China hacked into Pentagon computer network

Update: U.S. military routinely hacks into Chinese networks
AFP

China's military successfully hacked into the Pentagon's computer network, it was reported reported Tuesday, although the Chinese government dismissed the accusation as groundless.


The Chinese military's cyber-attack was carried out in June following months of efforts, the London-based Financial Times said, citing unnamed current and former US officials.


While the Pentagon declined to say who was behind the hacking, which led to the shutdown of a computer system serving the office of Defence Secretary Robert Gates, officials told the paper it was China's People's Liberation Army.


"The PLA has demonstrated the ability to conduct attacks that disable our system," the paper quoted a former US official as saying.


One senior US official reportedly said the Pentagon had pinpointed the exact origin of the attack.


The paper quoted another person familiar with the event as saying there was a "very high level of confidence... trending towards total certainty" that the PLA was responsible.


While denying the accusations, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu countered that there were some in the United States who were seeking to damage improving Sino-US military relations.


"Against the background of good momentum towards the improvement of Sino-US military ties, some people are making groundless accusations that the Chinese military is attacking the networks of the US defence department," Jiang told journalists when asked about the Financial Times report.


"This is not only groundless but a demonstration of a Cold War mentality."


A spokesman for the Chinese defence ministry declined to comment on the report when contacted by AFP on Tuesday.


Reports of China hacking into German government systems were also raised last week between Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel.


German weekly Der Spiegel reported that espionage programmes traced to the PLA had been detected in computer systems at Merkel's office, the foreign ministry and other government agencies in Berlin.


"We in the government took (the reports) as a matter of grave concern," Wen said after meeting Merkel.

U.S. military routinely hacks into Chinese networks

John J. Tkacik, Jr. a research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, has a "sneaking suspicion" that the C.I.A. is being pressured to downplay the "China threat." Otherwise, why would the intelligence agency have hastily revised, downward, their estimates of the percentage of Chinese GDP dedicated to defense spending? Clearly, the Bush administration is going even softer on China.


But if so, someone's sending mixed messages. Because a slew of unnamed U.S. officials are quoted in Tuesday's Financial Times expressing alarm about an "incursion" by People's Liberation Army "hackers" into Pentagon computer systems -- "the most successful cyber attack on the U.S. Defense department," according to the officials.

“The PLA has demonstrated the ability to conduct attacks that disable our system... and the ability in a conflict situation to re-enter and disrupt on a very large scale,” said a former official, who said the PLA had penetrated the networks of U.S. defense companies and think-tanks.

Sounds like the "China threat" is very much alive!


How the World Works doesn't doubt that the dance between world's preeminent superpower, the U.S., and the number one contender for the throne, China, could someday turn into an ugly showdown. But the Financial Times' choice for a headline, "Chinese military hacked into Pentagon" could be accused of rhetorical alarmism, and not just because most of the information accessed during the attack appears to have been unclassified.


Later in the same article:

The PLA regularly probes U.S. military networks -- and the Pentagon is widely assumed to scan Chinese networks -- but U.S. officials said the penetration in June raised concerns to a new level because of fears that China had shown it could disrupt systems at critical times.

Scan? Scan? What does that mean? Is it the same as "probe?" Or could one even say: "the Pentagon is widely assumed to regularly hack into Chinese networks?"


Birds do it. Bees do it. The PLA and the Pentagon do it. An editorial in the Financial Times running along with their "scoop" even observes:

Yet it is probably also right to assume that the U.S. and other western governments are busy infiltrating the computer systems of foreign governments. It is therefore disingenuous to complain too vigorously when those same foreign governments become good at doing it back.

Infiltrating? Isn't that the same as "hacking?" Or, to be semiotically precise, "cracking?"


If the editors of the Financial Times think it disinenguous to complain too vigorously about foreign military computer adventurism, why is one side accused of "hacking," while the other just "scans?"