Chinese hackers hitting many more places than Japan

TAIPEI — Computer networks of the Diet and Japan's largest defense contractor have been attacked by alleged Chinese hackers, but Japan is not the only target in the region.



Taiwan has long been a key target of such attacks, especially from China. The attacks began in 1999 after then President Lee Teng-hui upset Beijing by saying negotiations between the two sides should be conducted on a "special state-to-state" basis.
Since then Chinese hackers claimed to have launched more than 100,000 attacks on Taiwanese government websites.
These claims could not be confirmed until 2001 when evidence surfaced that attacks on Taiwanese websites originated in China.
In 2003, Taipei finally accused China of waging systematic cyberwarfare across the strait, and formed a Cabinet-level task force under the Defense Ministry to counter these attacks.
A top Taiwanese official in charge of information security said recently that China has some 900,000 hackers with "close ties to the Chinese government or military."
Among them, about 70,000 to 80,000 are in the military or law enforcement agencies, while 500,000 to 600,000 others are civilians organized like military units who are rewarded for their online forays.
The official said another source of hacking is Huawei Shenzhen Technology Co., China's top networking firm and the world's second-largest Internet infrastructure provider.
Founded in 1988, the company was established by a former director of military telecommunications research for the People's Liberation Army (PLA).
A study by the RAND Corp. in 2006 indicated Huawei maintains close ties with the Chinese military, which "serves a multifaceted role as an important customer, as well as Huawei's political patron and research and development partner."
Chinese cyberwarfare is not limited to computer hacking.
In what some describe as the worst security breach in half a decade, a Taiwanese court recently sentenced the former head of electronic communications in Taiwan's army command center, Gen. Lo Hsien-che, to life in prison for selling secrets to the Chinese.
Lo was recruited by Chinese agents who sought to augment hacking with more traditional forms of espionage, encouraging betrayal in the enemy's ranks using money and blackmail.
Elsewhere in the world, suspected Chinese hackers have regularly defaced U.S. political and military websites and staged coordinated attacks on NATO computers.
Civilian entities have also been attacked in the United States, with Google announcing in 2010 it had detected a "highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google."
President Barack Obama, unlike his processor, has made protection of the nation's networks and computers a national security priority, and recently set up a military cybercommand.
According to a Pentagon report, China has developed ways to infiltrate and manipulate computer networks around the world in what U.S. defense officials conclude is a new and potentially dangerous military capability.
The report says computer network intrusions at the Pentagon and other U.S. agencies, think tanks and government contractors "appeared to originate" in China, a claim Beijing categorically denied.
Britain and Germany are fighting similar battles.
Britain's cybersecurity chief, Maj. Gen. Jonathan Shaw, warned Thursday that foreign hackers are stealing valuable commercial information from British companies.
"The biggest threat to this country by cyber is not military, it is economic," he said, adding that China poses the biggest threat.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel's visit to China in 2007 was marred by news that computers at the German Chancellery and ministries had been infected with Trojan horse spy programs from China.
Premier Wen Jiabao assured her that measures would be taken to "rule out hacking attacks," though developing the military potential of cyberspace has been a PLA priority for at least a decade.
No country is invulnerable, as was made clear by this summer's attacks on Japan, which until recently has not been targeted as extensively as Taiwan and Western powers.
Like Japanese technology giant Sony, which fell victim to a serious breach of its security earlier this year, observers say Tokyo cannot afford to be caught unprepared.

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