign attack on a US company?
Here's how to make this news interesting to the mainstream:<p>"Chinese hackers cost US economy $100,000 / h"<p>Well, replace random accusations and numbers by facts of course, but that's a valid question: How many employees can currently not to any meaningful work because they don't have access to what they're supposed to work on? This times salaries spent on them anyway is a good lower bound for the damage done to the economy (actual damage should be higher since employees should of course add more value to the economy than their salary).
I've had a fair number of press people contact me about this. I think the issue is: github isn't a consumer service, and the attack is novel enough, that explaining it requires explaining several things at the same time. Adding In the gfw/China aspect makes it even more confusing.<p>This is the kind of story where a tech individual should probably do a compressive blog post which gets syndicated, rather than relying on journalists. I can understand why no one at Baidu, GitHub, or Fastly is doing this, though.
DDoS attacks and similar things are of very little significance to people who don't understand what they are. In their minds, all the damage is on virtual space and nothing is real. And they're somehow sure that all the damage done will be fixed soon.
DDoS attacks are very common. Every large web based company will deal with an attack on this vector sooner or later and more than once. I think itwould be an issue if we started considering every single instance as a foreign attack.<p>It seems to me like you trying to make a parallel to the Sony hacking. These two instances are very different. The Sony hackers used a much more diverse toolset to inflict damage on a number of different vectors.
Perhaps because non-programmers (aka civilians) don't know what GitHub is, and it's difficult to explain.<p>Perhaps it's interesting to reframe in a language that affect most people:<p>"Linux development halted by ciberattack!!!"<p>That's not completely true and too linkbaity, especially with the three bang sings. Is there another huge mainstream project hosted there?<p>Another linkbait:<p>"Hackers break hackers site!!!"<p>Not so appealing to most people, but you can exploit curiosity. Also, you'll get a lot of complains about the incorrect use of the word "hackers" in both positions.
Just have Buzzfeed cover it:<p>Top 10 ways to DDOS a code repository. Number 7 will surprise you.<p>Millions of people are now accessing github. Who they are will surprise you!<p>You've been DDOS wrong your whole life. Find out how to do it correctly.<p>Millions of people now unknowingly going to github. Find out who, and why you might be too.<p>Also don't forget WhiteHouse has a github account...."WhiteHouse code repository under attack by China"
One plausible reason: the story is a "slow burn" story that hasn't had time to gain traction. Mainstream news acts more like an aggregator of information that percolates out of various niche segments' echo chambers: give it time.<p>Another thing to consider: what is particularly newsworthy about it to the general public? Software technology focused people would find this very news worthy. I have little sympathy for a business of any size that uses github as its primary repository: the most-current source should be maintained on an internal server, in my opinion, and companies that require github to be fully available to operate are doing it wrong. I mean one of the primary advantages of a distributed repo is that there is a complete history for every node that has synced with the most recent commit. There shouldn't be a strong dependence on a central repo.
To a first approximation, nobody cares. Inside particular segments of the tech community, lots of people care. But the tech community is very small on an absolute scale and its segments even smaller.<p>The other group of people who care are those engaged in ongoing cyber warfare. To them Github is probably not worth defending at the risk of escalating to a wider cyber and economic conflict.<p>Even should US government cyber warefare assets attribute the attack directly to an entity with a direct relationship to 中华人民共和国 diplomatic corps, why would the US deploy assets to protect a company that is knowingly violating 中华人民共和国 policy? Github is neither required nor prohibited from hosting projects that violate 中华人民共和国 foreign or domestic policy. It has made a business decision for business reasons.<p>Don't get me wrong, I am not defending 中华人民共和国 policies in regard to the dissemination of information and propaganda [or the US policies regarding the same]. Nor am I criticizing or praising Github's business decisions. I am just explaining what I believe is the case, not what I think should or should not be the case.
What is the attack? Who is effected? How much is the impact? When did it start? Why is it being done? Answer those questions, create a blog post, and send a link to that post to your local news, the national news and any outlet focused on nationalism since it is China - think right wing political sites. Make the job easy and this will get more coverage.
Mainstream media only ever report a few categories of story regarding the tech industry.<p>- Hackers stealing information<p>- Billion dollar acquisitions<p>- Harassment scandals<p>- Apple announces anything
It took another day, but this attack has now hit the mainstream press. Some examples:
<a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-coding-website-github-hit-with-cyberattack-1427638940" rel="nofollow">http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-coding-website-github-hit-wi...</a>
<a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/github-coding-site-hit-by-cyberattack-1.3014644" rel="nofollow">http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/github-coding-site-hit-by-...</a>
<a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/740f727c-d699-11e4-97c3-00144feab7de.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/740f727c-d699-11e4-97c3-00144feab7...</a>
<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/mar/30/github-cleans-up-cyber-attack" rel="nofollow">http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/mar/30/github-cle...</a>
<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/china-accused-of-launching-fourday-cyber-attack-on-us-coding-website-github-10143392.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/new...</a>
Well maybe no one at Github is allowed to contact local news sources, and if they can't get a quote or information from a reliable source at the company they won't run the story I guess?
this article on paid russian trolls makes me wonder if the chinese are employing the same tactic on this forum<p><a href="http://www.rferl.org/content/how-to-guide-russian-trolling-trolls/26919999.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.rferl.org/content/how-to-guide-russian-trolling-t...</a>
Because it's totally irrelevant to someone who is not directly related, not to just programming but Github.<p>I'd like to ask back some questions:<p>1) What makes you think it's a worthy topic?<p>2) What makes you think China or any <i>powerful group</i> - not sure in what terms this group is supposed to be powerful - has anything to do with it?
It is, now.
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/31/technology/china-appears-to-attack-github-by-diverting-web-traffic.html?ref=technology" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/31/technology/china-appears-t...</a>
"Why is this not in the mainstream news? "<p>Ironically, you realize of course that if something is mainstream news (or any news at all) then that's a trophy that creates a greater likelihood of future copycat events happening. Notoriety is certainly part of the buzz of doing something like this.
It's a developer oriented site. Why would a non-developer care that it's down? The main outlets want the attention of the majority - so we don't get alerts when HN, Github, etc go down or get attacked but we do when Facebook drops for 15 minutes
I'm sure it will be. Give them a minute. After all, I bet there are plenty of media folks reading this thread. And plenty of media orgs use GitHub themselves.
Because, simply, the ability for the Technorati to push and pull code from a website does not an act-of-war make, no matter how you and I may view it.<p>It seems almost certain, however, that in the coming week, this story will be told in the "mainstream news" (I don't really know what that is anymore tho, TBH)<p>I am sure, when things shake out, the attacks will be used in some political-posturing kind of way and by some politician who will judiciously use it to drum up support among an interested group.
><i>Why is this not in the mainstream news?</i><p>HackerNews, Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook aren't mainstream? I beg to differ.<p>If this event was reported on any other media, I'd have no idea that it was occurring.