Chinese hacked computers, U.S. lawmakers say

Experts say China is clearly ramping up its cyberwar capabilities. The Christian Science Monitor reported last fall that China was in the vanguard of states aiming to use cyberwarfare for political ends. It said experts believe that most Chinese hackers are "gray hats" – meaning they are tech-savvy Chinese nationalists who aren't formal agents of the Chinese government.

Today, of an estimated 120 countries working on cyberwarfare, China, seeking great power status, has emerged as a leader.

"The Chinese are the first to use cyberattacks for political and military goals," says James Mulvenon, an expert on China's military and director of the Center for Intelligence and Research in Washington. "Whether it is battlefield preparation or hacking networks connected to the German chancellor, they are the first state actor to jump feet first into 21st-century cyberwarfare technology. This is clearly becoming a more serious and open problem."

A recent National Journal article claimed that according to US security sources, China-based hackers, including those working for the government, may have played a role in two massive blackouts in Florida and the northeast US in recent years.

The magazine said US intelligence officials had linked the People's Liberation Army to the largest-ever blackout in North America, a 2003 outage across 9,300 square miles in the US Northeast that affected some 50 million people.

Tim Bennett, the former president of the Cyber Security Industry Alliance, a leading trade group, said that U.S. intelligence officials have told him that the PLA in 2003 gained access to a network that controlled electric power systems serving the northeastern United States. The intelligence officials said that forensic analysis had confirmed the source, Bennett said. "They said that, with confidence, it had been traced back to the PLA."

However, some commentators reacted skeptically to that report. Writing for a Wired magazine-hosted blog, Kevin Poulsen called the article "cyberwar hysteria," arguing that an exhaustive 6-month investigation into the 2003 blackout had traced the root cause of that outage to the utility company First Energy's failure to trim trees growing into power lines in Ohio.

Now that we're seeing "overgrown trees" between the same scare quotes conspiracy theorists bracket around "lone gunman" and "moon landing," the cybarmageddon hawks have squarely set foot in the realm of 9/11 truthers. I'm waiting for them to blame Chinese hackers for "Hurricane" Katrina.

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