We should never take up arms for a thread that has no human casualties, especially when there are alternatives.
If your neighbour enter your home uninvited, because the door is not locked, the first thing you do is ask nicely not to do that. The next thing you do is lock the door. You don't start shooting at them first ...
So if a government shut down US airports for 72 hours but resulting in no loss of life, should we just sit back and do nothing? A risk to human life isn't the only threshold that determines retaliation. A risk to economic activity is just as provocative as physical violence. How about if they attacked the power grid? A huge number of companies's businesses depend on services like github. Do we just hold hands and choose to pray for a solution or do we hit the perpetrators in the gut? If the Chinese are behind it, we should immediately start seizing their US assets until such time as they put an end to the nonsense. If the Chinese can thwart Google, they sure as hell have the means to stop a cyber attack from their soil: even if they are directly the ones doing it. Alternatively, their cables could be cut (there are only about 7 that connect China with the outside Internet.) if someone is spraying you with a firehouse, cutting off their water supply is a just and reasonable response.
I don't think they're breaking into their system at all. They're just abusing a public interface on their sight. A more apt analogy would be repeatedly calling their phone, or ringing their doorbell nonstop. Your analogy implies they are destroying GitHub's property, which they aren't.
Bit further than that. They're crowding your front porch with the explicit purpose of preventing any of your friends, family or customers actually getting to your front door. I think the intent is important to note. It's not a child who likes the sound of a doorbell, but an adult employed to achieve a very negative outcome.
I wouldn't be averse to depth charging a fiber optic cable (more specifically - damaging their ability to operate the great firewall) so long as there are no human casualties. Even better if it could be done without disrupting Chinese Internet.
Unfortunately, most people's response would be "What's a GitHub"?
I was addressing the assertion that this is the first time China attacked the U.S. Whether or not the U.S. reciprocates is off-topic, but to answer your question: I don't know about any evidence that would suggest the U.S. reciprocates.
I'd say cut the internet trunk lines to China... period.. end of story. That would seem to be an appropriate response. Blacklist China's internet traffic completely.
@vacri, can't reply directly to you... but here goes.
If China was loading missiles into cargo ships that fire at northern california, we wouldn't continue to let ships enter/leave China. As to the debt that China owns, they're already in a position of playing games with currency and resources to assert a dominant position.
Eventually you have to stand up for yourself. As to the do-dad manufacture costs, well I think we'd be okay if we had to go a couple years without any new do-dads.
