16 Years of Cyber Warfare Between Chinese and American Hackers

At the same time as the US plays up the “China Threat”, the United States Cyber Security forces are growing rapidly. Germany’s Der Spiegel obtained top-secret documents that show that the U.S. National Security Agency’s hacker department, the Office of Tailored Access Operations (TAO), is the agency’s secret weapon.

(Chinese Version)

Although the most nationalist of hackers have stepped down from the stage of history, the ranks of Chinese and American hackers are always on the rise. We have yet to see some truly explosive news, such as a hacking of the White House website, but the damage of future cyber warfare will as huge as that presented by nuclear wars.

According to a report from the Global Times, U.S. presidential candidate Hillary has accused China of “trying to hack into everything that doesn’t move in America — stealing commercial secrets…stealing huge amounts of government information.” According to Chinese scholar Jin Canrong, Hillary is doing nothing more than soliciting cheap applause by attacking China, “in order to curry American favor in the voting booth”. But this move from Hillary is one of the darkest accusations made against China by a U.S. official.

In fact, when it comes to international politics, I do not really have the right to offer any kind of substantive critique; however, when it comes to the love-hate relationship between Chinese and American hackers, I have a lot of memories and stories to share.

The rage of 1999

The story really begins in the year 1999. That year, our embassy in Belgrade was hit by a U.S. missile attack, and Chinese netizens immediately set off a wave of Internet protests, and Chinese hackers were unable to stand seeing their compatriots killed, their embassy bombed, and their national dignity violated. They launched a days long cyber attack against the White House, NATO, and other U.S. websites, with the White House web site being repaired several times from the evening of May 8 onwards, with even the stars and stripes on the home page being replaced.

One hacker wrote in his daily journal that, “the following is a record of my experiences online from May 8th and 9th, in the 24-hour time span from 8am until 9pm the following day, during which time the only thing I had to eat was one lunch. Nothing is recorded after 8am on the 9th. There was the news that more than 300 U.S. sites had been hacked on May 9th.

But the U.S. reported these events in the following way: “Chinese protesters wrote an extremely large number of emails directly to the White House to express their dissatisfaction. The White House website was unable to cope with such a large number of emails and had to temporarily shut down for repairs.” This was the first time a large number of emails caused the White House website to malfunction.

Within less than 12 hours after the NATO missile strike against the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, the website of the U.S. Embassy in China was attacked by Chinese hackers.

The age of the hacker is already upon us

In the latter half of the 1990s, the power of Chinese hackers has grown and become increasingly clear. According to Southern Weekly, the Chinese Red League, the Chinese Hawks League, and the Chinese Hackers League are the three main hacking organizations that are increasingly becoming the primary force in the Chinese-US hacker war. For a time, the Lion Red League and the Wan Tao Hawks became heroes among Chinese hackers.

The former group preaches a hardliner nationalist spirit and gave itself the unique name of “Honker”, a transliteration of its Chinese name, hongke. Hopefully they will be able to use their political stance as a legal justification of their aggressive behavior.

Speculation about the motivations of the hackers doesn’t matter anymore. Objectively, nationalist spirit and patriotism have swelled the ranks of Chinese hackers. In 2000, hacking technology was just as popular as today’s blogs, and “protect and serve the homeland” was the young OCS person’s mantra. But these hacking groups entered many times into confrontations with their counterparts in the United States and other countries. These confrontations usually followed political and military events, such as the U.S.-China plane collision over Hainan and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s visit to the Yasukuni shrine.

In April 2002, the Chinese Internet Association announced the stop of organized attack behaviors. The Red League was brought to its knees by this, becoming a website with very little traffic.  But hackers are now scrambling to keep up with the surging national security industry, with no room for any other cares.

According to Professor Min Dahong of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences: “On its most fundamental level, the actions of Internet hackers are not so different from the university students throwing rocks at the U.S. embassy. It is a means of catharsis. “ He added that, “Times have changed, and the environment has changed. The Internet has also changed.” China’s first hacker group “Green Corps,” was motivated by passions of nationalist sentiment and fleeting emotions, so “how could hackers not change as well?”

Large-scale attacks in the name of nationalism have been difficult to launch ever since that point. On the last day in 2004, the leader of the Chinese Red League announced the closing of its site. Professor Min Dahong authored a declaration bidding farewell to the end of the era of passionate Chinese hackers. The founder of “Green Corps”, the godfather of Chinese hackers, gradually faded from the public eye, and is now the chief security officer for the popular App Wifilocating.

Obama could launch a cyber war

Chinese hacking has died down, but American politicians are reluctant to let go. In recent years, the US has time and time again used “hacking” to rattle its saber against China, using online networks to play up the “China threat”, providing the US with new grounds for America’s strategy to contain China as well as to America’s own partisan politics. The hype about the “Chinese hacker” has served to please the domestic public while attracting political attention and putting more restrictions on Chinese technology.

On the Internet, corporate espionage and hackers abound, and no country or business is immune to such attacks. Data show that China is among the countries receiving the most cyber attacks. During the month of December 2012 alone there were 3,049 overseas IP addresses that gained back-door access to 11,295 domestic websites, gaining them remote control access. The United States was the number one origin of these IP addresses, planting backdoor entrances in 4,240 domestic websites.  Although the technical aspects from a considerable number of attacks point to probable origin in the United States, China has refrained from making any simple and hasty conclusions about American culpability.

Recently, the US instigated a legal review of its ever increasing cyber attack capabilities. Officials involved in the review stated that the president has been authorized to launch “pre-emptive” hacker attacks. These officials said that if the United States found credible evidence that another country planned to launch large-scale cyber attacks, the president has the power to launch pre-emptive hacker attacks. The Pentagon has now set up a new cyber command. A senior US official stated that cyberwar legal reviewers believe that cyber weapons are extremely powerful, akin to nuclear weapons, and that the command to launch a cyber war must come from the commander-in-chief.

TAO: The most frightening hacker organization in the world

It is worth noting that at the same time as the US plays up the “China Threat”, the United States Cyber Security forces are growing rapidly. Germany’s Der Spiegel obtained top-secret documents that show that the U.S. National Security Agency’s hacker department, the Office of Tailored Access Operations (TAO), is the agency’s secret weapon.

TAO’s operations range from counter-terrorism to traditional espionage to instigate cyber attacks. These top-secret documents show that the measures that the TAO can use are extremely diverse and that they can be used arbitrarily. They make use of the technology flaws in the IT industry, and no one is spared, not Microsoft, Cisco, or Huawei.

An internal description of TAO’s responsibilities shows clearly that invasion attacks are a significant part of the job for this sector. In other words, the NSA’s hacking operations have received government approval. In the last 10 years, this department has successfully hit 258 targets in 89 countries, almost everywhere in the world.

In fact, TAO experts already have direct access to the protected networks of many elected officials. They infiltrated the network of a European telecommunications company and are able to obtain and read messages sent by the Blackberry BES email server, an encrypted server that had previously been considered to be safe.

According to information put forward by Washington intelligence agencies, up until last year, around 85,000 computers around the world had been infiltrated by NSA experts. TAO technology is strong enough to be able to obtain all information passing through the “blackout” of submarine cables. Labeled “top secret” and “foreigners banned from reading”, the document describes the NSA’s monitoring of the successful cable system channel SEA-ME-WE4. The massive undersea cable is connected to Europe, North Africa, the Gulf region, and then continues through Pakistan and India and all the way to Malaysia and Thailand. No information can escape the prying eyes of the TAO.

 

[The article is published and edited with authorization from the author @vittimes, please note source and hyperlink when reproduce.]

Translated by Jennifer Smith (Senior Translator at ECHO), working for TMTpost.

转载请注明出处、作者和本文链接
声明:文章内容仅供参考、交流、学习、不构成投资建议。
想和千万钛媒体用户分享你的新奇观点和发现,点击这里投稿 。创业或融资寻求报道,点击这里

敬原创,有钛度,得赞赏

赞赏支持
发表评论
0 / 300

根据《网络安全法》实名制要求,请绑定手机号后发表评论

登录后输入评论内容
  • Why no coment here

    回复 2015.07.23 · via android
391
1
358

扫描下载App