America Confirmed Chinese Government behind Cyber Attacks

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America Confirmed Chinese Government behind Cyber Attacks

 

A US Senate panel has recently confirmed that the cyber attackers associated with the Chinese government have repeatedly infiltrated the computer systems of American airlines, tech companies and other contractors that were engaged in the movement of American troops and military equipment.

According to the results of the Senate Armed Services Committee’s year-long probe, the military’s US Transportation Command, also known as Transcom, only know about 2 out of 20 such hacks within a single year. The investigation discovered gaps in reporting requirements and a lack of information sharing among American government bodies that left the US military oblivious to the cyber intrusions of its contractors.

The committee’s chairman blamed the Chinese hackers rather that the big defense industry’s cock-ups. He claimed that the peacetime intrusions into the networks of key defense contractors give evidence of China’s aggressive actions on the Internet.

However, the cybersecurity expert Dmitri Alperovitch, who is a chief technology officer with the security firm Crowdstrike, pointed out that China had for years shown interest in the logistical patterns of the military of the United States. The Chinese military normally uses secret or top-secret networks disconnected from the Internet, while the American private companies hired by the United States do not. According to the report, from June 2012 to June 2013, there were about 50 hacks or other cyber events into the computer networks of Transportation Command contractors.

The investigation found out that at least 20 of those intrusions were successful hacks attributed to an “advanced persistent threat†– this is a term used to describe sophisticated threats normally associated with cyber attacks against governments. Moreover, the probe attributed all of those intrusions to China. As a result, the committee’s top Republican called for a “central clearinghouseâ€, which can facilitate reporting suspicious cyber activity for the contractors.