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Chinese Army blamed for Pentagon hack
Dragon footprints found in server room.
By Tom Jowitt, Techworld | Techworld
Published: 11:40 GMT, 04 September 07
The Chinese military has been blamed for a hack into a computer network belonging to the Pentagon, according to leaked reports of an internal investigation.
The Financial Times, citing unnamed current and former US officials, said the hack of US Department of Defence systems took place in June.
While the Pentagon declined to say who was behind the hacking, which led to the shutdown of a computer system serving the office of Defence Secretary Robert Gates, officials told the UK newspaper that it was China’s People's Liberation Army.
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“The PLA has demonstrated the ability to conduct attacks that disable our system,” the newspaper quoted a former US official as saying. One senior US official reportedly said the Pentagon had pinpointed the exact origin of the attack.
The paper quoted another person familiar with the event as saying there was a “very high level of confidence... trending towards total certainty” that the PLA was responsible.
The paper said both the US and Chinese militaries were widely assumed to conduct computer espionage on each other, however the June hack has raised concerns to a new level “because of fears that China had shown it could disrupt systems at critical times.”
However, the Chinese are vigorously denying the claim, dismissing it as a product of “Cold War” thinking.
“The Chinese government has consistently opposed and vigorously attacked according to the law all Internet-wrecking crimes, including hacking,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu at a regular news briefing on Tuesday.
“Some people are making wild accusations against China ... These are totally groundless and also reflect a Cold War mentality.”
Last week, Chinese hackers were accused of infiltrating German government computers. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, apparently raised the issue with China’s premier, Wen Jiabao, in a visit to Beijing. The Der Spiegel newspaper claimed that the hackers had been traced to Guangzhou and Lanzhou, which are both centres of operation for the People’s Liberation Army.
There seems to be little doubt that the PLA probes US networks, just as the US does the same to Chinese systems. And it is not just foreign governments that the Pentagon has to worry about.
Back in July, Gary McKinnon, the ex-systems administrator accused of conducting the biggest military hack of all time, won the right to have his case against extradition to the US heard by the House of Lords.
McKinnon, accused of causing £475,000 ($961,000) worth of damage to computers by hacking into systems belonging to the Pentagon, NASA and the US military from his home in North London, could face a life sentence in jail with no chance of repatriation if he is extradited to the US.
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Add your commentComments
Emmanuel Osei | Published: 22:39 GMT, 07 October 2007
I don't believe the PLA stands for the Chinese Army. The people of Chian should not be accused wrongly. The accusation is not the problem but the origin of the accusation. China needs peace
Yaw Osei | Published: 22:33 GMT, 07 October 2007
The fact that systems could be hack by the Chinese, means more security has to be put in place to avert future hacks by the US army.
peter | Published: 19:38 GMT, 06 September 2007
China is becoming too aggressive, something needs to be done
Dan | Published: 00:11 GMT, 05 September 2007
It is another unexcusable lie from US defense department PR. It always inflates chinese military threats to US security in order to justify its budgets which it is the biggest spending sector in the US government finance, I have no doubt that the US FBI & CIA have been infiltrating chinese governmental Network like crazy. It always has!
Exit | Published: 18:29 GMT, 04 September 2007
Careful reader, No, it's more like saying that Arlington, VA, is the center of the U.S. military; which is true.
A student of China | Published: 16:32 GMT, 04 September 2007
The U.S. government is trying to create more fear in our country. Bush and his buddies would love for us to be afraid of any country that will surpass our struggling economy. China is rising peacefully...and the U.S. military should deal with other problems before they try to go after the biggest country in the world.
SysAdmin | Published: 15:46 GMT, 04 September 2007
The headline is inaccurate - the PLA is *not* the same thing as the Chinese military.
antithesis | Published: 14:42 GMT, 04 September 2007
Yeah, this from the same country who ran over their own people with tanks and executed others afterward then wouldn't put it in their history books. Oh I'd believe them -------- NOT!
careful reader | Published: 14:21 GMT, 04 September 2007
This is misleading, Guangzhou alone has a population of 10 millions. Lanzhou is a big city. It is like saying that NY is center of operation for U.S. Army. >>The Der Spiegel newspaper claimed that the hackers had been traced to Guangzhou and Lanzhou, which are both centres of operation for the People’s Liberation Army.