Excuses for 'cyber army' expansion
- By Zhang Yixuan
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E-mail People's Daily Online, February 6, 2013
The United States is once again claiming to have been attacked by Chinese hackers. This time, the alleged "victim" is Dow Jones & Company, the publisher of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
In recent years, there have been quite many "victims" that claimed to have been attacked by "Chinese hackers": Google, arms dealers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, NASA... In November last year, subordinate departments of the U.S. Congress even issued an annual report saying China has become the Internet world's most threatening country.
However, while the United States kept on "flattering" the "Chinese hackers" in such manner, it always seemed vague on presenting evidence. This time, the New York Times and Dow Jones & Company are still making the accusations based on similar grounds as usual – that the IP address of the attacking source is from China.
People with a little understanding of network knowledge would know that attacks of hackers are transnational and hidden in nature, and therefore the IP address cannot be taken as sufficient evidence to confirm the source of the hackers.
National security has become the U.S.' preferred "fig leaf" to cover the implementation of trade protection and economic sanctions, the ultimate excuse for it to exaggerate the Chinese threat theory on a global scale.
Clearly, by hyping "Chinese hackers", it can please the people at home, attract political attention, as well as impose more technical restrictions on China.
However, it is a noteworthy fact that, while rendering the "China's Internet threats", the United States is also rapidly expanding its network security forces. Just a few days before Dow Jones & Company accused China, media disclosed the news that the United States was going to expand its network security force by five-fold.
There are throngs of commercial spies and network hackers on the Internet, and any national department or enterprise is possible to suffer attacks. Relevant data show that China is one of the countries that suffer most severe cyber attacks in the world. Although from the technical view, a considerable number of attacks are from the U.S. network, China has never made hasty inference or reckless conclusion about the attacking source.
As a major power of the Internet, China explicitly prohibits hacker attacks in the law, severely cracks down on online hacking, and has been participating in global exchanges and cooperation in the field of network security in a constructive manner. In the age of globalized and information-based economy, information security has become a global issue. International cooperation is indispensable in countering hackers. Groundless slander against other countries and the implementation of double standards on Internet governance is not the proper behavior of a responsible big country.
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