China emerges as leader in cyberwarfare
In recent weeks, China has been accused of hacking the Pentagon as well as British and German government offices.
from the September 14, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 4
But China's cyberstrategy is deemed murkier and more widespread. The tenaciousness of Chinese hackers, whose skills were once derided by US cyberexperts, has begun to sink in to Western states and their intelligence services.
Probes of the Pentagon system that would bring US intervention should China attack Taiwan are part of a program dating to the 1990s that links cyberwarfare to real-world military action by China's People's Liberation Army. The very probe shows success in China's long-term program, experts say.
"The Chinese want to disrupt that unofficial network in a crucial time-frame inside a Taiwan scenario," says Mr. Mulvenon. "It is something they've written about. When you read what Chinese strategists say, it is the unclassified network they will go after … to delay deployment. China is developing tremendous capability."
Much of the hacking prowess in China is attributed to "gray hat" hackers – techie mercenaries, often younger males, geeks proud of the title – who can be mobilized to attack systems if needed, experts say.
In cyberparlance, black hats are hackers whose professional life is spent trying to attack other systems. White hats are those who defend against attacks. But China is regarded as having a substantial number of hackers in the gray middle – cutting-edge technopatriots loosely affiliated with the Chinese government, but who are not formal agents of the state.
This allows many Chinese hackers to exist in a zone of deniability. To be sure, provability and deniability are central in cyberwarfare. The most difficult problem is how to prove who hacks a system.
In recent weeks, Beijing has officially expressed shock, pain, and denial of news reports like those in Der Speigel fingering China, and at a host of official and semi-official accusations. But China's ardent denials, in the face of its own professed desire to be a cyberattack specialist, are not entirely persuasive, analysts say.
"Sometimes [Chinese] will brag about their exploits, and other times they'll disclaim them entirely, blaming unknown rogue individuals," says Bill Woodcock, research director at Packet Clearing House, a nonprofit research institute that focuses on Internet security and stability.
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