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Timothy Thomas: Why China Is Reading Your Email
Beijing’s cyber attacks are rooted in military strategy, says one of America’s foremost experts. The best way to combat them is for the U.S. to go on the cyber offensive too.

Timothy L. Thomas By DAVID FEITH

Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

For several years, Washington has treated China as the Lord Voldemort of geopolitics—the foe who must not be named, lest all economic and diplomatic hell break loose. That policy seemed to be ending in recent weeks, and Timothy Thomas thinks it’s about time.

The clearest sign of change came in a March 11 speech by Tom Donilon, President Obama’s national security adviser, who condemned “cyber intrusions emanating from China on an unprecedented scale” and declared that “the international community cannot tolerate such activity from any country.” Chinese cyber aggression poses risks “to international trade, to the reputation of Chinese industry and to our overall relations,” Mr. Donilon said, and Beijing must stop it.

“Why did we wait so long?” wonders Mr. Thomas as we sit in the U.S. Army’s Foreign Military Studies Office, where the 64-year-old retired lieutenant colonel has studied Chinese cyber strategy for two decades. More than enough evidence accumulated long ago, he says, for the U.S. to say to Beijing and its denials of responsibility, “Folks, you don’t have a leg to stand on, sorry.”

U.S. targets of suspected Chinese cyber attacks include news organizations (this newspaper, the New York Times, Bloomberg), tech firms (Google, GOOG -1.06% Adobe, ADBE +2.00% Yahoo YHOO -0.26% ), multinationals (Coca-Cola, KO +0.55% Dow Chemical DOW +0.19% ), defense contractors (Lockheed Martin, LMT +2.17% Northrop Grumman NOC +0.36% ), federal departments (Homeland Security, State, Energy, Commerce), senior officials (Hillary Clinton, Adm. Mike Mullen), nuclear-weapons labs (Los Alamos, Oak Ridge) and just about every other node of American commerce, infrastructure or authority. Identities of confidential sources, hide-outs of human-rights dissidents, negotiation strategies of major corporations, classified avionics of the F-35 fighter jet, the ins and outs of America’s power grid: Hackers probe for all this, extracting secrets and possibly laying groundwork for acts of sabotage.

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Ken Fallin
Timothy Thomas

China’s aggression has so far persisted, Mr. Thomas says, because “it makes perfect sense to them.” The U.S. has difficulty defending its cyber systems, the relatively new realm of cyber isn’t subject to international norms, and years of intrusions have provoked little American response. “I think they’re willing to take the risk right now because they believe that we can’t do anything to them,” he says. “You have to change the playing field for them, and if you don’t, they’re not going to change. They’re going to continue to rip off every bit of information they can.”

Hence the promise of Washington’s apparent shift in policy. “There’s something going on,” Mr. Thomas says, and the Donilon speech was only one part. This month’s more significant news, he argues, was the announcement that the U.S. military’s Cyber Command (founded in 2009) would for the first time develop and field 13 offensive cyber-warfare teams. The Chinese “now know we are ready to go on the offense. There’s something that’s been put in place that I think is going to change their view.”

Not that he expects Beijing to back down lightly. On the contrary, Mr. Thomas points to the literature of the People’s Liberation Army to demonstrate that China’s cyber strategy has deep—even ancient—roots.

The essence of China’s thinking about cyber warfare is the concept of shi, he says, first introduced in Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” about 2,500 years ago. The concept’s English translation is debated, but Mr. Thomas subscribes to the rendering of Chinese Gen. Tao Hanzhang, who defines shi as “the strategically advantageous posture before a battle.”

“When I do reconnaissance activities of your [cyber] system,” Mr. Thomas explains of China’s thinking, “I’m looking for your vulnerabilities. I’m establishing a strategic advantage that enables me to ‘win victory before the first battle’ “—another classic concept, this one from the “36 Stratagems” of Chinese lore. “I’ve established the playing field. I have ‘prepped the battlefield,’ to put it in the U.S. lexicon.”

Or, as Chinese Gen. Dai Qingmin wrote in his 2002 book, “Direct Information Warfare”: “Computer network reconnaissance is the prerequisite for seizing victory in warfare. It helps to choose opportune moments, places and measures for attack.” Says Mr. Thomas: “He’s telling you right there—10 years ago—that if we’re going to win, we have to do recon.”

A 1999 book by two Chinese colonels put it more aggressively (albeit in a sentence as verbose as it is apocalyptic): “If the attacking side secretly musters large amounts of capital without the enemy nations being aware of this at all and launches a sneak attack against its financial markets,” wrote Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, “then, after causing a financial crisis, buries a computer virus and hacker detachment in the opponent’s computer system in advance, while at the same time carrying out a network attack against the enemy so that the civilian electricity network, traffic dispatching network, financial transaction network, telephone communications network, and mass media network are completely paralyzed, this will cause the enemy nation to fall into social panic, street riots, and a political crisis.” No kidding.

This vision from 1999 reads like an outline of the report published last month by Mandiant, a private-security firm, about “Unit 61398,” a Shanghai-based Chinese military team that since 2006 has mounted cyber assaults to steal terabytes of codes and other information from U.S. assets. Among the targets of Unit 61398 was Telvent Canada, which provides remote-access software for more than 60% of the oil and gas pipelines in North America and Latin America.

Unit 61398 is said to engage in “spearphishing,” whereby would-be cyber intruders send emails with links and attachments that, if clicked, install malware on target computers. Lesser hackers might spearphish while posing as Nigerian princes, but Unit 61398 developed sophisticated ways, including colloquial language, to mimic corporate and governmental interoffice emails.

Spearphishing, too, draws on traditional Chinese stratagems: “The Chinese strive to impel opponents to follow a line of reasoning that they (the Chinese) craft,” Mr. Thomas wrote in 2007. With this kind of asymmetric approach, he says, “anybody can become an unsuspecting accomplice.”

In this context Mr. Thomas mentions a cartoon published last year in Army magazine in which one Chinese general says to another: “To hell with ‘The Art of War,’ I say we hack into their infrastructure.” Good for a chuckle, perhaps, but Mr. Thomas warns against taking the message seriously. China’s hacking is in fact “a manifestation of ‘The Art of War,’ ” he says, and if the U.S. military doesn’t realize that, it “can make mistakes. . . . You have to stay with their line of thought if you’re going to try to think like them.”

“Boy,” he later laments, “we need a lot more Chinese speakers in this country”—a point underscored by the fact that he isn’t one himself. He reads Chinese military texts in translation, some published by the U.S. government’s Open Source Center and some he has found himself. He stumbled upon Gen. Dai’s “Direct Information Warfare” on a trip several years ago to Shanghai, when an associate led him (and an interpreter) to an unmarked military bookstore on the top floor of a building on the outskirts of town. “I could tell when I walked in that the people behind the cash register were stunned I was there,” he recalls. In public bookstores, he says, material addressing Chinese national security is often marked “not for foreign sale” on the inside cover.

The Ohio native does speak Russian, having focused most of his military service (from West Point graduation in 1973 until 1993) on the Soviet Union. That language skill still comes in handy, and not just because Russia is suspected of having carried out cyber assaults against Estonia in 2007 and Georgia in 2008.

Look at the Mandiant report’s map of Chinese cyber intrusions (at least those tied to Unit 61398): Russia is untouched. “That’s a huge area. . . . I really would wonder why they’re after South Africa, the U.A.E. and Singapore but not Russia. And Luxembourg. They went after Luxembourg but not Russia?” Together with Iran, he argues, China and Russia make up “not the axis of evil but the axis of cyber.”

So what is to be done? Security firms are working to harden networks against hackers, and members of Congress are promoting legislation to let the government work more closely with Internet service providers without opening up the companies to lawsuits or infringing on civil liberties. Washington could challenge Chinese cyber espionage with targeted economic sanctions. Meanwhile, there is much talk about establishing international standards for cyber space, but it is unclear what that would mean—which probably explains why top officials in Washington and Beijing have both endorsed the idea.

None of this seems promising to Mr. Thomas, who stresses building deterrence through offensive capabilities, such as the 13 new teams at U.S. Cyber Command. The implication is that the best defense is a good offense.

And doesn’t that suggest, in turn, that the U.S. and China are headed toward a dynamic of mutually assured cyber destruction? “It seems like it,” he says.

It’s heartening to hear, then, that Chinese military literature isn’t uniformly aggressive toward America. This includes writings about the “China Dream,” which posits that China will overtake the U.S. economically and militarily by midcentury—and which has been adopted as the signature cause of new President Xi Jinping.

“They give you both versions,” says Mr. Thomas. “They give you a model that says, ‘There will be no way we’ll ever fight [the U.S.], we’ll work on cooperation.’ A chapter later, ‘There could be a time where if pushed hard enough, we’ll have to do something and there will be a battle.’ ”

But what about the argument that the U.S. is shedding crocodile tears? America (and Israel) were almost certainly behind the most successful known cyber attack to date: the Stuxnet virus that impeded Iran’s uranium-enrichment program. There might be some comfort in knowing that the U.S. is doing unto China what China is doing unto the U.S., says Mr. Thomas, but “we don’t seem as intrusive as the other side.” That is illustrated especially, he says, by China’s state-sponsored commercial espionage. He frequently hears complaints from U.S. firms dealing with Chinese counterparts who know their secrets, adding that “I don’t think people really get the security briefing of just how invasive it is.”

Then there’s the argument that all this is overblown because no cyber attack has ever killed anyone. Mr. Thomas responds, somewhat impatiently: “If I had access to your bank account, would you worry? If I had access to your home security system, would you worry? If I have access to the pipes coming into your house? Not just your security system but your gas, your electric—and you’re the Pentagon?”

He adds: “Maybe nobody’s been killed yet, but I don’t want you having the ability to hold me hostage. I don’t want that. I don’t want you to be able to blackmail me at any point in time that you want.” He cites the Chinese colonels’ vision, back in 1999, of “social panic” and “street riots.” “I wonder what would happen if none of us could withdraw money out of our banks. I watched the Russians when the crash came and they stood in line and . . . they had nothing.”

Mr. Feith is an assistant editorial features editor at the Journal.

A version of this article appeared March 30, 2013, on page A11 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Why China Is Reading Your Email.

Hamilton’s penniless millionaire

SHARON TIRABASSI
Barry Gray/The Hamilton Spectator
A porttrait of Sharon Tirabassi, who won more than $10 million in the lottery in 2004. She now rides the Barton Street bus to work, a part-time job to support her kids in a rented house in northeast Hamilton.
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TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN

The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. does not have a system for following up with winners. There is also no requirement for winners to work with a financial adviser.

“There’d be no way for us to make that requirement of winners … people are adults and need to be able to make their own decisions,” said spokesperson Don Pister.

He said it is “quite, quite rare, thankfully” that winners blow through their funds so quickly, although without a system to check in, it is impossible to know.

“We do remind people it’s their money. It can be difficult, but there is a need to say no,” Pister said.

Nine years after cashing her $10,569,000.10 cheque, lotto winner Sharon Tirabassi is catching the Barton Street bus to her part-time job. She’s working to support her kids in their rented house in northeast Hamilton.

Tirabassi, 35 — one of this city’s biggest lotto winners — has gone from rolling in dough to living pay cheque to pay cheque.

The Lotto Super Seven payout didn’t come with a financial adviser and before she knew it — big house, fancy cars, designer clothes, lavish parties, exotic trips, handouts to family, loans to friends — the money was gone.

“You don’t think it’ll go (at the time), right?” she says.

She’d check her account now and again, but there were always so many zeroes that she figured it was fine — until one day there was just three quarters of a million left.

“And that was time for fun to stop and to just go back to life,” she says.

She’s happier today. Says life has more purpose now than when she was shopping.

She’s working part-time as a personal support worker and raising her six kids in a rented downtown house off Barton and Sherman.

Her husband, Vinny, also 35, has another three kids from a previous relationship.

Asked about how life turned out for them, Vinny shrugs, smoking a cigarette in the doorway of their rented home.

“I lived like this my whole life, I never was rich,” he says. “We grew up like this, so we’re used to it.”

Pretty much all that’s left now is in trust for her kids when they turn 26 — her children will be OK, and that’s what’s important to her.

“The moment I got it, I divided it among my family … all of that other stuff was fun in the beginning, now it’s like … back to life,” she says.

RELATED: The Hamilton Millionaires’ Club

Before her win, Tirabassi had been living in an east Hamilton apartment with her three kids, each one from a different father.

She was Sharon Mentore then — not yet married. She had just landed a job as a personal care provider, fresh off welfare, and couldn’t afford a car.

But on Easter Weekend in April 2004, she literally hit the jackpot and won $10.5 million from a Lotto Super Seven ticket.

For someone who spent her teenage years bouncing around from shelter to shelter, she was unprepared for the millionaire lifestyle. That cheque might as well have been a money tree in the yard — it felt like cash for life.

Suddenly, life was but a dream.

She took friends on wild, all-expenses paid trips to Cancun, Florida, Las Vegas, California, the Caribbean.

She bought a house on West 5th, and she married Vinny.

In 2006, the newlyweds and blended Tirabassi family moved to a massive $515,000 home on Kitty Murray Lane in Ancaster.

Despite cashing a $10.5 million cheque just two years earlier, Tirabassi took out a $360,000 mortgage on the house.

The pair, Vinny says, owned four vehicles: a bright yellow Hummer, a Mustang, a Dodge Charger and a $200,000-plus, souped-up Cadillac Escalade — Tirabassi’s baby.

Her customized licence plate read “BABIPHAT,” after one of her favourite designer clothing lines.

Ancaster neighbours hated that Cadillac. Equipped with interior turntables and sound mixers, it blared hip-hop music in the driveway and shook their quiet suburban street.

Tirabassi didn’t like her neighbours.

“They didn’t like young people,” she says.

Besides the extravagant vehicles, a lot of the cash went to family and friends.

Too much, she admits now.

She gave her parents $1 million.

Another $1.75 million was divided among her four siblings.

She bought several houses in the city, renting them out at affordable rates to families. She said she paid people’s rent. Lent money to help out a friend when her husband went to jail. Helped another two friends start up a business in Toronto.

A lot of friends came out of the woodwork when news broke of her win — and a lot of them she never heard from again.

“Money is the root of all evil,” she says, shaking her head.

Vinny agrees.

“Friends that she hadn’t talked to in a long time came calling.”

“Money doesn’t buy you happiness. It caused her a lot of headaches,” he says.

“She lost a lot of friends, a lot of family.”

By 2007, according to a Spectator interview at the time, Tirabassi had already blown through half of her winnings, and was living off interest from investments on the other $5 million.

Also that year, Vinny crashed the Mustang.

He pleaded guilty to two counts of driving impaired and causing bodily harm. He was sentenced to 18 months in jail plus two years’ probation. And his licence was revoked for five years.

He would serve time again in 2011 after breaching his conditions and driving with a disqualified licence.

In 2008, while he was in jail, the Tirabassis lost the Ancaster house.

From there, they moved to Hagersville, then out west to Edmonton once Vinny was out of jail.

They moved around a lot and today, Hamilton’s penniless millionaires are back downtown, living in a rented house on a quiet industrial street — not far from where she started.

It’s modest, the walls covered in family photos and the odd relic from their flashier days — Michael Jackson memorabilia for her, Maple Leafs memorabilia for him.

They have two cats and a rabbit named Princess.

The Tirabassis are worried about people knowing where they live now. Their win didn’t make them a lot of friends, and they’re worried about being robbed.

“A lot of people do still think she has lots of money,” Vinny said.

Between the two of them, there are nine kids. Three each from previous relationships, and three more together.

The Dodge Charger and the Hummer are nowhere in sight on their new street. She drives a hot pink electric bike these days, when she’s not taking the bus.

The Cadillac’s in storage; it needs work done that she can’t afford right now.

A lot of friends are gone too.

People took advantage of them, didn’t pay them back when they loaned them money.

“(They said) ‘they’ve got enough so they’re OK, right?’” Vinny said.

Hamilton resident Gayle Zolaturiuk accepted a $30-million cheque from the OLG last week, and local convenience store owner Myungsu You is waiting to collect his $16.1 million on March 22.

If the Tirabassis can give Zolaturiuk and You one piece of advice as they collect their wins, it’s to be wary of whom you share it with.

“Try to keep it to yourself. Keep it to yourself and don’t trust anybody but family,” Tirabassi says.

But as she heads to work in her scrubs Wednesday, she says she couldn’t help giving so much away.

“That’s the way I was brought up. Help those who can’t help themselves,” she says with a shrug.

Rather than mourn the millions, she’s concentrating now on raising her kids with those same family values.

“I’m trying to get them to learn that they have to work for money,” Tirabassi says.

“Every so often they ask for money and I say I don’t have any money till payday. You have to wait ’til payday.”

Residents of Lambe area of Ogun state have received an audacious letter from some fearless robbers urging them to give them a welcoming hospitality when they attack their community in the coming days.
The daredevil men of the underworld who described themselves as friends of the community said in the letter written in Yoruba language and pasted conspicuously on many walls on Akin Akindele, Community Road and Jelili Popoola Streets, that they are coming ‘very soon’ and are not afraid of the police or other security agencies.The letter reads, “You residents of this area be prepared to receive your friends very soon. If you like, inform the police or your security men or OPC, you will just lose your lives. What is important is to cooperate with us and to get ready to give us a warm welcome,” the robbers said in the short letter.
“If you like, inform the police or your security men or OPC, you will just lose your lives,” they warned.
The letter ends with these words, “We your friends, robbers”.
Panic and confusion had since enveloped the community with a resident describing Lambe as ‘the playground of armed robbers.’
“Lambe has become the play ground of armed robbers. Incessant robbery attacks have forcedlandlords to flee the area and are now tenants in other places,” he said, pleading that his name should not be mentioned.
Landlords and tenants in the area are so confused that they do not know what to do and are prepared for the worst. Due to fear of the unknown, residents of the community are so scared to talk about the issue.
A resident, who does not want his name disclosed, said he will not inform the police as there might be mass killings.
“Besides, the police and the OPC cannot be trusted because they may be aware of their coming and will not do anything,” he said.
A female resident said her family will relocate from the community this week. She said her family needs money to celebrate Easter, explaining that the residents are worried because of the lack of security in the country.
She revealed that none of the residents wants to talk about it because “the robbers might be living among us.”“ I have warned my husband to stay away from this matter because you do not know who is who in the area, “she said.
Another resident in the community said since they received the letter, most residents do not sleep again at night and the landlords and tenants are afraid to even inform the police or talk about it because those behind the letters could be among them.
According to information made available to DailyPost, one of suspects behind the impudent letterswas arrested in the night at about 1.00 am and handed over to the police at Ajunwo Police Division.
However, efforts to reach the station’s DPO were futile as his phone rang endlessly unanswered.
Source-Dailypost

Figures of Speech: Keys to Effective Communication

Idiom
By John W. Schoenheit

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The ability to communicate with words is one thing that sets mankind apart from all other creatures. God is the Author of language, and no one has ever used language as precisely as God does in the Bible, including His use of figures of speech, of which there are more than 200 varieties in Scripture.[1] When most people say, “a figure of speech,” they are speaking in general terms of something that is not true to fact. However, genuine “figures of speech” are legitimate grammatical and lexical forms that add emphasis and feeling to what we say and write. In the Bible, God uses figures of speech to emphasize things that He wants us to see as important. Many people who read the Bible never think to ask themselves, “How do we know what God wants emphasized in His Word?” God uses figures of speech to put emphasis where He wants emphasis, so it is important that we recognize and properly interpret the figures of speech in the Bible. Knowing the figures of speech God uses in the Bible helps us to understand the true meaning of Scripture and enables us to more fully enjoy its richness.

The figure of speech we are going to study in this issue of The Sower is “idiom.” An idiom is the use of a word or words in a way that is peculiar to a language or group of people in that it has a meaning that cannot be derived from the literal meaning of the word or words. An idiom is a legitimate figure of speech that is used for emphasis, although sometimes the idiom becomes such an imbedded part of the language that it is no longer considered an idiom but becomes an accepted meaning of the word, and the emphasis is lost. Idioms are so common that sometimes it can be hard to communicate without using them. Idioms have to be individually learned because the meaning of the words is not literal, but assigned by the culture.

Every language has thousands of idioms, and some idioms are common enough to human experience that they exist in many cultures. Both the Bible and English, for example, speak of the “face” of the earth despite the fact that the earth has no “face.” There are many idioms in the Bible, and if we are going to understand it, we must understand them. Some idioms in the Bible are individual words or phrases, while some involve the way nouns or verbs are used.

The sun of righteousness
An idiomatic phrase in the Bible is the “sun of righteousness.” God is referred to as “light” in the Bible. It makes perfect sense, then, that the Son of God, who revealed the Father and brought light to the world, would be idiomatically called “the sun of righteousness” and the “sunrise from on High.”

Malachi 4:2
But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. And you will go out and leap like calves released from the stall.[2]
I can remember reading this verse as a new Christian and knowing that it referred to Jesus Christ, but not knowing why he was called the “sun” and not the “son.” The answer is that in the biblical idiom, Jesus was the sun because he brought the light of his Father to the world. Zachariah, the father of John the Baptist, referred to Jesus as the rising sun.

Luke 1:78
because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven

This verse makes no sense if you do not know the idiom. How can the “rising sun” come from heaven? The sun comes from below the horizon and rises up into heaven. However, when we know the idiom, that the “rising sun” is the Messiah, the verse makes perfect sense.

The Prophetic Perfect
An idiom that we of Spirit & Truth Fellowship have spent considerable time writing about is the “prophetic perfect.” In that idiom, a future action that is certain to occur is spoken of in the past tense as if it had already occurred. Doing this emphasizes the certainty of the event happening.[3] For example, speaking of the return of Jesus Christ, the NASB quite literally translates Jude 1:14 as, “the Lord came with many thousands of His holy ones.” Of course saying a future event has already occurred can be confusing to the beginning Bible student. Thus, some translators try to make it easy for the Bible student by translating the verse into English as a present or future tense (cp. the NIV, “the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones).

Hebrew active verbs can express an attempt
The way the Hebrew language views verbs, an active verb does not have to mean the action is accomplished, but only attempted. This seems very strange to the Western mind, and makes some verses confusing.

Exodus 8:16-18 (KJV)
(16) And the LORD said unto Moses, Say unto Aaron, Stretch out thy rod, and smite the dust of the land, that it may become lice throughout all the land of Egypt.
(17) And they did so; for Aaron stretched out his hand with his rod, and smote the dust of the earth, and it became lice…all the dust of the land became lice throughout all the land of Egypt.
(18) And the magicians did so with their enchantments to bring forth lice, but they could not…

The difficulty in the verses above is that the magicians “did so,” but they “could not.” What we need to understand is that the verb “did so” can idiomatically mean, “tried to do so.” The NIV in Exodus 8:18 translates the idiomatic use of the verb right into the verse, making it easier for us: “But when the magicians tried to produce gnats by their secret arts, they could not.” Another example of this idiomatic use of active verbs is in Ezekiel.

Ezekiel 24:13 (KJV):
…because I have purged thee, and thou wast not purged…

The King James Version translates the verbs in a straightforward manner, but it is confusing. How can God purge the people, but they are not purged? The NIV translates the idiomatic use of the verb into the English so we can understand the verse better: “…because I tried to cleanse you but you would not be cleansed…”

Idioms of the language are one reason that simply having a lexicon and concordance will never be enough to fully understand the Bible. At some point we must read and understand the original languages as they were spoken. Thankfully, we have many very good resources such as critical commentaries to help us more completely understand the Bible.