China Aims To Narrow Cyberwarfare Gap With US (zdnet.com)

According to the Department of Defense, China is looking to narrow the gap with the U.S. in terms of cyberwarfare capabilities. "The Pentagon report said that in recent years the Chinese army has emphasized the importance of cyberspace for national security because of the country's increasing reliance on its digital economy," reports ZDNet. "It said Chinese military strategists see cyber operations as a low-cost deterrent that can demonstrate capabilities and challenge an adversary." From the report: The DoD's annual report to congress (PDF) points to a Chinese international cyberspace cooperation strategy in March 2017, which called for the expedited development of a military "cyber force" as an important aspect of the country's defense strategy. However, the U.S. report said that China also believes its cyber capabilities and personnel lag behind those of the U.S. and that China "is working to improve training and bolster domestic innovation to overcome these perceived deficiencies and advance cyberspace operations."

The report lists "cyber activities" directed against the DoD by China and said: "Computer systems around the world, including those owned by the U.S. government, continued to be targeted by China-based intrusions through 2017." It said these intrusions focused on accessing networks and extracting information, and said China uses its cyber capabilities to support intelligence collection against U.S. diplomatic, economic, academic, and defense sectors.

Comments

Re: LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah there is no gap to be narrowed. China has infiltrated most major American companies and I have been part of dealing with that for one of the biggest. APT 27? Yeah, I know them.. there are more.

China is already leading on defense

[shanen]

The story is not very well written. Should I cite the best book I've read on the topic? I bet no one cares within the context of today's Slashdot.

Anyway, the story is obviously about offensive capabilities, where the Chinese have lagged behind. Amusingly enough, a lot of that is because of the language problems, mostly the human languages, but also the computer languages, especially as related to the inaccessible source code. Right now it seems clear that the leaders in offense for cyber-war are the Russians.

On the defensive side, the Chinese are probably the leaders. They have the Great Firewall of China as a fairly serious line of defense and they think (and have always thought) in terms of partitioning and isolating and controlling their networks. Not just the computers, but the human networks, too. However it is probably more important that their society is less dependent upon computers and therefore less vulnerable to cyber-warfare attacks.

America is supposed to be one of the leaders in offensive capabilities, but the weaknesses on the defensive side are overwhelming. Almost no defenses and high vulnerability. Only tiny traces of defensive thinking.