(2007-09-12) Reid China Vs Us Cyber War

Tim Reid on whether China will be starting a CyberWar with the US. The blueprint for such an assault, drawn up by two hackers working for the People's Liberation Army (PLA), is part of an aggressive push by Beijing to achieve "electronic dominance" over each of its global rivals by 2050, particularly the US, Britain (UK), Russia and South Korea... It also emerged this week that the Chinese military hacked into the US Defence Secretary's computer system in June; have regularly penetrated computers in at least 10 Whitehall departments, including military files, and infiltrated German government systems this year... Larry M Wortzel, the author of the US Army War College report, said: "The thing that should give us pause is that in many Chinese military manuals they identify the US as the country they are most likely to go to war with."

Update: Bruce Schneier doesn't think many of these attacks are coordinated or supported by the government. They're basically young, male, patriotic Chinese citizens, trying to demonstrate that they're just as good as everyone else. As well as the American networks the media likes to talk about, their targets also include pro-TibEt, pro-TaiWan, Falun Gong and pro-Uyghur sites... The money comes from several sources. The groups sell owned computers, malware services, and data they steal on the black market. They sell hacker tools and videos to others wanting to play. They even sell T-shirts, hats and other merchandise on their Web sites... Certainly the Chinese government knows the leaders of the hacker movement and chooses to look the other way. They probably buy stolen intelligence from these hackers. They probably recruit for their own organizations from this self-selecting pool of experienced hacking experts. They certainly learn from the hackers... If anything, the fact that these groups aren't being run by the Chinese government makes the problem worse. Without central political coordination, they're likely to take more risks, do more stupid things and generally ignore the political fallout of their actions. In this regard, they're more like a Non-State Actor.