China Finally Admits It Has Army of Hackers

China finally admits it has special cyber warfare units — and a lot of them.
From years China has been suspected by U.S. and many other countries for carrying out several high-profile cyber attacks, but every time the country strongly denied the claims. However, for the first time the country has admitted that it does have cyber warfare divisions – several of them, in fact.
In the latest updated edition of a PLA publication called The Science of Military Strategy, China finally broke its silence and openly talked about its digital spying and network attack capabilities and clearly stated that it has specialized units devoted to wage war on computer networks.


An expert on Chinese military strategy at the Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis, Joe McReynolds told TDB that this is the first time when China has explicit acknowledged that it has secretive cyber-warfare units, on both the military as well as civilian-government sides.
CHINESE CYBER WARFARE UNITS
According to McReynolds, China has three types of operational military units:
Specialized military forces to fight the network -- The unit designed to carry out defensive and offensive network attacks.
Groups of experts from civil society organizations -- The unit has number of specialists from civilian organizations – including the Ministry of State Security (its like China’s CIA), and the Ministry of Public Security (its like FBI) – who are authorized to conduct military leadership network operations.
External entities -- The unit sounds a lot like hacking-for-hire mercenaries and contains non-government entities (state-sponsored hackers) that can be organized and mobilized for network warfare operations.
According to experts, all the above units are utilized in civil cyber operations, including industrial espionage against US private companies to steal their secrets.
"It means that the Chinese have discarded their fig leaf of quasi-plausible deniability," McReynolds said. "As recently as 2013, official PLA [People's Liberation Army] publications have issued blanket denials such as, 'The Chinese military has never supported any hacker attack or hacking activities.' They can't make that claim anymore."
CHINESE CYBER UNIT 61398
In 2013, American private security firm Mandiant published a 60-page report that detailed about the notorious Chinese hacking group 'Unit 61398', suspected of waging cyber warfare against American companies, organizations and government agencies from or near a 12-story building on the outskirts of Shanghai.
The UNIT 61398 also targeted a number of government agencies and companies whose databases contain vast and detailed information about critical United States infrastructure, including pipelines, transmission lines and power generation facilities.
MOST WANTED CHINESE HACKERS
Last year, the United States filed criminal charges against five Chinese military officials, named Wang Dong, Sun Kailiang, Wen Xinyu, Huang Zhenyu, and Gu Chunhui, for hacking and conducting cyber espionage against several American companies.
The alleged hackers were said to have worked with the PLA’s Unit 61398 in Shanghai. Among spying on U.S companies and stealing trade secrets, they had also accused for stealing information about a nuclear power plant design and a solar panel company’s cost and pricing data.

China Escalating Attack on Google

 

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Chinese authorities have made Google's services largely inaccessible in recent days, a move most likely related to the government's broad efforts to stifle discussion of the 25th anniversary of the crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square on June 3 and 4, 1989.In addition to Google's search engines being blocked, the company's products, including Gmail, Calendar and Translate, have been affected.
This is not the first time China has taken aim at Google and its users there. The authorities blocked Google for 12 hours in 2012, according to GreatFire.org, an independent censorship-monitoring website, which published a blog post about the recent problems Monday. But the recent crackdown has been more severe, and there has been no indication of how long it will last.
"This is by far the biggest attack on Google that's ever taken place in China," said a co-founder of GreatFire.org, who asked to remain anonymous to prevent retaliation by the authorities. "Probably the only thing comparable is when the Chinese government first started blocking websites in the 1990s."
While Internet users in mainland China could reach international versions of Google search until a few days ago, "all Google services in all countries, encrypted or not, are now blocked in China," GreatFire.org said in the blog post. These include the Chinese-language version based in Hong Kong, Google.hk, and Google.com, Google Australia and others.
Other services with no direct search function, including the company's Picasa photo program, Maps service and Calendar application, were also inaccessible to most users Monday.
"It is the strictest censorship ever deployed," the blog said.
Unlike the websites of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and The New York Times, which are reliably blocked by the authorities, Google services have been disrupted in a way that affects about 9 of 10 Chinese users, according to GreatFire.org. By allowing some access, "the Chinese government is trying to pin the blame on Google," the GreatFire co-founder said.
Google said that it was not the problem.
"We've checked extensively, and there are no technical problems on our side," said a Google spokeswoman, who declined to elaborate.
Google's traffic from China on all its services fell 50 percent over the weekend, according to the company's transparency report.
As most Internet users in China can attest, Google's services have been subject to varying degrees of interference since 2010, when the company shut down its Internet search service in China amid accusations of government censorship and intrusions by state-backed hackers. The move prompted angry denunciations by the Chinese government, but many young people responded by placing mourning wreaths at Google's headquarters in Beijing, a testament to the company's popularity in the country.
Since then, Google has been directing users to an uncensored search engine in Hong Kong.
The government has in the past denied that it interferes with Google services in China, but many users complain that gaining access to Gmail is difficult and at times nearly impossible.
The co-founder of GreatFire.org said complaints began appearing on Chinese social media last week but were quickly erased by censors.
"Sigh ... my Google calendar is dead again," a user on the popular Sina Weibo microblog wrote Monday. "Every year it's sensitive, this year even more so." The post was swiftly deleted.
Whether the blockage is permanent or just a temporary measure that will ease after June 4 is unclear. Government offices in China were closed Monday for a national holiday.
In recent weeks, the authorities have waged a particularly aggressive campaign against those who might seek to discuss or commemorate the events of 1989, detaining dozens of dissidents, scholars and legal defenders. Some of those detained are facing criminal charges, a development that rights advocates say goes beyond previous efforts to stifle public commemoration of the crackdown. In an effort to foil online discussion, code words for the crackdown, including "6-4-89" and "May 35," have also been blocked.
"They're locking up everyone that they can and blocking everything they can," said Jeremy Goldkorn, director of Danwei, a website that tracks the Chinese media and Internet.
But even as the Chinese government continues to fortify its complex online censorship regimen, commonly known as the Great Firewall, software developers who support the free flow of information have been creating more innovative products that allow users to break through. Millions of people in China rely on proxy servers, virtual private networks and other methods to skirt Internet controls, although those measures are often subject to interference.
In March, Google began encrypting what is known as search by default in China. The secure system permits users to conduct uncensored searches, an act the government could prevent only by blocking direct access to Google. The authorities have now locked that electronic door, unless Internet users have the right software to pry it open.
At least one workaround is protected in a place censors may find hard to reach: the cloud. The activists at GreatFire.org say they have developed an "unblockable" Google mirror website that relies on encrypted cloud computing. To take it down, the government would have to block online systems used by many companies in China - a move that probably would have significant economic repercussions.