China keeps pushing
Here’s an interesting tidbit of news:
Chinese nationals have illicitly tried to access U.S. military installations and other sensitive areas some 100 times in recent years, raising the issue of espionage.
The Wall Street Journal reported this weekend that these incidents range from individuals claiming they were just following GPS to get to restaurants that are actually on bases to speeding through checkpoints to scuba divers. Since we know that the America-hating Chinese Communist Party planted half a dozen illicit police stations in the U.S. and infiltrated all major U.S. institutions and levels of government, the risk of espionage is very real.
Then of course there’s Joe and Hunter Biden, on the take for who-knows-what promises.
And on a much much smaller scale, for a month or two I’ve noticed an attack of Chinese bots. “Attack” may not be quite the right word; let’s just say an awful lot of visits for no discernible reason. I had an uptick of traffic without any obvious links to explain it, and I started to wonder. Sure enough, there was a new influx of Chinese “visitors.”
I’ve been engaged in trying to control it and have been somewhat successful. But my question is: what are they looking for? I assume it’s something business- or money-related. But the blog doesn’t have anything of that sort on it; this is a very plain Jane blog. One thing of which I’m virtually certain is that a whole bunch of actual Chinese people are not suddenly fascinated by the musings of thenewneo.
Many mainland Chinese are among the illegals being allowed across our border. Online articles going back a long time confirm this. Since ‘travel’ is so well controlled in China one wonders who is providing travel documents and money for their journey. Why are they these ‘mostly military age men’ coming here? Probably best not to ask…
But my question is: what are they looking for?
Unless you’re seeing an uptick in comment spam originating from China, they’re likely looking for unpatched vulnerabilities in the blog engine.
Tim:
There’s been no change in comment spam, so I assume it has something to do with searching for some vulnerabilities of some sort.
Neo, your blog is anything but Plain Jane.
SHIREHOME:
Thanks – but to Chinese bots, it IS pretty plain and simple.
I think.
General Tso is checkin’
Neo: there are some third-party log analysis tools that might shed some light on what’s going on. It’s been a while since I’ve worked with WP on the server side, so I’m not 100% sure what’s available any more. You’d likely see weird URL requests with lots of double-dots (..) or oddball file name requests like .htaccess.
As always, it’s a good idea to review the configuration and current versions of WordPress and whatever plugins you use to make sure they’re up to date. If you’re hosted on WordPress’ offering, of course, they should be managing all of that for you.
neo:
As Michael Corleone said to his brother, while contemplating the murder of a rival and a police captain:
_________________________
It’s not personal, Sonny. It’s strictly business.
–“Godfather 1”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUh3TZpMCY4
_________________________
With the right tools it costs almost nothing to probe every website on the planet for weaknesses.
RE: China
It seems like the Chinese government is very aggressively pushing against all of it’s enemies–especially the U.S.–while at the same time there are a lot of signs that it is on the verge of economic collapse and, a decade or so down the road, a demographic/social collapse, which will drastically decrease their population, and thus, their ability to influence things, and their influence on the world stage.
Their grandiose and very expensive “Belt and Road” initiative–designed to not only enable them to move troops all over the place more rapidly, and to improve their ability to move commercial products by land and sea, but also to put a lot of poorer countries in hock to the Chinese, seems to be in trouble.
In addition, they seem to be in all sorts of dire economic trouble.*
As I suggested here a couple of months ago, in view of their impending population collapse, are the Chinese leaders—who have to know this demographic collapse is now inevitable and coming down the pike—making all sorts of aggressive moves now, while they still have the manpower and clout to do it?
* See, for instance, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gegFRxyKGmo&t=316s
and here, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meJItedDm2Y
or this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-B5xeQG7KQ&t=8s
or this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq6Tx-7t9Ws
or this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SfjIXBAdYc&t=10s
“Why are they these ‘mostly military age men’ coming here”
They’re coming here because the economy back in Mainland China is collapsing, and all indications are that the collapse is accelerating. It’s hard to describe just how bad things are getting, and how rapidly it’s all happening. I don’t want to make “China will collapse in X!” predictions because too many people make those, and I don’t have the necessary training for that sort of thing in any case. But based on what I’ve been seeing, there are strong indications that we’re about to see a complete economic collapse of the major cities at about the same time that Beijing tries to launch a new version of the Cultural Revolution.
I’d be getting out as quickly as possible if I were a Chinese citizen.
junior–
P.S. Chinese millionaires are also leaving China in great numbers.*
* See https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/china-economy-millionaire-exodus-high-net-worth-migration-covid-rebound-2023-6?op=1
I am unalterably opposed to communism, as the gravest of offenses against God and mankind. I’ve never bought into the meme that the CCP has abandoned its allegiance to the ideological imperative that the world must be made communist. Nor do I want to denigrate in any way the threat from China. This said, I’m sure glad we aren’t trying to spy on China the way they do on us. Nor do I buy that our efforts are purely reactive.
Geoffrey Britain:
What do you think the NSA, DIA, CIA do in there little spare time, aka when they aren’t keeping track of non-progressives in the USA? They gather intelligence on everybody else in the world. It is their job and used to be their main occupation, foreign intelligence gathering. Signals intelligence, traffic analysis, code breaking, satellites, U-2s, SR-71s, ELINT aircraft flying as close as possible to CCP airspace. You do recall the CCP spy balloons that some wanted to drop on Billings, MT?
Apologizing first Russia and now the CCP? Gentlemen don’t read other nation’s “mail?”
om on September 4, 2023 at 5:35 pm said:
General Tso is checkin’
Love that sort of word play!!
Geoffrey Britain
Having worked in the field for awhile I can say everyone spies on everyone. By any means. Your mindset is somewhat naive.
Despite demographic decline, China is America’s mortal enemy, a wolf and we are sheep just a-grazing on, on Chinese-made meds and other critical necessities. With fentanyl, the Chinese are killing off our young at 100,000 deaths per year. And we do nothing. The CCP et al. has bought up hundreds of thousands US acres, all neighboring or near US air bases.
To take comfort in China’s demographic decline is foolish. Like 18th century Britain, they can become the world’s only superpower, especially if there are more rotten Democratic administrations than Biden’s. British population then was hardly huge! I fear glib Newsom especially as a Dem. election success.
Sorry Neo. But my first gut reaction is “it’s you babe!” This site has some very smart commenters and your thoughts alone are a great summary of precise events.
They’re Here . . .
Anne-
So you saw Kingdom of Heaven? ?
Cicero –
We do nothing? Trump initiated a mass exodus of businesses from China, and it’s accelerating. A few weeks ago, I watched a video that mentioned that there are now entire days when Shanghai’s most important docks are completely empty. Can you imagine that happening in, say, Long Beach?
China’s busy projecting itself as powerful. Don’t believe any of it. China is hollow, and I don’t think the facade can stay up for much longer.
And in this morning’s radio news, a couple in China (land of Can Do!) have been arrested for knocking down part of The Great Wall with an excavator (backhoe, trackhoe, or big yellow machine) to facilitate access to their job site.
“They paved paradise, put up a parking lot ….” In the song it was a big yellow taxi, not an excavator, however. Times, they are a’changin’.
Word has leaked to the other side of the globe of your spectacular Mah Jongg skills.