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By Tom Groenfeldt
Chinese cyber attacks against the U.S. government and American corporations are increasing sharply, according to a recent study by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
Established by Congress in 2000, the commission monitors and reports on the national security implications of the bilateral trade and economic relationship between the U.S. and China. The commission reported that attacks, probably from China, against U.S. defense contractors in 2007 and 2008 managed to capture several terabytes of data related to the design and electronic systems of the F35 Lightning II, one of the most advanced American fighter planes.
The Department of Defense reported a sharp increase in cyber attacks over the last several years -- a nearly 20 percent increase in 2008 from 43,880 the year prior, and more than 43,000 attacks just in the first half of 2009. The U.S. military figures it spent more than $100 million in the first half of the year in response to attacks on its networks.
Although it is not always possible to identify with certainty the source of cyber attacks, U.S. government investigators believe a high percentage originated with the Chinese government or the People's Liberation Army (PLA).
Northrop Grumman, which undertook an investigation for the commission concluded that: "China is likely using its maturing computer network exploitation capability to support intelligence collection against the U.S. government and U.S. defense industries by conducting a long-term, sophisticated, computer network exploitation campaign."
If there is a bright side to this picture, it is that security experts admit the U.S. has cyber capabilities at least as advanced as China's and is steadily using technology to learn more about Chinese military capabilities. The commission noted that military journals in China have "long expressed professional admiration for perceived U.S. network and electronic warfare capability."
Mike McConnell, former director of National Intelligence and director of the NSA, told a newsletter at consultancy Booz Allen Hamilton, where he now works, that the major powers are all probing each other all the time. "In China today, there are thousands of people in a sustained effort to collect intelligence, many of them on an entrepreneurial basis, as it were, within a competing bureaucratic structure," he said. "China understands that a strategic vulnerability of the United States is its soft cyber underbelly. I believe they seek to 'own' that space."
He continued: "My view is that the Chinese received a big shock when watching the action of Desert Storm (during the first Iraq war). They saw the power of the U.S. linking computer technology with weaponry to attain precision. We had dropped 1,000 bombs in World War II to destroy a target effectively. In Vietnam, it took hundreds of bombs. Today it takes one."
In January 2007, China demonstrated its ability to shoot down a satellite. With a ground-based missle it shot down one of its own, orbiting more than 500 miles above the earth's surface, as a warning to the U.S., which relies on satellites for communications and reconnaissance.
Army researchers have concluded that the PLA views network warfare as both a key enabler of modern warfare and a critical new spectrum of conflict -- such as the ability to act against an enemy's command, control, computers, communications, intelligence and surveillance capabilities. China also has a cadre of hackers who operate quite openly, perhaps with government tolerance or outright support, against Western targets. They have launched denial of service and other attacks against Web sites supporting Tibet, Xinjiang, Falun Gong and Chinese pro-democracy organizations, according to the commission.
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