Days after security experts pointed fingers at the involvement of a “state actor” in the biggest series of cyber espionage operation discovered yet, China’s leading state newspaper dismissed as “irresponsible” popular suggestions of Beijing’s involvement.
The main mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist party, the People’s Daily in a report today said “linking China to internet hacking attacks is irresponsible.”
Earlier this week, McAfee, the web security company, said it had discovered a five-year long campaign of cyber attacks, involving the infiltration of the networks of 72 organisations making it the biggest internet espionage till date.
Targets included the governments of the United States, Taiwan, India, South Korea, Vietnam and Canada; the United Nations; the International Olympic Committee; the World Anti-Doping Agency; the Association of Southeast Asian Nations; and an array of companies, from defense contractors to high-tech enterprises.
While McAfee stopped short of naming the “state actor” behind the cyber-attacks, other experts were more specific in pointing out China as the most likely culprit considering that the second largest economy in the world was not among the Asian countries that were attacked.
Jim Lewis, a cyber expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, after studying McAfee’s discovery said it was very likely that China was behind the campaign. Speaking to Reuters, he based his argument on the simple reason that some of the targets had information that would be of particular interest to Beijing.
For instance, the IOC and several national Olympic Committees were breached in the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Games, the Taiwanese government which China views as renegade province was targeted, China’s biggest rival in Asia, the Indian government was attacked, and sensitive data on US military systems and satellite communications were siphoned.
“Everything points to China,” Lewis said.
McAfee said it didn’t know how the stolen data were being used but cautioned that “if even a fraction of it is used to build better competing products or beat a competitor at a key negotiation (due to having stolen the other team’s playbook), the loss represents a massive economic threat.”
Montreal based NGO, the Canada Tibet Committee in a release August 3, called on the Canadian government to pursue McAfee’s findings to the RCMP’s Integrated Technological Crime Unit and the UN’s International Telecommunication Union (ITU) for further investigation.
