Find the first part of this interview at : Hluchan : You Can’t Secure the Cloud Totally – 1 and second part at : Hluchan : Money is also a Motivation for The Turkish Hackers – 2 link.
Turk Internet: If we come to a larger scale, what do you think about the trends in new hacking styles? For Example some Chinese military hacking happened recently?
Mohammad Hlcuhan: Well about Chinese military I am not an expert. I don’t cover the China region, however I have my co-worker Ming, from the same office. Ming if you see this my regards to you. From what I learned from helping him do his work China has a powerful very well organized military apparatus which is a cyber work component. I even have some images of Chinese hackers in my presentation.
Specifically these are Chinese soldier hackers. Instead of the average hacker maybe with a pony tail like you have (points the interviewer), maybe an uncut beard or maybe a shirt that is untucked and looking kind of a nerd or something as we call in US which is a sort of caricature of a person, you have Chinese hacker soldiers with a crew cut hair. They have uniforms on them but instead of carrying a gun, they are sitting in front of a computer and doing their attacks.
Of course this is all espionage and they collect information in mass form various mostly open source sites but also some non-open source sites. And even if it’s mildly classified if it’s such a little confidential information, they can take bits of confidential information and put it all together into a complete picture. Eventually once a complete picture is formed, they have information to put an entire picture collected by hundreds and hundreds of these hackers.
These hackers are extracting piece of data from various sources and pretty soon an entire, very large and detailed picture starts to emerge. So for China they are quite effective and I should add in this regard that Chinese hackers don’t seem to be confining themselves just in hardly United States. They are also interested in India. I cover India and there is a great concern of espionage done by Chinese hackers against India.
Recently Indian government complained that Chinese hackers infiltrated even their nuclear institutions, their universities, their diplomatic facilities and embassies. Of course you know there is a tension between India and China at the borders. There is Assam for example in north east province, the Indian equivalent of State of Maine in the US. Far in north east just around Bangladesh you have certain borders along the Himalayas which are disputed.
So for China of course there is Jammu and Kashmir, which India disputed Pakistan. Well the northern edge of Jummo and Kashmir also disputed China. And then of course there is the Dalai Lama who has a headquarters in India. So there is a political friction, there is fuel for political. Al this stuff, to vary in degrees, gives political fuel to the activities of these Chinese hackers.
Turk Internet: I would like to ask you about the confliction between Google and China. Google explained that Chinese government carried some hacker activism. What do you think about it?
Mohammad Hluchan : I think it’s entirely possible. I mean as we see China has a pattern and this is just not myself talking, I am just parroting what I’ve heard other people say. India complains about it, United States complain about it, other countries, even Iran complains about it. They have so many heavy vast information gathering operation going on.
It’s fairly evident and well if you think about it from their point of view, they are obviously interested in this new technology. China actually has the largest number of internet users in the world right now. The internet is a big deal in China. So there is strong interest in the net in China, there is a certain level of obsession going on. They are interested in the internet technology, they want to exploit it so from their point of view they are trying to drive maximum benefit from it.
So they start to gather information from here and there and everywhere. Some other countries do the same. But as an analyst here I can’t take sides, what China is doing is understandable from their point of view.
Turk Internet: The world is fast changing and we are emerging in many fields, especially with the internet. What can we expect from future in hacker activities?
Mohammad Hluchan : Let me make a prediction. Actually I made this prediction before but I will restate it again. There is Central Asia (Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kirghizstan and Tajikistan). All these places are really newly opening up to the internet. Turkmenistan has some internet infrastructure there. Of course this nothing like Japan or US, but nonetheless you have a combination over there of poverty.
You have a combination of exposure to what we call Russphere, the Russian internet sphere. So there is a cultural connection because many central Asian languages are still written with the Russian alphabet. So those factors that I have just mentioned will allow a class of emerging hackers in the coming years with connections to Russia, which has its well known for set of hackers.
Among all the other things they will be motivated by poverty. They will need money in order to develop. So obviously I predict the Central Asia will become a new threat for Europe.
Turk Internet: Thank you very much for this interview. I know you can speak a lot of languages can you say a few words in Turkish? May be some closing words?
Mohammad Hluchan : Hepinize selam olsun. (I salute you all). Gule gule (Goodbye), kendine iyi bak (take care). Turkce yeni ogreniyorum, kusura bakmayin gelecekte daha iyi olacak. (I am just learning to speak Turkish so sorry for my mistakes, it will be better).
See the Turkish translation of this interview at : Hluchan : Çinli Hacker’ların Askerlerden Farkı, Silah Taşımak Yerine Bilgisayar Başında Oturuyor Olmaları – 3 link.
Kaynak : 