Data Theft: China and the F35

This week there have been renewed reports that the Chinese have been attacking US military networks, this time to gain informaiton on the F-35.

Later the US Aerospace industry clarified their statement by saying that:

“Representation of successful cyber attacks on the F-35 program [are] incorrect,” … then the follow caveat was added “to our knowledge there has never been any classified information breach [despite] attacks on our systems continually”

The risk of a “cyber war” between China and the US seems to be increasing, with incursions by China reported more and more frequently, from the NASA incident to the FBI report into the risk of cyber attacks from China and Russia.

In addition to the US Congress has previously stated that China has been heavily involved in data theft of DoD information, stating that:

Page 162:“U.S. computer security authorities detected a series of cyber intrusions in 2002 into unclassified U.S. military, government, and government contractor Web sites and computer systems. This large-scale operation, code named Titan Rain by the U.S. government, was attributed to China.”

Page 164:“China has an active cyber espionage program” and “Many individuals are being trained in cyber operations at Chinese military academies”

 

Page 166: China’s strategists believe the United States is dependent on information technology and that this dependency constitutes an exploitable weakness.

It should be noted that some of these incidents, though reported relatively close together, occured over quite a range of times, many years in fact.

 Also, US incursions into Chinese cyber space are less likely to be reported in the the Western papers as the Chinese attacks on the west are.

 In case we forget the biggest attack the US got caught for, back in 2001, involved the physical access to China as well as electronic intrusion. In this incident the US had been using Chinse airspace to gain electronic information/signals from China.

How would that incident be reported in the Western press it if was the other way around?

 

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