The Cyber Security Question

By An Gang

Technology meets diplomacy in U.S. accusations of Chinese hacking

The United States has recently ratcheted up pressure on China for its alleged involvement in hacking. U.S. President Barack Obama said on March 12 that the United States expects China and other countries to“follow international norms” in cyber space. It was the first time the U.S. president publicly accused China of posing cyber security threats,pushing allegations of a Chinese cyber threat to a new high.

One day before, U.S. National Security Advisor Thomas Donilon claimed that “U.S. businesses have been increasingly concerned about the targeted theft of confidential business information and proprietary technologies through cyber intrusions emanating from China.” In February, U.S.computer security firm Mandiant Corp. reported that a group attached to the Chinese military had stolen data from more than 140 companies and government agencies, most of which were in the United States.

Unwarranted charges

The Chinese Government has rejected the U.S.accusations. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said the Chinese Government attaches great importance to Internet security,and firmly opposes and combats cyber attacks in accordance with the law. “What cyber space needs is not war, but rules and cooperation,”she said. China’s Ministry of National Defense also said the Chinese military has never supported hacking activities.

On March 17, in his first press conference as the Chinese premier, Li Keqiang said online hacking is a worldwide problem and China is one of the major targets of hacker attacks. The country does not support—and indeed opposes—such attacks, he said. The premier rejected accusations of hacking against the United States, calling them a “presumption of guilt.” He suggested the two countries should not make groundless accusations against each other but spend more time doing practical things that will contribute to cyber security.

Of ficial statistics show that the websites of the Chinese Ministry of Defense and the China Military Online suffered 144,000 cyber attacks monthly on average in 2012, totaling 1.73 million a year, of which 62.9 percent came from Internet addresses in the United States. In the first two months this year, 2,194 U.S.-based servers were found to have attacked and controlled nearly 1.29 million computers in China,and more than 3,500 Chinese websites were attacked by hackers using U.S. Internet addresses.

The Internet is borderless, allowing hackers to hide their identity. It is difficult to locate the ultimate source of hacking activities due to the transnational and anonymous nature of cyber attacks. Chinese analyses show that many hackers from other countries including China’s neighbors prefer attacking U.S. websites via Chinese addresses.

Chinese scholars pointed out U.S. accusations of Chinese cyber attacks focus on two points: One is that they are backed by the mili-tary, with the collaboration of universities and Internet firms; the other is that Chinese hackers steal business secrets and illegally access e-mail accounts of U.S. dignitaries. All these charges are aimed at vilifying China and portraying the United States as a “victim of cyber attacks”as well as a “cyber space guardian.” By undermining the online credibility and legitimacy of countries that are not its allies, the United States is seeking to take the moral high ground in cyber space.

Cyber security is a newly emerging international security problem, and it is playing a growing role in the national security strategy of the United States. On February 12, Obama released an executive order aimed at shoring up defenses for U.S. critical infrastructure vulnerable to cyber attacks. Its focus is to enable government agencies to share information about cyber security threats with operators of critical infrastructure, and work together to build and develop a practical framework for ensuring cyber security. On March 12, during a testimony to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said for the first time that cyber attacks and cyber espionage had supplanted terrorism as the top security threat facing the United States.

In the meantime, the United States has considerably enhanced its cyber defense force.Keith Alexander, Commander of the U.S. military’s Cyber Command, announced on March 12 that the U.S. military would create 40 new cyber warfare units, of which 13 would be responsible for launching attacks. “This defendthe-nation team is not a defensive team,”Alexander said. “This is an offensive team.”

The cyber army has now become a new military branch of the United States in addition to the army, the navy and the air force. The U.S.military admitted that there are 11,000 staff members serving in the U.S. Cyber Command.But the Foreign Policy magazine put the number at 53,000-58,000.

These developments show the United States considers cyber space an important battlefield equal to traditional warfare. Under the guise of so-called “cyber threats” from other countries like China, it has attempted to stir up public opinion and expand its cyber operations. These preparations could be seen as an important shift of the U.S. security concept and strategy that envisions the prospect of a fullblown cyber war.

The United States is seeking an asym-metrical absolute advantage in cyber space.Alarmingly, all previous wars started by Washington after World War II, such as the Iraq War, seemed to have followed the same routine: raising an accusation of a plausible threat to create an imaginary enemy before launching a war. In keeping with this logic, the evolution of the U.S. cyber military security strategy, if it is there, could endow the U.S. president with the power to wage an undeclared war in the cyber world after the source of a fatal cyber security threat is con firmed.

By undermining the online credibility and legitimacy of countries that are not its allies, the United States is seeking to take the moral high ground in cyber space

Need for cooperation

But can people say that there is already a cyber war in progress between China and the United States, or that a “cold war” has broken out in cyber space? The answer might be as opaque as cyber space itself. However, we have reason to believe that as the world’s top two Internetusing countries, China and the United States will continue their competition and cooperation into the virtual world.

China’s Foreign Ministry has repeatedly affirmed the country’s position, saying, “China stands ready to work with the international community including the United States to carry out constructive dialogues and cooperation based on the principles of mutual respect and trust so as to jointly safeguard the ‘peace, security, openness and cooperation’ of cyber space.”

Cyber security has also entered high-level communication between China and the United States. On March 14, newly elected Chinese President Xi Jinping held telephone talks with Obama, with cyber security among their topics.During U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew’s trip to China on March 19-20, the issue was also on his agenda.

Cyber security cooperation between the two countries is already underway. Much progress has been made in combating online money laundering and pornography, countering e-mail spam and sharing antiterrorist information.

Moreover, the issue was included in the Sino-U.S. Strategic Security Dialogue launched in 2011. Representatives from cyber security management departments of both sides, including their militaries, took part in the dialogue.The platform has the potential to create a new cooperation mechanism on cyber security between the two countries. On the platform,the United States is particularly concerned with whether or not China has a cyber security strategy and a cyber army. It has repeatedly asked China to reveal the nature of its mechanisms for safeguarding cyber security.

The Chinese Government has not officially released a systematic cyber security policy, and the Chinese military has on many occasions denied the existence of a cyber army. Because the Internet involves many issues, it is estimated that at least 16 government agencies share the responsibility of Internet management and cyber security protection in China.

However, there are viewpoints in Chinese academic circles and media that China has every reason to build a cyber army. They claim that every country has its own cyber space and cyber security relates to national security as well as people’s livelihood. Thus, China surely needs to safeguard the security of its national information system.

There is still not a universal norm for managing the cyber world. There remain disputes worldwide on questions like whether there is Internet sovereignty, where the boundary of cyber sovereignty is, and how to make rules for the cyber domain. There are even disputes over these questions within China. However,the pace of change brought on by the Internet leaves little time for consensus building.

A recent editorial from China’s Global Times newspaper said China has no intention to challenge the United States in cyber security, and it is the common aspiration of Chinese people to live in peace with the United States. It added that China should never intend to do harm to others, but should always guard against the harm others might do to itself. ■