According to the annual report of DoD China is close to developing another cyber weapon capable of unplugging internet jack from an entire nation’s infrastructure. New Chinese cyber attacks might be using stolen data gained by advanced hacking.
It is not news that far eastern country has been conducting cyber espionage operations against US officials for years, but if true such attacks would be devastating for critical infrastructure of any nation, more or less. By targeting critical nodes Chinese cyber attacks would disrupt network throughout the region.
Researchers suggest to developing offensive cyber capabilities in order to tackle such complexities.
DoD beilieves that chinese cyber attacks operations may be the part of a strategy that has been designed to help People’s Liberation Army in 3 possible ways:
- Allowing offensive data collection for intelligence
- They may be employed to slow response time by adversaries
- They may be used as a empowerment when paired with kinetic attacks in wars and conflicts.
Report used a wave of cyber attacks in 2014 as a ground of the theory. In 2014, Chinese cyber attackers successfully penetrated US organizations and have stolen valuable data.
FireEye researches reported in April that Chinese government was involved in a long running cyber espionage operation “APT30”.
China is the most involved nation in cyber espionage but other countries like USA are not that innocent too. Based on leaked documents by whistleblower Edward Snowden, NSA is conducting large scale cyber espionage operations against other countries and its own citizens.
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