It’s no secret that China is a major source of attacks on governments and political groups (and individuals). However, it’s been harder to prove that the Chinese government and military is directly involved in such attacks. At least until now.
According to this report on the Website theepochtimes.com, a short snippet from a recently released propaganda film produced by China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), shows a custom built cyber attack tool being pointed at Websites belonging to Falun Gong, the spiritual group that has long been a target of oppression within China. The film is documentary proof that the PLA is engaged in offensive hacking against political targets inside and outside China.
The short film segment – all of six seconds – shows a user interacting with a simple interface that allows the attacker to choose a target network from a drop down list and insert an IP address to launch the attack from. In the segment shown, the IP Address of a U.S. university, the University of Alabama, Birmingham, is used to launch the attack. The screenshots shown in the film reveal the name of the software and that of the Electrical Engineering University of China’s People’s Liberation Army, the university that created the tool, The Epoch Times reported.
China is believed to be the source of high profile attacks on U.S. government, military and commercial entities, including the Aurora attacks. However, the Chinese government has steadfastly denied that it is engaged in such practices. The propaganda film in question was created to illustrate how China is defending itself from the United States, which China sees as the aggressor in cyberspace.
Even in counterintelligence in cyberspace, “He hit me first.” is heard as in the nursery.
This is great stuff. It has not been well proven in the media that China has literally been attacking western states despite the many claims. China disputes it, and experts outside of China dispute it.
Normally, what proof is given tends to be examining the targets. The targets are the sort of targets China considers enemies of the states. And, at times, sophistication can give tell tale marks.
This information is important for the companies getting hacked – and for the media who raises alarms on the attacks – a ton of money is being invested by China into cyber-espionage to make up for their nation’s vast defeciency in *innovation*. It is, on one level, pirating taken to an extreme. But, it can become worse, because China has a lot of instability and can get greedy out of desperation.
Historically, China has not been an invader of much. Now, they are, and that is something everyone has to deal with in comp sec.
I didn’t notice the article saying “he hit me first”, though China has not complained about the US government attacking them.
Nor any of these other nations which seem to be being attacked by the Chinese government.
This is a common refrain, though, but I see it as coming from Hollywood. People think the US government just magically listen to everything and hack everything. But, there has been no evidence of this, and the massive intelligence failures the US has shown over the years says that the US and other nations are not doing such a thing.
Western nations do not have as much of a motive to do this as China or Russia does. These Western nations have innovation. Innovation translates into money and national stability for China, Russia, and similar nations whose systems are not properly operating.
It is not the same in the West, where we currently have a monopoly on all good ideas.