China calls US the 'real hacking empire' after Pentagon report

Click banner for more info

China on Wednesday accused the United States of sowing discord between China and its neighbours after the Pentagon said Beijing is using espionage to fuel its military modernisation, branding Washington the "real hacking empire".
The latest salvo came a day after China's foreign ministry dismissed as groundless a Pentagon report which accused China for the first time of trying to break into U.S. defense computer networks.
The Pentagon also cited progress in Beijing's effort to develop advanced-technology stealth aircraft and build an aircraft carrier fleet to project power further offshore.


The People's Liberation Army Daily called the report a "gross interference in China's internal affairs".
"Promoting the 'China military threat theory' can sow discord between China and other countries, especially its relationship with its neighbouring countries, to contain China and profit from it," the newspaper said in a commentary that was carried on China's Defence Ministry's website.
The United States is "trumpeting China's military threat to promote its domestic interests groups and arms dealers", the newspaper said, adding that it expects "U.S. arms manufacturers are gearing up to start counting their money".

The remarks in the newspaper underscore the escalating mistrust between China and the United States over hacking, now a top point of contention between Washington and Beijing.
Voice of Russia, Reuters

US accuses China of targeting Government computers as part of a cyber espionage campaign

The United States has accused China of targeting U.S. Government computers as part of a cyber espionage campaign, that’s according to BBC quoting the Pentagon’s annual report. This is the first time the Pentagon directly linked China’s cyber spying to the Beijing Government. It says cyber intrusions, focused on collecting intelligence on U.S. diplomatic, economic and defense sectors, which could benefit China’s own defense program.

To discuss this in more details Voice of Russia joined on the phone by Andrey Komarov – Head of International Projects of Group IB (digital forensics company).
Hello Andrey! Thanks for joining us. The US has accused, as you’ve heard, the Chinese Government and military of being involved in cyber attacks against America. Does this mean that today it is sort of impossible to conceal the source of attacks?  It’s quite a problematical question because the sphere of cyber warfare and cyber intelligence right now is not absolutely transparent. That’s why there is no opportunity to 100% confirm that China was really involved into that incident.

Several months ago the American-based company called Mandiant published an analytical report on malware and special cyber espionage campaign by China called APT1. There are some strange things in it that the Chinese specialists published their own IP address, which is very strange, because if that operation was really serious – no one would do such a thing to easily find them and disclose the geographical position of the source of the attack. So, personally, I have several questions to it.
Does that mean that there is no proof? Or it means that actually, even if the US is saying that, they cannot be 100% sure it comes from China?

Yes, you are right because there is no opportunity to confirm it. I can say that according to some special sources like Honeypot Project, it is a special project which monitors the net and the Internet on the presence of cyber attacks, more than 10 000 of attacks per day are going from China.
But you need to understand that it could be not the Chinese people or their army involved in it, it could be cyber criminals from all over the world using their address base for anonymity and other purposes.
And in general, can we say that the Chinese are getting more technologically advanced, so to speak?
Yes, I can say that the Chinese specialists are very experienced and skilful. And the topic of cyber warfare is very well researched in their country. Their army is very good in the sphere of radio electronics. Electronic warfare and cyber warfare became one of the traditional parts of their modern warfare.
That’s why from the one side it is a very-very skilful country in the sphere of high technology and IT security.

From the other side they have a lot of skilful people for it.
As I understand, sometimes and in some cases certain countries block at least some sectors of the Internet. My question is, is it technically possible to somehow cut the Chinese cyberspace from the one of the United States? Can that be a solution?
Of course, technically it’s possible. It will take some resources but it won’t solve the situation in total because there will be lots of other ways to compromise the network space of other countries, for example by satellite ways of communication, by signal intelligence and other ways. So, it is quite a political question, not technical.

We are talking about actually stealing some secret sensitive information from virtual, cyber networks, as I understand. The question is, is it possible to create such cyber networks inside institutions, inside Pentagon compound for instance, that will be closed, that will not be possible to access from the outside?
Yes, there are the so-called isolated environments which are not connected to the Internet. But as practice shows, there are lots of internal threats and ways of how to steal this data internally with the help of insiders or vulnerabilities in the internal software and hardware, or with the special so-called chain vulnerabilities in hardware.

The problem of malware is quite important nowadays because for example we, as digital forensics company, we face lots of samples of malware targeted at political institutions, embassies, corporations. So, it is the environment which is impossible to disconnect from the world wide web.
But can we say that technically isolating the networks and environments is an efficient way of fighting these cyber attacks?

Mostly, it’s not efficient without internal organizational measures in IT security. Of course, is quite helpful because with the help of it we can prevent transferring the data to unsafe environments. But at the end of the day it should be in complex with other means of security.
And could you give some steps that you would take, for example, if you were running the Pentagon?
First of all, to categorize the data by its type, like state secret, military secret, embassies’ data. Secondly, to isolate it from the Internet and to monitor all the actions which are performed with this data, especially by the internal employees.

And the third recommendation is to monitor the means of communication within the company or organization, such as you’ve mentioned, or other law enforcement and special services, with the help of data leakage prevention systems and intrusion detection systems.

Pentagon accuses China of waging cyberwar

Boris Volkhonsky, senior research fellow, Russian Institute for Strategic Studies
On Monday, the Pentagon released its annual report to the U.S. Congress on China's military capabilities. For the first time ever, the U.S. Department of Defense directly accused the Chinese government and military of using cyber-weapons against the U.S. in a deliberate, government-developed strategy to steal intellectual property and gain strategic advantage.

In fact, much of what China is accused of, has been practiced by the U.S. itself against opponents around the globe. What has probably worried U.S. officials most is not just the fact that China is acquiring similar capabilities and exploiting similar techniques, but the very fact that the U.S. is losing its monopoly in a domain in which, until recently, it felt unrivalled.
For years, it has been an open secret that quite a lot of cyber-attacks and cyber-espionage originate in China. According to The New York Times' estimates, China's "share" in cyber-espionage in the U.S. exceeds 90 percent.
Still, until now the U.S. has avoided directly accusing the Chinese government and People's Liberation Army of deliberately using cyber-weapons against the United States. The Pentagon's 2013 "Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China" report to the Congress is the first official statement of the kind.

"In 2012, numerous computer systems around the world, including those owned by the U.S. government, continued to be targeted for intrusions, some of which appear to be attributable directly to the Chinese government and military," states the report.
Apart from stealing technology, China's efforts are aimed at obtaining insights into American policy makers' thinking and, through such information gathering, at "building a picture of U.S. defense networks, logistics, and related military capabilities that could be exploited during a crisis."

In fact, there are several noteworthy aspects of the report;
Although today's China is surely among the most active users of cyber technology for covert operations, it is definitely not the only and certainly not the first country in the world to use such techniques. It is probably sufficient to recall a number of cyber attacks against Iran's nuclear facilities executed by the U.S. and its faithful Middle East minion, Israel.
Such attacks not only endangered the notorious Iranian "nuclear program", but, if anything had gone wrong, were fraught with huge potential repercussions, like huge scale radioactive contamination.
So, to blame the mirror for a distorted image is a little futile – China is doing nothing more than has been practiced by the U.S. for many years.

Of course, no unbiased observer should be happy that China has acquired such destructive technology and is using them on such a scale, but cyber war is a 21st century reality we all have to live with – and it hardly matters whether it is China or the U.S. (by far the more belligerent country) which is the main user of the techniques.

Closer inspection of the Pentagon report, may reveal that what really worries U.S. military officials is not the scale of China's military preparedness as such, but the very fact that the U.S. can no longer consider itself unrivalled in fields in which, until recently, it thought of as its own domain.

The list of threats from China includes investment in electronic warfare capabilities in an effort to blind American satellites and other space assets; China’s first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, commissioned last September and a new carrier base under construction; progress in developing Chinese stealth aircraft, first tested in January 2011; heavy investment in short and medium range ballistic missiles; and other "activities designed to support military procurement and modernization."
One may also add to the list a recent report quoted by Washington Post and compiled by Associated Press on China's emergence as a new force in drone warfare.
Drones have been used excessively by the U.S. in recent years against sovereign countries, although concerns about their legality have been voiced in the U.S. itself.

But wouldn't it be too naïve to think that any advanced monopoly can remain an exclusive domain forever? The fact that China has acquired and is using such technologies only underlines the fact that not everyone in this world is happy about the U.S. monopoly in the field.

More so, when the report notes China's "military capabilities that could be exploited during a crisis" and further list them, it would be appropriate to ask, whence the crisis? Isn't it the U.S. "strategic pivot" to Asia, declared in late 2011 and aimed at amassing a U.S. military presence in Asia Pacific, thousands of miles away from the U.S. coast, that has provoked China to take reciprocal measures?
Of course, no such question is answered in the Pentagon's report.
China, US, US-Chinese relations, cyber war, cyber attack, World, Politics
Source