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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