China’s Cyber Forces

China is well known for its global cyber espi­onage efforts. And while the United States has received most of the media atten­tion given to cyber attacks, we are not the only ones deal­ing with this issue. India is now point­ing the fin­ger at China, claim­ing they have sys­tem­at­i­cally launched a series of attacks on sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion sys­tems and net­works of Indian agen­cies. India rapidly responded and now has cyber-​​security forces down to the division-​​level to guard against cyber wars. But is that really enough given China’s stated ambitions?

China’s Cyber Warfare Doctrine is designed to achieve global “elec­tronic dom­i­nance” by 2050 which would include the capa­bil­ity of dis­rup­tion of the infor­ma­tion infra­struc­ture of their ene­mies. This doc­trine includes strate­gies that would dis­rupt finan­cial mar­kets, mil­i­tary and civil­ian com­mu­ni­ca­tions capa­bil­i­ties as well as other parts of the enemy’s crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture prior to the ini­ti­a­tion of tra­di­tional mil­i­tary oper­a­tions. With all the attacks that have been attrib­uted to China, there has to be sig­nif­i­cant intel­li­gence out there about tech­niques, cyber weapons and strate­gies that have been used in these cyber assaults. The pro­lif­er­a­tion of China’s cyber capa­bil­i­ties will be the topic of a Congressional hear­ing in DC on May 20th. This hear­ing will exam­ine “China’s Proliferation Practices and the Development of its Cyber and Space Warfare Capabilities.”

Military and intel­li­gence sources have known that Chinese cyber forces have devel­oped these detailed plans for cyber attacks against the United States and oth­ers. It is believed that the plans for such an attack were drawn under the direc­tion of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

China has a sig­nif­i­cant cyber weapons and intel­li­gence infra­struc­ture in place today. What is alarm­ing is not only do they have the intent, but they have the money. Beijing has the world’s sec­ond or third largest defense bud­get depend­ing on where you look for the num­bers. Their mil­i­tary bud­get has been on the rise at 10 per­cent or more a year for over a decade. This, as well as the attacks, are evi­denced by their cyber oper­a­tional abil­ity to scan, acquire nodes for their grow­ing bot­net as well as the con­tin­ued sophis­ti­cated assaults on defense infor­ma­tion sys­tems in the US, Germany, UK and India. In addi­tion, in April 2007, Sami Saydjari, who has worked on cyber defense sys­tems for the Pentagon since the 1980s, told Congress: “The sit­u­a­tion is grave, with nation-​​states such as China devel­op­ing seri­ous offen­sive capabilities.”

Recent attacks on the United States and India have brought this threat to the fore­front. While diplo­matic efforts to address these attacks have been ini­ti­ated, vir­tu­ally no progress has been made, accord­ing to indi­vid­u­als close to the issue. The fol­low­ing infor­ma­tion has been pro­vided by Spy-​​Ops and rep­re­sents their assess­ment of China’s cur­rent cyber capabilities.

China People’s Liberation Army (PLA)
Military Budget: $62 Billion USD
Global Rating in Cyber Capabilities: Number Two
Cyber Warfare Budget: $55 Million USD
Offensive Cyber Capabilities: 4.2 (1 = Low, 3 = Moderate and 5 = Significant)

Cyber Weapons Arsenal:
In Order of Threat — Large, advanced BotNet for DDos and espi­onage
Electromagnetic pulse weapons (non-​​nuclear)
Compromised coun­ter­feit com­puter hard­ware
Compromised com­puter periph­eral devices
Compromised coun­ter­feit com­puter soft­ware
Zero-​​day exploita­tion devel­op­ment frame­work
Advanced dynamic exploita­tion capa­bil­i­ties
Wireless data com­mu­ni­ca­tions jam­mers
Computer viruses and worms
Cyber data col­lec­tion exploits
Computer and net­works recon­nais­sance tools
Embedded Trojan time bombs (sus­pected)
Compromised micro­proces­sors & other chips (sus­pected)
Cyber Weapons Capabilities Rating: Advanced
Cyber force Size: 10,000 +
Broadband Connections: More than 55 mil­lion
China’s Hacker Community: Honker Union, Red Hackers Alliance (The 5th largest hack­ing orga­ni­za­tion in the world.)
China’s Software Industry: In Q1 2007, the soft­ware indus­try RMB 96.7 bil­lion with a year-​​on-​​year increase of 26.9%.

In Q1 2008, China recorded RMB 144.36 bil­lion in soft­ware indus­try sales rev­enue, up sharply year-​​on-​​year.

From all this infor­ma­tion one can only con­clude that China has the intent and tech­no­log­i­cal capa­bil­i­ties nec­es­sary to carry out a cyber attack any­where in the world at any time. Nations around the world can no longer ignore the advanced threat that China’s cyber war­fare capa­bil­i­ties may have today and the ones they aspire to have in the near future. Just recently Belgian jus­tice min­is­ter, Jo Vandeurzen, claimed that attacks against the Belgian Federal Government orig­i­nated from China and are most likely sanc­tioned by Beijing. The Belgian min­is­ter of for­eign affairs, Karel De Gucht, told their par­lia­ment that his min­istry is the sub­ject of cyber-​​espionage by Chinese cyber agents. This is just the tip of the ice­berg. Spy-​​Ops believes that an esti­mated 140 coun­tries will be work­ing on their cyber weapons by the end of 2008 and that in the next five years we will see coun­tries and extrem­ist groups jock­ey­ing for cyber supremacy.

– Kevin Coleman

May 8th, 2008 | Cyber-warfare | 283110 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2008/05/08/chinas-cyber-forces/China%27s+Cyber+Forces2008-05-08+12%3A18%3A48Ward You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.