Intellectual Property Law

'Cyber Cold War' Has Been Launched

By IBLS Editor

When IT security colossus McAfee launched a deep study to discover what or who was behind the many recent breaches of Western government and military websites and computer systems, they drew a shocking conclusion ? that a new war on the web had been launched against Europe, the U.S. and other locales by China, calling it a "Cyber Cold War." According to their analysis of trends developing in Internet security threats, they state such sabotage and espionage is one of the largest threats to future internet security. McAfee published this analysis in a report called: VIRTUAL CRIMINOLOGY REPORT -- CYBERCRIME: THE NEXT WAVE, released in November 2007.

The report claims government computer systems in Australia, Britain, New Zealand, the U.S., Germany, India and Estonia have been attacked and besieged and in the last year and they say that this virtual espionage will continue to expand and become one of the largest global Internet security concerns in 2008. Further, the report states that 120 countries have now the resources to launch similar attacks. But for now, the main concern is from China, which actually articulated a such a strategy in a white paper, boasting that it has "informationised armed forces" as a growing capability of its military strategy. James Mulvenon, director of the Centre for Intelligence and Research in Washington, claims the Chinese were the first to jump "feet first" into cyber warfare technology. Mulvenon is also an expert on the Chinese military.

What is the aim of this espionage? It will come as a frightening conclusion to many in the financial industries that China appears to be drawing a bead on nothing less than a total attack on the Internet infrastructure of many nations, not just military sites. This brings up another aspect of China not often discussed, the complete mixing of business, Government and military entities in such a manner that businesses have the means and legal support to engage in and benefit from audacious acts of Internet espionage.

Sites known to be targeted run across the gamut, from political, military, economic and technical arenas being probed by espionage and marked for destruction, if need be. McAfee Avert Labs senior vice-president Jeff Green says: "Cyber crime is now a global issue. It has evolved significantly and is no longer just a threat to industry and individuals, but increasingly to national security. We're seeing emerging threats from increasingly sophisticated groups attacking organizations around the world."

Claims the perpetrators aim to wreak havoc by disrupting critical national infrastructure systems have been accepted for quite some time as China repeatedly probed various Government agencies around the world. While pure military sites such as the U.S. Department of Defense are an obvious target, others have been hacked as part of the military industrial complex, such as defense contractors. Nato experts claim the attackers are using Trojan viruses to gain access on to hand-picked government offices and that 99% of cases go undetected.

In regards to a recent Eastern Europe cyber-attack, a Nato Internet security analyst said, "The complexity and coordination seen during the Estonia attacks was new. There was a series of carefully timed attacks using different techniques and specific targets. The attackers stopped deliberately rather than being shut down." This assault disrupted Estonian Government, news and bank servers for weeks. In May 2007, at least one million computers were employed in the barrage resulting in countless hits bombarding Estonian websites to overwhelm and disable them, known as "distributed denial of service" attack. This assault probably derived from Russia, who was in the midst of a war of words with Estonia at the time.

IBLS ran a recent story about this type of problem, where Chinese agents working inside the Shell Oil Company, located at a site within the U.S. were coerced by the Chinese Government into working as industrial spies. The Government used the safety and health of family members back in China as a threat if the workers did not comply. In the Rolls Royce case, hackers from outside the company breached all but the last layers of security of the business website, attempting to steal technical information, before being repulsed by security measures. The assault nearly crippled the entire computer system before it ended. This was considered an act of military espionage and a major U.S. national security threat since Rolls Royce is a major contractor for the U.S. Army, supplying many irreplaceable parts for the Middle East war theater. See IBLS Chinese Web Spies Steal Rolls Royce & Shell Oil Secrets..

Overall, targeted sites include air-traffic control, financial markets, government computer networks, utility providers and international organizations. In September 2007 it was revealed that Chinese hackers, including some in the Chinese Army, had been hacking into the computer systems of British government departments, including the Foreign Office.

The McAfee analysts claim they drew their research from all over the globe and various entities, stating: "For this report we consulted with more than a dozen security specialists at top institutions such as NATO, the FBI, SOCA, the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS), the International Institute for Counter -Terrorism in Israel and the London School of Economics. These experts are also on the front lines in the fight against cybercrime every day, and we asked for their insights on the state of this dangerous underworld - as well as their predictions on where it's going next..."

Readers should check back often to the IBLS News Portal as we plan to stay on top of this compelling story and give even more details of these new disturbing and dangerous developments in the dark world of military and industrial espionage, including the gripping tale of the launch of the new Cyber Cold War.

Full post as published by IBLS Internet Law Blog on January 13, 2008 (boomark / email).