![How human voice matters in the Chinese political discussion on Clubhouse The following post is the second part of a Chinese feature report on the Chinese political discussions on Clubhouse in early February 2021 published on Stand News on February 12. The English version is translated by Neris Jonathan and published on Global Voices under a content partnership agreement. You can read the first part here. The most distinctive attribution about Clubhouse in comparison with other social media is its audio medium. Jane Wong was the first Hong Kong-based IT engineer invited to Clubhouse during the trial period. She explained that when she first joined the platform, it was basically made up of tech workers from Silicon Valley and used by some small circle of celebrities to talk about their start-up experience. Only by February 2021, it had become popular in Hong Kong. She highlighted the platform’s audio character when commenting about its popularity: Audio communication generates a sense of authenticity and people are more willing to discuss in an orderly manner… Audio communication makes you realize that on the other side of the screen, there is a real person speaking. It generates a sense of intimacy. Hence, people are very respectful when speaking and seldom argue. Charles, the host of Xinjiang chatroom, agreed: One would not face any consequence using text as medium as they were hiding behind the screen; however, if thousands of people hear one’s voice and the speech was hurtful and indecent, others will react instantly. Zhang Jiaping, a prominent journalist and founder of community content platform, Matters, also pointed out that audio communication has recovered the warmth in actual human communication: People’s accents, the slang they used, the speed at which they were speaking, the breaks they took to breathe – all these details were concealed in written texts. Within the three days before Clubhouse was blocked, Zhang Jieping only slept for about three to four hours, during the rest of the time she was mostly plugging into Clubhouse. She was attracted to one particular voice which came from an official from the village community committee up in the mountains of Hubei province (Mainland China). He was sharing what he had learnt and how shocked he felt upon listening to the discussions in the “Xinjiang room” and the “Tiananmen incident room”: [His voice] it was so authentic…his accent and the way he spoke was not like that of the city folks we hear all the time, his voice was very touching. He was speaking from his heart. A Taiwanese writer who happened in the same discussion room said it felt like watching one of Jiang Zhanghe’s movies [on China rural grassroot community] when he heard the man’s voice. Zhang believes that Clubhouse will bring a paradigm shift in the development of social media and that text-based social interaction on the Internet would transform into audio based communication: Perhaps Clubhouse will mark the beginning of the audio social network community… The main medium for our social interaction has always been our voices. The fact that we have shifted to use text for our communication is due to the technological restriction of the Internet…. the popular use of SMS and emoji in all these years has reflected that text based communication is nothing natural. She believed that the shift to audio will further lower the threshold of communication – people who don’t know how to write or who find it difficult to express through writing can participate in public discussion: Whenever the breakthrough of communication technology could bring along the lowering of threshold in communication, it could always unleash people’s creativity that couldn’t have ever imagined. Similar to Jane Wong, Zhang also observed how audio had generated a new communication order: Sound is linear, unlike written text with which we can read ten lines at a glance. In Clubhouse, the participants can only listen to one person at a time to effectively receive the message. Very naturally people have to speak one after another. Everyone has to wait for their turn to speak and the rule is embedded in the medium. She noticed that usually for those who jumped the queue to speak, they were usually bad speakers. On the contrary, those who waited patiently for their turn were usually rather open-minded and that regardless of their opinions, they would express themselves in a respectful manner. However, after Clubhouse was blocked in China, the intimacy in political discussion on Clubhouse was also affected. Zhang said: I wasn’t as hooked as I previously was after Clubhouse was blocked in China, I couldn’t listen to the voices I wanted to listen to. The voices that Zhang treasured was the shocking utterance of ordinary people when they first heard about what happened in Xinjiang and in Tiananmen Square. You could hear the shock from their voices that they were hearing these things for the first time. Regardless of their opinions, whether they defended against or denied or accepted what they had heard, you could definitely tell from their voices that they were shocked and confused about the reality that they had imagined. In my opinion, these moments are invaluable. The discussion has shaken their belief system, this is what we call communication. On the other hand, many people from Taiwan and Hong Kong said that for the first time they had the chance to hear such authentic voices coming from ordinary mainland Chinese people, which is far different from the kind of stereotypical Chinese people that they usually think of… But there will be less moments like these now that Clubhouse is blocked in Mainland China. More frequently she heard ‘don’t try to fool us, I also had overseas living experience.’ Despite the block, Zhang believed that the paradigm shift from text to audio social media communication has started and Clubhouse is just the beginning.](https://technologytimes.pk/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Exchange-Server-Check-For-Chinese-Spies-In-Your-System-White-House.png)
Data Raids Against On-Premises Microsoft Exchange Server Setups By The Chinese State-Linked Group Hafnium Have Been Much More Extensive.
Last week Microsoft warned that four zero-day exploits affecting its mail server tech were being actively exploited by Hafnium, a previously identified “nation state” level threat group believed to have links to the People’s Republic of China. Microsoft’s initial assessment suggested that raids so far had affected a “limited” number of companies using its Exchange Server products.
However reports over the weekend suggest that this was a very optimistic view. Sources told independent security expert Brian Krebs that “at least 30,000 organisations” across the US have been successfully hacked. Separately, Reuters reports that more than 20,000 US organisations have been compromised via the Exchange Server zero-days. Worldwide the number is likely to be much higher, with Krebs suggesting that the global total is likely to top 100,000.
The White House press office joined the chorus of warnings, stating that the Microsoft Exchange hack is “an active threat” and urging government departments, the private sector and academia to patch their on-premises exchange servers. Exchange Online is not believed to be affected. The US National Security Council (NSC) warned that CIOs and CISOs should not just patch and relax, tweeting:
If the new estimates are correct, the scale of the attack has already exceeded that of the recent SolarWinds hack, in which a tainted software update gave suspected Russian nation-state hackers remote access to large numbers of targeted networks. Microsoft says that the two attacks are not connected. Andy Miles, chief information security officer at cybersecurity firm Quantum Resilience, told Verdict that “on the balance of probabilities” UK organisations must also have been compromised.
Telemetry data from cybersecurity firm ESET indicates the majority of attacks are against US organisations, with 267 observed attacks. Germany was a distant second with 25. “Several” cyber-espionage groups have been exploiting the Exchange vulnerabilities, ESET added. While Microsoft has rolled out patches for the four Exchange critical vulnerabilities, as the NSC points out, installing the security updates does not remove threat actors that have already compromised the network – or undo any damage that might have already been done.
Once Hafnium compromises its victims’ servers it deploys a web shell, a malicious interface that gives hackers the ability to steal data or install malicious software. This software could give Hafnium complete remote control over affected systems. The Hafnium hackers have been observed stealing files and emails from affected companies, as well as installing connections to a remote server.
The NSC says that it is “essential” for organisations to search for indications that Hafnium was inside the network. Microsoft has published a script which can be used to scan for signs of such intrusions. Chris Krebs, former head of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure and Security Agency, said via Twitter that the Exchange Server hack is “the real deal”.
He added: “If your organisation runs an [Outlook Web Access] server exposed to the internet, assume compromise” between 26 February and 3 March. The Exchange Server attacks started as early as 6 January 2021 but the Chinese espionage group appears to have stepped up its efforts in the last few days.
News of the Exchange Server hack came in the same week that Microsoft announced it is opening a new Azure cloud region in China. Under China’s National Intelligence Law, businesses operating in the territory must cooperate with state intelligence services, which means the Chinese state would not need to resort to hacking to gain access to data stored on those servers.
This news was originally published at Verdict.