Several times already, the Chinese "cyber army" has broken into the US Department of Defense computer systems.
Earlier this year, Germany claimed that Chinese hackers had infected its government computers with spyware.
Attacks by Chinese hackers are far from rare, but the Chinese cyber army is more than just a few lone hackers.
In 1999, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) officially established its cyber army, which has been constantly expanding. Its cyber army is part of the regular organization of the PLA, and "cyber warfare" is part of China's "asymmetric warfare" and "unlimited war" strategies. Currently, its main activities are interfering with or hacking into the computer systems of other countries and infecting them with computer viruses.
As early as the turn of the millennium, the US Department of Defense issued a warning that China had the ability to hack into civilian and military computer systems that didn't have sufficient protection. Its report this year Military Power of the People's Republic of China, addressed the issue of the Chinese cyber army developing viruses to attack computer networks. US Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Richard Lawless urged Congress in June to guard against underestimating the power of Chinese cyber attacks.
However, the cyber army's invasions have been limited to some non-classified Web pages, causing a "denial of service" server overload by bombarding Web sites with requests for data, or changing images on a Web site. Chinese hackers have never actually hacked into important, classified systems. It is especially difficult to gain access to the classified parts of the US Defense Department or other military systems.
Apart from that, China is facing many difficulties in developing its cyber army. It is reliant on imports for most of its computer hardware and software. More than 90 percent of the computer operating system used by China's government and military is imported from the US. The overall security of China's informatics and Internet is lacking and it does not have security controls for imported technology and equipment. Also, economic relations between China and the US are becoming more entertwined, so if the cyber army were to wage war on the US economy, it would easily create problems for China. None of these factors are beneficial to the development of China's cyber warfare.
Nevertheless, we cannot assess cyber warfare from a traditional military point of view, as a technical or conceptual breakthrough could eradicate the advantage that the US and European countries have in information warfare, and this is something that many people with insight into the situation are worried about. It is by now undisputed that China's cyber army is growing in strength. We will have to be very careful.
Cheng Ta-chen is an independent defense analyst.
Translated by Anna Stiggelbout
US President Donald Trump last week told reporters that he had signed about 12 letters to US trading partners, which were set to be sent out yesterday, levying unilateral tariff rates of up to 70 percent from Aug. 1. However, Trump did not say which countries the letters would be sent to, nor did he discuss the specific tariff rates, reports said. The news of the tariff letters came as Washington and Hanoi reached a trade deal earlier last week to cut tariffs on Vietnamese exports to the US to 20 percent from 46 percent, making it the first Asian country
Life as we know it will probably not come to an end in Japan this weekend, but what if it does? That is the question consuming a disaster-prone country ahead of a widely spread prediction of disaster that one comic book suggests would occur tomorrow. The Future I Saw, a manga by Ryo Tatsuki about her purported ability to see the future in dreams, was first published in 1999. It would have faded into obscurity, but for the mention of a tsunami and the cover that read “Major disaster in March 2011.” Years later, when the most powerful earthquake ever
As things heated up in the Middle East in early June, some in the Pentagon resisted American involvement in the Israel-Iran war because it would divert American attention and resources from the real challenge: China. This was exactly wrong. Rather, bombing Iran was the best thing that could have happened for America’s Asia policy. When it came to dealing with the Iranian nuclear program, “all options are on the table” had become an American mantra over the past two decades. But the more often US administration officials insisted that military force was in the cards, the less anyone believed it. After
During an impromptu Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) rally on Tuesday last week to protest what the party called the unfairness of the judicial system, a young TPP supporter said that if Taiwan goes to war, he would “surrender to the [Chinese] People’s Liberation Army [PLA] with unyielding determination.” The rally was held after former Taipei deputy mayor Pong Cheng-sheng’s (彭振聲) wife took her life prior to Pong’s appearance in court to testify in the Core Pacific corruption case involving former Taipei mayor and TPP chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲). The TPP supporter said President William Lai (賴清德) was leading them to die on
RSS