Stopping the Chinese hacking onslaught.

AuthorMagnuson, Stew
PositionCybersecurity

History may one day reveal that as the United States fretted over the possibility of a "cyber Pearl Harbor"--a catastrophic attack that would take down electrical grid--its economic lifeblood was being slowly drained away by a massive hacking enterprise located in the People's Republic of China.

Cyber Command Commander Army Gen. Keith Alexander last year called the cyber-espionage being conducted against U.S. companies the largest transfer of intellectual property from one nation to another in the history of the world.

Eric Rosenbach, deputy assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy, said the nation is not as focused on intellectual property theft as it should be. A catastrophic cybenvar is important to prepare for, but an unlikely scenario. Stealing data important to the nation's economic security, meanwhile, is occurring here and now.

"It is the clay-by-day cut that is bleeding us--the death by a thousand cuts to watch out for," he said at the Air Force Association's CyberFutures Conference recently.

Experts describe a large, technologically advanced and well organized enterprise coming out of China that is going after businesses large and small. Any firm that has a trade secret, or could he used as a stepping stone to a larger company; is a potential target. Intellectual property theft has the potential to erode a company's profits or even bankrupt it. There is no magical software that can stop every intrusion attempt, but even companies with few resources can take steps to mitigate the risk, experts told National Defense.

To thwart the Chinese cyber-espionage enterprise, it is important to characterize it. In the world of network security, it was once called the "advanced persistent threat" But government officials have done away with using that euphemism, it's China, they now say. The October 2011 "Foreign Spies Stealing U.S. Economic Secrets in Cyberspace" report, produced by the FBI's office of the national counterintelligence executive, acknowledged that the attacks came from China, but stopped short of blaming the Chinese government, which routinely denies involvement.

These espionage enterprises seem to have the full force and resources of the Chinese government behind them, analysts said.

Jason Lewis, chief technology officer of Looking Glass Cyber Solutions, said, "In general, when you have a situation where the state runs everything, you have to assume that the state is involved in any enterprise."

How much intellectual property trade secrets and business intelligence is being exfiltrated across the Pacific every day?

It is almost impossible to estimate the losses for several reasons. Companies have a hard time putting...

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