Report Details Chinese Cyber Attacks and Espionage
Wednesday, February 20th, 2013February 20, 2013
An overwhelming percentage of the cyber attacks on the data held by U.S. companies and government agencies are carried out in a building on the edge of Shanghai, China, cyber security experts revealed yesterday. Mandiant, a U.S. computer security firm, released to The New York Times a report on a highly detailed study that tracked cyber attacks to a Chinese army unit headquartered in a run-down Shanghai neighborhood.
Digital forensic evidence–confirmed by U.S. intelligence officials–strongly suggests that People’s Liberation Army Unit 61398 is actually a cyberwarrior unit that has carried out an overwhelming percentage of the attacks on the U.S. departments of Defense and State as well as American corporations. According to Mandiant, the focus of the unit’s espionage increasingly is on the critical infrastructure of the United States, in particular public utillities: electrical power grids, gas lines, and waterworks.
“In the cold war, we were focused every day on the nuclear command centers around Moscow,” a senior defense official told a Times reporter. “Today, it’s fair to say that we worry as much about the computer servers in Shanghai.”
Additional World Book articles:
- Computer virus
- Industrial espionage
- Armed forces 2010 (a Back in Time article)
- Hackers, Criminals, and Terrorists (a special report)