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Hacking attacks against organisations promoting democracy in Hong Kong were run using the same infrastructure previously linked to Chinese cyber-espionage attacks, according to new research from security firm FireEye.

Sites promoting the Occupy Central Pro Democracy movement, including Next Medias Apple Daily publication and the HKGolden forum, have been hit by DDoS attacks.

The assaults against Next Medias Apple Daily "brought down its email system for hours" as well as affecting its website.

The use of DDoS attacks as a political tool during times of conflict is not new; patriotic hacktivist groups frequently use them as a means to stifle rival political groups. The apparent objective of these DDoS attacks is to silence free speech and suppress the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong. The Chinese government is therefore an obvious suspect.

In the case of Hong Kong, FireEye discovered "an overlap in the tools and infrastructure used by China-based advanced persistent threat (APT) actors and the DDoS attack activity" against the Hong Kong protest movement.

FireEye reports that DDoS attacks against the Pro-Democracy Movement using the KernelBot network. Samples of malware powering these attacks are signed with digital certificates linked to previously observed APT activity, including Operation Poisoned Hurricane, according to FireEye.

The QTI International and CallTogether code signing certificates, previously seen in malware attributed to APT activity, have cropped up in malicious code used in other attacks targeting the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong. For example, malicious JavaScript inserted into the Hong Kong Association for Democracy and People's Livelihood website featured the QTI certificate.

More recently, as noted by security researcher Claudio Guarnieri, the website of the Democratic Party of Hong Kong hosted a redirect to the same malicious JavaScript.

All this tool and infrastructure sharing points to links between pro-Beijing hacktivists and state-sponsored groups focused on IP theft and cyber-espionage. It's evidence of collusion but far from definitive, according to FireEye.

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Pro-democracy Hong Kong sites DDoS'd with Chinese cyber-toolkit

Direct Democracy classically termed pure democracy
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By: Lord fec6

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Direct Democracy classically termed pure democracy - Video

The End of Universal Democracy: The Cameron Cowan Show
Universal Democracy http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/27/opinion/david-brooks-is-america-losing-faith-in-universal-democracy.html?

By: Cameron Cowan

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The End of Universal Democracy: The Cameron Cowan Show - Video

Video 01 DDF Introduction to the Direct Democracy Forum
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Video 01 DDF Introduction to the Direct Democracy Forum - Video

Democracy is a lovely word. It evokes images of civil rights marchers singing We Shall Overcome in Birmingham, Ala. It is 10,000 keys jingling the message of Its time in Pragues Wenceslas Square 25 years ago. It is the delighted faces of Afghans and Iraqis holding up ink-stained fingers and the brief springtime of hope in Cairo.

Any serious system of democracy, however, has another word attached to it that is crucial to its success but is much less evocative, a word that is at best workmanlike and more likely to be accompanied by a shrug or an ugh than the thrill of human aspiration. That word is representative.

Buzzkill, right? And yet whatever you think of the political class, it is necessary to make democracy function. Even if advances in digital technology could take out these middlemen, elected officials would still be needed to counter the very real problem of tyranny of the majority. More than that, representative democracies, as James Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers, refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of the nation.

Representatives today are more often seen as bickering and inflexible than wise and discerning. Why the lack of love? Maybe because we know too much about them. A democracy requires public officials to live in the public eye, which was fine in the days before 24/7 media. The always-on spotlight, however, has burned away the privacy needed for representatives to consult one other, to blue-sky ideas, make deals, and compromise for the good of the nation and not just their own political survival or their partys advantage. Add to that the political expedient especially for members of the US House to stay close to constituents, fundraisers, and party purists, and you have a system that is broken.

The Monitor recently asked five experts how to fix the Congress. If there is a common theme in what these five (former Senate majority leaders Tom Daschle and Trent Lott, former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, Sarah Binder of the Brookings Institution and The George Mason University, and Jason Grumet, author of City of Rivals: Restoring the Glorious Mess of American Democracy) recommend it is that representatives be given space space away from the spotlight, space to do business, space free from relentless campaigning and opposition gotchas, space to make Capitol Hill their workplace and not just a base they tag once a week. (You can read what they say by clicking here.)

No one is calling for a return of the smoke-filled backroom or machine politics. Lets just acknowledge that the humans we elect need the latitude to do their jobs with some degree of privacy, just as you and I need when we are noodling with ideas and weighing what can be done against what we wish could be done. Lets acknowledge that a wise nation honors its human representatives as much as its democratic ideals.

John Yemma is editor-at-large of the Monitor. He can be reached at yemma@csmonitor.com.

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Giving our representatives room