China’s military is conducting extensive cyber warfare and spying operations through several electronic intelligence units, including a group identified for the first time called Beijing North Computing Center, according to a new report by a private research group.
“Chinese cyber espionage poses an advanced persistent threat to U.S. national and economic security,” states the report, set for publication Friday.
The report by the Project 2049 Institute, an Arlington, Va.-based think tank that focuses on Asian security issues, concluded that groups operating from Chinese territory have been “waging a coordinated cyber espionage campaign targeting U.S. government, industrial, and think tank computer networks.”
The report said that despite difficulties in identifying direct links to Chinese military hackers, “the PLA General Staff Department (GSD) Third Department is likely a leading authority for cyber surveillance.”
Written by former Pentagon official Mark Stokes and L.C. Russell Hsiao, a Project 2049 research fellow, the report concludes military cyber activities are housed under the Third Department, which is similar to the United States National Security Agency, because of its signals intelligence work, its high-performance computing work, and its linguistic and code-breaking specialists.
The Third Department conducts “cyber reconnaissance” that involved breaking into foreign computer networks in preparation for future battle or conflict.
A central unit is the Third Department’s Beijing North Computing Center (BNCC), the report says.
“In the case of the PRC [People’s Republic of China], the existing data suggests that BNCC may be the leading agent responsible for planning, coordinating, integrating, and synchronizing PLA computer network operations, including defense of classified networks, exploitation of foreign networks, and possibly denying an adversary access to his networks,” the report said.
According to the report, a dozen Chinese hacker groups have been “identified and linked” to the People’s Liberation Army, China’s military, while others are working on behalf of universities and information security enterprises, with the largest ones operating in Beijing and Shanghai.
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In addition to the Beijing Center, other cyber warfare units include another unit under the Shanghai-based military and several Technical Reconnaissance Bureaus spread throughout the country.
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Defeating the Chinese cyber warfare effort is going to take more than just defensive measures. The US needs to be able counterattack and fry the computers used in the cyber warfare operations. One method would be to allow them to steal some data that has a malware virus embedded in it.
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