China Watch Blog

China Watch Blog has learnt that Prolexic, the global leader in Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection services, announced that it has issued a number of recommendations that organizations can use to validate their DDoS defenses, as well as protection services they receive from mitigation providers.

“Making sure a provider can actually deliver on the level of service it promises is a critical step that many organizations overlook,” said Stuart Scholly, president at Prolexic. “Mitigation failure is such a common problem that the majority of Prolexic clients came to us after the DDoS protection they had in place did not work.”

Prolexic recommends that organizations work closely with their DDoS mitigation provider(s) to complete a professional, planned provisioning and service validation. The only way to be sure that DDoS protection will be effective is through proactive validation against different types of attack scenarios.

Prolexic recommends the following best practices for DDoS mitigation service testing and validation:

· With the DDoS mitigation service active, verify that all applications are performing properly.

· Verify that all routing and DNS is working.

· In partnership with your mitigation service provider, generate a few gigabits of controlled traffic to validate the alerting, activation and mitigation features of the service.

· Test small levels of traffic without scrubbing and without any DDoS protection to validate that your on-premise monitoring systems are functioning correctly. This action will also help you identify the stress points on your network.

· Conduct baseline testing and calibrate systems to remediate any network vulnerabilities.

· Schedule validation tests on a regular basis (yearly or quarterly) with your DDoS mitigation service provider to validate that the service configuration is still working correctly – and eliminate the risk of network element failures due to DDoS. If network issues arise during testing, your service provider may need to make modifications based on recent changes to your network, such as modified firewall rules, firmware updates and router reconfiguration.

“Based on the test results, Prolexic also recommends developing a mitigation playbook as part of an incident response plan,” said Scholly. “This helps ensure that everyone in the organization knows what to do and what to expect if an attack strikes.”

Additional DDoS service validation recommendations and guidance on how to develop a DDoS mitigation playbook can be found in Prolexic’s latest white paper, “Planning for and Validating a DDoS Defense,” which can be downloaded for a limited time from www.prolexic.com/planning.

China Watch Blog reports that China’s e-commerce economy will grow nearly six times by 2020 as more retailers and vendors tap online shopping to lure consumers.

The e-commerce economy – including online transactions and the e-commerce related service industry and information technology infrastructure – will reach 43.8 trillion yuan (US$7.1 trillion), with the majority made up of enterprise transactions of 33 trillion yuan, according to a Shanghai Daily report.

The value of online retail sales, from individual and enterprise sellers, may reach a combined 10 trillion yuan by 2020, Alibaba Group Research Center said in a report yesterday.

Though e-commerce retail only accounted for 6 percent of China’s overall economy in 2012, the figure is seen to reach 16 percent by 2020 due to its huge growth potential as vendors move to the virtual world to lure shoppers, the report said.

Last year, Alibaba Group’s retail arm Taobao and Tmall recorded more than 1 trillion yuan of sales, 10 times their transaction size in 2008.

China is set to become the world’s largest online market whose size may exceed US$420 billion and rise to US$650 billion annually by 2020, McKinsey&Co said in a report in March this year.

China is home to the world’s largest Internet user base of over 560 million and a younger generation of consumers who shop by clicking their mouse.

China Watch Blog has learnt that a disturbing new type of telecom blackmail has appeared in Shanghai, one that seems to operate through enforcement loopholes of telephone companies and police.

Criminals are using telephone software to make very frequent phone calls to a victim’s cellphone, and threatening to keep it up until they are paid off, the Shanghai Daily reported.

In a recent case, a salesman surnamed Zhang said he received more than 2,000 calls, with a call every one to two minutes over two days, and as soon as he picked up, the call ended, the Shanghai Morning Post reported.

According to a message sent to Zhang, the harassment would stop only if he transferred 500 yuan to a designated bank account.

Zhang called police, but was told the amount of money was too small to file the case, and it is hard to collect evidence as the suspects usually use software and a server outside the city or country to make the calls.

Zhang’s phone service said it could act against only those calling or sending messages using their service.

The harassment started on Friday last week when a call that appeared as “private number” showed up on Zhang’s phone.

“I tried to call back, but the other side hung up right after the call was put through,” Zhang said.

In just 10 minutes, Zhang got 16 such calls. Zhang did not pay the 500 yuan and he received more than 2,000 calls that weekend.

Zhang dared not turn off his phone for fear of missing important calls.

“I think they found my number on the Internet,” Zhang said. “I’m so frustrated. I don’t want to change my number and I’m afraid they are just going to ask for more if I pay.”

“The suspects are very crafty as they asked for only a couple of hundred yuan just to avoid criminal charges,” a police officer said.

The phone company suggested Zhang set up his phone to allow only calls from contacts in his phone, which Zhang said wasn’t a good answer, either.

During the May Day holiday, Zhang turned off his phone and received no more of the calls when he turned it on again. He’s hoping they don’t come back.

China Watch Blog has learnt that a Russian entrepreneur wants to introduce MAT Russian swear words – to the English speaking world and in doing so upset all sense of decency.

MAT is the term used to describe Russian sacral swearwords and the plot is simple yet ingenious. Introduce English speaking people to MAT and encourage them to use these Russian words regularly. The ingenious part of the plot is that very few of their friends and family will know that they are swearing and by using these words individuals will be participating in one of the best stress relieving activities around.

The leader of this plot to infiltrate the English language and scandalize Americans is Sergey Yanchevskiy. According to Yanchevskiy there is pure healing magic in properly shaped sacral swearwords, especially Russian language swear words. Yanchevskiy and his team are planning to gather the most effective Russian swear words into one book and then deliver these MAT guides to libraries throughout the United States.

Their diabolical scheme is to introduce as many Americans as possible to the healing power of MAT and they won’t rest until they can walk any street in the country and hear these Russian swear words being expressed on a regular basis.

In essence, the goal of Yanchevskiy’s project is to undermine conventional norms by making swearing more acceptable. Using Russian, a language few Americans know is the perfect way to allow people to swear without obviously offending anyone. It’s scandalous, it’s ingenious and it just might work.

Drawing on recent studies by some of the top researchers Yanchevskiy is testing out the new theory that getting made and yelling out swear words is healthy and in fact can have a healing effect. Researchers are now learning that getting angry every now and then and relieving stress by shouting a few swear words can actually help people cope with daily life in a more effective manner.

Of course there is always the problem of the social stigma of swearing but one can only be offended if they are aware that a swear word has been uttered. That’s where Russian MAT comes in. Like a covert operation, Yanchevskiy and his colleagues will infiltrate the English language and offer people the chance to curse to their hearts content with few people understanding what they are saying.

Yanchevskiy argues that Russian MAT is more effective at helping people cope with stress because of the way the Russian words are structured and how they sound. Forcefully pronouncing the Russian words correctly leads to the maximum stress relieve for those who say them.

Yanchevskiy is currently in the early stages of developing his book and is offering the average person the chance to take part in making the book a great success. He has teamed with Indiegogo.com to fund this project. The partnership with Indiegogo let’s Yanchevskiy enlist many different people in his subversive plot to infiltrate the English language and bring Russian MAT to the masses.

China Watch Blog has learnt that one billion tourists have traveled internationally in 2012 according to the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), the United Nations specialized agency for sustainable tourism.

This is equivalent to one in every seven people on the planet traveling the world in 2012, up from just 25 million in 1950.

The figure establishes tourism as one of the world’s largest and fastest growing economic sectors, accounting for:

· 9% of global GDP (direct, indirect and induced)

· 1 in every 12 jobs worldwide (direct, indirect and induced)

· US$ 1.2 trillion in exports a year

· 6% of world trade

· 8% of the exports of least developed countries

For developing countries, tourism brings much needed foreign exchange and investment. Tourism has also proven an extremely resilient sector, despite uncertain economic conditions, and is key to supporting the global economy in the current challenging times.

UNWTO forecasts point to the one-billionth tourist arriving somewhere in the world in December. UNWTO has chosen 13 December as the symbolic arrival date of the one-billionth tourist.

To celebrate, UNWTO has been running a global campaign to raise awareness of the power of one billion tourists to affect positive change by making small changes to their travel behaviour. The campaign, One Billion Tourists: One Billion Opportunities, calls on the one billion tourists to make their actions count by saving water and energy, using public transport, protecting heritage and more.

China Watch Blog reports that Teligistics has surpassed the $7 billion mark in total contract value procured on behalf of client companies since its founding in 1997.

Referring to this significant milestone, Dave Roberts, CEO and founder of Teligistics, says “We are undoubtedly the leading source for large enterprise procurement of complex global voice, data and technology related contracts.

“We continue to win for our clients ‘Best in Class’ contracts because we have the technology, subject domain expertise, experience and the market data necessary to deliver outstanding results.”

Teligistics launched the proprietary and ground-breaking online eProcurement tool branded as Telibid™ in 2011. This web-based sourcing tool allows enterprises to publish an RFP (request for pricing/proposal) online via customizable telecom templates for all categories of telecom services (wireless/mobility, local, long distance, audio/web conferencing, MPLS, Managed Services, Internet access and more). Telibid includes an optional state-of-the-art reverse auction format.

Roberts continues “Telibid is the next generation of sourcing tools for enterprise-level telecom users. The design was based on the subject matter expertise we have assembled from sourcing thousands of large and complex global telecom contracts. Our methodology for analyzing telecom provider rate plans, for which we received a U.S. Patent in 2005, is the basis for the financial analysis reports that are created from the RFP bidder responses. Teligistics clearly continues to be the market leader for this type of in-depth analysis.”

Roberts adds, “Despite the fact that the cost of technology and communications services generally go down over time, most large organizations are faced with ballooning telecom budgets but can’t figure out why. This is generally due to the fact that the average telecom cost per employees is exploding with the primary culprit being wireless mobility. The rate of telecom consumption is outpacing the natural downward trend of technology in the marketplace. The rate of increase in telecom costs per employee is only second to employee healthcare.”

Founded in 1997, Teligistics is a closely-held private Texas corporation and the leading provider of enterprise-level telecom cost control solution tools in the United States. Sourcing of large telecom contracts continues to be a core-competency of the firm, serving many Fortune® 1000 clients. Teligistics also provides client solutions in TEM (Telecom Expense Management) through its proprietary TEAM™ (telecom expense & asset management) platform for auditing, allocating and processing of telecom invoices for client companies. eMobilegistics™ manages thousands of mobile/wireless devices for client companies.

China Watch Blog reports that Hutchison’s comments to the Commission’s Statement of Objections on Sept 21.

“Instead of opposing the merger of the two smallest operators in Austria, the Commission should allow it to proceed and facilitate the entry of new, competitive MVNO players in the Austrian market”. Canning Fok, Group Managing Director, Hutchison Whampoa Limited

As anticipated last week, the Commission has now issued a Statement of Objections with respect to H3G’s acquisition of Orange Austria. We are analysing the Statement and will be responding to the Commission’s objections.

In our view, the approach taken by the Commission in this case is wrong and fails to sufficiently reflect the market realities in Austria.

The Commission’s assumption that a reduction in the number of operators in Austria from 4 to 3 will materially reduce competition is ill-founded. H3G has every incentive to continue to compete aggressively as the unquestioned challenger in the market, as it has since launching its business in Austria and elsewhere in Europe.

While we understand that the Commission may have serious concerns about the reduction from 4 to 3 operators in much larger markets such as Germany, Spain or the UK, it is wrong to apply this logic in a much smaller market such as Austria. With a population of 8 million people, scale and satisfactory returns on network investments are difficult to achieve, particularly for a new entrant challenger such as H3G.

It is also unprecedented to engage in a Phase 2 extensive scrutiny of a merger involving the two smallest operators in a market with a combined market share of only 22%.

Post-merger, we are aiming to achieve a market share of 30% by 2015. The merger will give H3G the means and scale it needs to compete against the two dominant incumbent operators who hold a combined 78% of the market.

It has taken H3G more than 10 years to reach a market share of 10%. Absent the merger, our 30% market share target will be a distant goal. With the merger, we can accelerate our business plan with early LTE roll-out, the offer of new products and technology and aggressive pricing.

The merger will therefore benefit consumers with a combined entity better able to mount a more effective competitive challenge against the incumbents. It will also ensure the investment needed to guarantee early LTE roll-out, better network coverage, higher speeds and less network congestion.

The Commission’s preliminary conclusion that this merger will reduce competition ignores these obvious pro-competitive effects and is wrong. Rather, the merger will ensure sustainable competition in Austria for the longer term.

The Commission has recently said that consolidation in the telecoms field can be beneficial if it increases efficiency, emphasizing cross-border consolidation. It is wrong, however, to assume that only cross-border consolidation can achieve efficiencies.

It is widely recognised that the main source of efficiencies is the in-country consolidation of operations, including network, sales, marketing and administrative functions. The combination of H3G and Orange does exactly that.

H3G’s offer of remedies: In an effort to achieve a speedy approval of the merger (and despite our view that the merger results in compelling pro-competitive effects), we have engaged in detailed remedy discussions with the Commission. As previously indicated, we made a very favourable and comprehensive MVNO access offer to all comers that will introduce new and effective competition in the Austrian market. The terms we have offered are extremely attractive and unmatched in Europe and will ensure that Austrian consumers benefit from a choice of new and competitive mobile services in all segments of the market (voice, data, prepaid and postpaid).

Our offer has already been endorsed by two substantial market players, and we are in active discussions with a number of others.

Instead of opposing the merger of the two smallest operators in Austria on the basis of its 4 to 3 concerns, the Commission should allow it to proceed and facilitate the entry of new, competitive MVNO players in the Austrian market. Our MVNO offer creates the favourable conditions for that to happen. This, rather than a rejection of the merger, will ensure a pro-competitive outcome for Austria.

The Commission should also take into account, and be concerned with, H3G’s own ability to compete post-merger. The intensity and effectiveness of our continuing competitive challenge will depend largely on the means at H3G’s disposal to continue to drive the market with a better network and attractive pricing. Additional structural remedies or economic commitments imposed on H3G by the Commission mean adding adverse economic burdens on H3G, the smallest player in the market. That will only undermine H3G’s ability to be an effective competitor, to the detriment of Austrian consumers and the Austrian economy.

We will detail these and other points in our response to the Commission’s Statement of Objections and are hopeful that we can convince the Commission of the pro-competitive benefits of the proposed merger. We will continue to work with the Commission in order to achieve a positive outcome, Hutchison Whampoa’s statement said.

China Watch Blog reports that evidence shows that the current model effectively promotes Internet growth and access in developing countries, and argues that any fundamental regulatory overhaul could halt such growth and find users cut off.

A new report released by Analysys Mason, global telecoms, media and technology (TMT) specialists, finds that recent proposals to regulate the global Internet will harm growth and innovation worldwide.

After assessing the current state of the Internet in under-served and developing regions worldwide, the report provides recommendations for governments on developing a robust Internet ecosystem without imposing any form of rate regimes on the modern Internet.

The report, ‘Internet global growth: lessons for the future’, authored by Michael Kende, co-head of Regulation at Analysys Mason, examines the impact of proposals that seek to apply the antiquated settlement system for terminating international voice calls over the legacy telecommunications network to Internet traffic.

The proposals addressed in the paper are to the International Telecommunications Regulations (ITRs), which are being readied for the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) to be held in Dubai this December by the United Nations’ International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

In the report, Kende assesses the proposals by focusing on the following areas:
• the success and growth of the Internet under the current model
• the negative impact of applying rate models developed for an obsolete telecoms system to the modern Internet

Kende concludes with recommendations for governments in developing countries on fostering a robust Internet while avoiding rate regulations.

The report highlights the Internet as a driver for growth and opportunity, noting its increasingly central role to consumers, businesses and governments alike.

Kende argues that the Internet has successfully evolved based on commercial considerations as opposed to regulatory dictates, noting that: “Content has transformed from largely text-based to multimedia delivery, global demand and usage has exploded, and access has moved toward wireless over wired.

“Significant investments must continue to occur in response to these patterns, as current projections show that the number of Internet users worldwide will increase from 2.2 billion today to 3.5 billion in 2020”.

The report confirms the continuing increase in Internet deployment using mobile broadband throughout the entire world, especially in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and that such investments are best achieved without internationally sanctioned regulatory intervention.

Multimedia content requires high bandwidth and can be expensive to deliver, but it is estimated that up to 98% of Internet traffic now consists of content that can be stored on servers, such as streaming video or web pages. These servers can be located in multiple locations around the world, and then delivered to users faster and at lower cost.

The result is a shift in usage patterns and global Internet traffic flows. For example, 70% of international Internet bandwidth originating in Africa went to the USA in 1999, but by 2011 this figure had plunged to less than 5% as bandwidth shifted to Europe. Now, content is increasingly being stored on servers in Africa, where it can be accessed domestically or regionally.

These changes in content flows highlight significant differences between the Internet and traditional telecoms as it existed when the ITR treaty was last updated in 1988. Applying unwarranted static voice regulations to the dynamic Internet would negatively impact users across the globe and slow or reverse current growth trends.

Furthermore, the rate regime system would be difficult to design and expensive to implement, and even then would increase the cost of content delivery and hinder network investment at the expense of end users.

Lastly, the report offers recommendations for governments in developing countries on cultivating a robust Internet ecosystem without imposing any form of accounting rates on the Internet. Specific suggestions include removing roadblocks to investment while stimulating demand, as well as full liberalisation of the sector while removing barriers to foreign investment and ownership.
“Spurring access and adoption of the Internet has the ability to transform and improve entire economies, and no one stands to gain more than those in developing nations,” added Kende. “Applying a settlement regime as some countries are proposing is a solution in search of a problem, which would ultimately slow Internet penetration and the availability of content.”

China Watch Blog has learnt that a two-year ST-EP project developing community-based tourism in the province of Tapoa, Burkina Faso, has recently been completed.

A UNWTO Volunteer worked for 13 months in the project area and today there are 20 trails, totaling 4 km in length, which have been added to the three circuits of the Gobnangou cliffs, managed by the Bialia Guides Association, for trekking and the observation of colonies of Rüppel’s vultures and Lanner falcons that inhabit the area.

Thanks to the project, all necessary equipment and training was provided by UNWTO and its partners to set-up a community-based campsite in the village of Tambaga.

Situated near the cross-border W Park, the Arly Park and other notable sites such as the Gobnangou cliffs and the ancestral ruins of Yobri village, the campsite is currently included among the tourism circuits offered by travel agencies of Ouagadougou which promote responsible tourism in Burkina Faso.

The project in Burkina Faso is part of a larger tri-national project on sustainable tourism development in Regional Park W, financed by the Italian Government and covering also activities in Benin and Niger.

In addition, synergies have been created with another ST-EP project in Park W, titled Development of Birdwatching Tourism at Regional Park W, which is implemented thanks to a contribution from the Ramsar Swiss Fund for Africa.

In December 2011, the birdwatching project provided training on ornithological tourism to fifteen guides and five forest agents from the three countries. The guides and forest agents were trained in the identification of different species of birds and in tour guiding skills, and were provided with binoculars and field guides on West African birds. A related awareness-raising activity among local populations and actors regarding the issues of protecting and conserving plant and animal biodiversity is currently underway.

The two-year ST-EP project is a reality today thanks to financing by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The project, titled Sustainable Development of Tourism in the District of Tambaga, has been executed in close collaboration with the Italian NGO, Association for Rural Cooperation in Africa and Latin America (ACRA), which is assisting rural communities in Tapoa to develop ecotourism.

China Watch Blog has learnt that Shelly Palmer put out this alert that satirical newspaper The Onion recently described Facebook as a project of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

“After years of secretly monitoring the public, we were astounded,” a fictional agency deputy director told Congress. He was happy that Facebook users voluntarily post “alphabetized lists of all their friends” and “even status updates about what they were doing moment to moment”. It is, he concluded, “truly a dream come true for the CIA”.

The scenario is not that far from the truth. Facebook has close to a billion users, many of whom post daily updates on their thoughts and feelings. The same thing happens on Twitter. Foursquare users share information about their location. Commentators on news sites express opinions and outrage. And, as a New Scientist review of procurement requests shows, the US government is keen to take advantage of what amounts to a society of self-surveillance.

In a way, they are behind the curve – marketing firms already monitor social networks to gauge public reaction to product launches. And online chatter can be analysed to forecast election results, for example. US federal agencies want to harness these techniques in an attempt to gauge overseas opinion about America, or even get hints on how to head off terrorist activity.

With these aims in mind, officials at the Department of State issued a procurement notice on 1 June asking software developers to submit bids for a contract to supply tools that provide “deep analysis of topics, conversations, networks, and influencers of the global social web”.

These tools will analyse conversations taking place in at least seven foreign languages, including Chinese and Arabic.

Once the bids are in, the software systems will undergo a six-month trial in which they will examine online reaction to a specific event, such as a talk given by a US ambassador.

The military is even further along with such plans. In 2007, the US air force awarded defence giant Lockheed Martin a $27 million contract to develop the Web Information Spread Data Operations Module, or WISDOM, which analyses posts made to news forums, blogs and social media.

Military analysts are already using it to monitor Central and South America and the Pacific region. Lockheed Martin is now upgrading WISDOM with a $9 million contract from the navy, which wants to “understand the latest regional trends and sentiment and predict threats from groups and individuals”.

Other departments have similar plans – the FBI is talking to software vendors, and the Department of Homeland Security already has a monitoring system up and running.

How might such monitoring affect our online behaviour?

Imagine reading an article about US government policies and then wanting to post an angry comment. Would you pause if you knew the government would collect and store your comment and username? “This prevents people from speaking their minds,” says Ginger McCall of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington DC.

“It quells dissent.” One would hope government officials had such concerns in mind. It is difficult to say, however, because repeated attempts by New Scientist to obtain comments from the Department of State were met with silence.

One would hope government officials had such concerns in mind. It is difficult to say, however, because repeated attempts by New Scientist to obtain comments from the Department of State were met with silence.