Well, something very unexpected has happened recently. The fact that China is having an army of hackers isn’t surprising; instead, acceptance of this fact by China is shocking. United States, India and many other countries have been suspecting this communist nation for a long time for carrying out cyber attacks. But, the every instance and complaint made was denied by China in the past.
A Chinese military strategy expert at the Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis, Joe McReynolds told The Daily Beast that China has accepted the fact that it uses hackers and cyber-warfare units. He called this release as a “once in a generation” document. For the first time, China has said, “Yes, we do in fact have network attack forces, and we have teams on both the military and civilian government sides.”
Back in the year 2013, Mandiant, an American security agency, published a sixty-page report with information about the Chinese hacking group Unit 61398. This mischievous group was suspected of doing damages to American companies and government via its headquarters located in Shanghai.
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In 2014, U.S. filed criminal charges against five Chinese military officials: Gu Chunhui, Wang Dong, Wen Xinyu, Huang Zhenyu, and Sun Kailiang. They were accused of hacking and are the FBI’s most wanted Chinese hackers.
What kind of hacking army China is having?
According to McReynolds, China has three divisions of operational military units:
– Special military forces to fight the network (for defensive and offensive network attacks)
– Experts from civil society organizations (for conducting military leadership network operations)
– External entities (non-government hackers for cyber warfare)
U.S. authorities have been trying their best from a long to get some concrete evidence about China’s involvement in the anti-States activities. All those efforts of U.S. have failed and China has discouraged any such discussion by denying such instances.
The Daily Beast writes:
Experts generally agree that Russia, China, and the United States have the most advanced and sophisticated cyber warfare forces. But Iran has been quickly gaining new capabilities and demonstrated a willingness to use them, as with a massive attack on U.S. bank websites in 2012. North Korea has also ramped up its cyber operations, most notably with the hacking of Sony Pictures Entertainment last year, which prompted the Obama administration to impose new economic sanctions on the hermit kingdom.
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