Cyberspying 'straining US capacity to respond'

• Source: Global Times
• [09:40 October 23 2009]
• Comments

By Sun Wei

A US congressional advisory panel said Thursday that China was ratcheting up its cyberspying operations against the US.

According to the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (ESRC) report, "China is likely using its maturing computer network exploitation capability to support intelligence collection against the US Government and industry by conducting a long-term, sophisticated, computer network exploitation campaign."

The commission contracted analysts at defense giant Northrop Grumman Corp to write the report.

Citing an example of a carefully orchestrated campaign against one US company, the report concluded the company's internal analysis indicated the attack originated in or came through China without providing a damage assessment that or any specific idea of who was behind the attack.

"They operated at times using a communication channel between a host with an IP address located in the People's Republic of China and a server on the company's internal network, a technique observed consistently in similar intrusions at other commercial firms," said the report.

"It is well known that, up to now, attribution is the most difficult component of information security investigations," Tang Lan, deputy director of Information and Social Research Center at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, told the Global Times.

"The attacker is disguised and hard to identify," Tang added.