China rejects claims it is behind cyber attacks

Published on March 11, 2010 by brooks | This story has been viewed 131 views

China has hit back at a report in The Times that it is behind a surge in international cyber attacks, saying that it is as much a victim of such attacks as any other country and opposes internet warfare.

The Global Times, an English-language newspaper run by The People’s Daily, quoted Li Daguang, a military expert, as saying that some Western powers may have adopted a strategy to sabotage China’s IT development by exaggerating the threat it poses.

The expert from the National Defence University said: ‘The high-profile criticism of China’s cyber abilities in The Times report is essentially a pre-emptive strike on China.”

The Times reported this week that cyber attacks originating from China were increasing rapidly and had hit government and military institutions in the United States. EU systems were so vulnerable that restrictions have been placed on the normal flow of intelligence.

The Global Times writer scrolled through the more than 100 comments posted online after the story, highlighting those that cast doubt on China’s cyber warfare ability. It quoted one posted by Dell Miller saying: “This must be government agencies trying to protect their budgets from cuts (by hyping the threat from China)”.

The Global Times seized on a comment in the piece by James Lewis of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington that Britain and the US cyber defences are among the world’s most sophisticated.

Tang Lan, an expert on information security at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, said: “Finally, an analyst from the West admits that they are not all just babes in the woods coming into a cyberwar. As a matter of fact, they are the actual dominant force in the cyber world.”

He told The Global Times: “For example, the US set up the world’s first hacker force – the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which manages identifiers across the world and allocates internet protocol addresses.

“The US also controls ten of the 13 root servers in the world, without which the Internet can’t function. The other three root servers are in Europe and Japan – and all are Washington’s allies.”

He concluded with China’s stock defence of its position. “China has more reason to worry about cyber attacks from the West, rather than be concerned with planning attacks on others.”

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