China had a less than happy reaction to a US congressional report that accused Beijing of developing sophisticated cyber warfare and militarising its space program. The annual China report to Congress of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission was aimed at misleading the public and impeding bilateral cooperation, foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said.
“The commission has all along seen China through dark glasses and has deliberately attacked China with slanderous accusations aimed at misleading public opinion and obstructing the development of Sino-US relations,” Qin said.
“The report is unworthy of rebuttal and the aims of the commission are doomed to failure,” he said in a statement on his ministry’s website.
The report issued in Washington Thursday accused China of developing a sophisticated cyber warfare program aimed at penetrating US computer networks to extract sensitive information.
“China has an active cyber espionage program,” the report said.
“China is targeting US government and commercial computers.”
The panel also criticized Beijing of exercising “heavy handed government control” over its economy and “continuing arms sales and military support to rogue regimes” such as Sudan, Myanmar and Iran.
The commission also issued a warning about China’s space program. “China continues to make significant progress in developing space capabilities, many of which easily translate to enhanced military capacity,” it said.
Qin urged the commission to stop issuing such reports and refrain from interfering in China’s internal affairs.
The Air Force wants a suite of hacker tools, to give it “access” to — and “full control” of — any kind of computer there is. And once the info warriors are in, the Air Force wants them to keep tabs on their “adversaries’ information infrastructure completely undetected.”
On Monday, the Air Force Research Laboratory introduced a two-year, $11 million effort to put together hardware and software tools for “Dominant Cyber Offensive Engagement.” “Of interest are any and all techniques to enable user and/or root level access,” a request for proposals notes, “to both fixed (PC) or mobile computing platforms… any and all operating systems, patch levels, applications and hardware.” This isn’t just some computer science study, mind you; “research efforts under this program are expected to result in complete functional capabilities.”
Unlike an Air Force colonel’s proposal, to knock down enemy websites with military botnets, the Research Lab is encouraging a sneaky, “low and slow” approach. The preferred attack consists of lying quiet, and then “stealthily exfiltrat[ing] information” from adversaries’ networks.
But, in the end, the Air Force wants to see all kinds of “techniques and technologies” to “Deceive, Deny, Disrupt, Degrade, [or] Destroy” hostile systems. And “in addition to these main concepts,” the Research Lab would like to see studies into “Proactive Botnet Defense Technology Development,” the “reinvent[ion of] the network protocol stack” and new antennas, based on carbon nanotubes.
raditionally, the military has been extremely reluctant to talk much about offensive operations online. Instead, the focus has normally been on protecting against electronic attacks. But in the last year or so, the tone has changed — and become more bellicose. “Cyber, as a warfighting domain . . . like air, favors the offense,” said Lani Kass, a special assistant to the Air Force Chief of Staff who previously headed up the service’s Cyberspace Task Force. “If you’re defending in cyber, you’re already too late.”
“We want to go in and knock them out in the first round,” added Lt. Gen. Robert Elder, commander of the 8th Air Force, which focuses on network issues.
“An adversary needs to know that the U.S. possesses powerful hard and soft-kill (cyberwarfare) means for attacking adversary information and command and support systems at all levels,” a recent Defense Department report notes. “Every potential adversary, from nation states to rogue individuals… should be compelled to consider… an attack on U.S. systems resulting in highly undesireable consequences to their own security.”
China had a less than happy reaction to a US congressional report that accused Beijing of developing sophisticated cyber warfare and militarising its space program. The annual China report to Congress of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission was aimed at misleading the public and impeding bilateral cooperation, foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said.
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