News / Asia

China Says US Hackers Attacking its Military Websites

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VOA News
The Chinese military says hackers attacked two of its websites an average of 144,000 times per month last year, and that most of the attacks originated in the United States.

The statement by Beijing's Defense Ministry comes days after a U.S.-based Internet security company accused the People's Liberation Army of carrying out a prolonged campaign of international cyber attacks.

Chinese military spokesperson Geng Yansheng said the number of attacks on the Defense Ministry and China Military Online websites have "risen steadily" in the past years.

He said nearly 63 percent of the attacks on the websites in 2012 came from America, though he did not provide any further information on the source of the alleged attacks.

China has rejected last week's report by the Virginia-based Mandiant group that claims to have traced years of attacks on U.S. businesses and government organizations to a secretive division of the People's Liberation Army.

China has long been viewed as a major source of global hacking attempts. But Beijing insists it is the victim, not the perpetrator, of cyber crimes.

On Thursday, China's Defense Ministry also took aim at recent reports that Washington plans to expand its cyber warfare capabilities. He said these efforts would be unhelpful, and called for U.S. officials to "explain and clarify" the reports.

Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.

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by: Jonathan Huang from: canada
February 28, 2013 10:18 PM
Whatever you guys is bashing on China, it doesnt matter. China is still growing fast and getting rich. And on the other side, Europe, Japan and America are dying.


by: Rob Swift from: Great Britain
February 28, 2013 4:25 PM
Chinese leaders always appear intent on making fools of themselves. The whole of China runs on pirate (stolen) software. They are blind guides and they always fall into a pit.


by: Wangchuk from: NYC
February 28, 2013 9:41 AM
It's hard to verify anything the PLA says but even if this claim were true, you can't cyber attack the USA and not expect a response. I sincerely hope that the USA is defending itself from Chinese hackers and that America show China it will strike back if attacked by Red Hackers.

In Response

by: Ian from: USA
February 28, 2013 12:35 PM
Anyone who are too trust full to believe a Chinese will have their country stolen from them . Like all of their lies such as Tibet is part of China, they killed the Tibetans yet claimed that Tibetans are terrorists. We all know Chinese are victims of their own lies


by: dan from: Vancouver
February 28, 2013 8:58 AM
Considering the staggering depth, range, and experience of China's computing community, does it not seem odd they contribute nothing to the international community to exploit and vulnerability exposure?

When a new potential zero-day, weakness, vulnerability is found, China never found it. They don't participate in any of the black/white hat community. Their computing science academics, commercial IT professionals, programmers are not part of the solution. They have produced one or two lousy domestic anti-viral apps and yet complain/claim they are the ones who are the victims of hacking.

There's something very suspicious about all this. Could the reason lie in that China's government/military cyber community regards exploits and vulnerabilities as cyber-capital to be used, and not exposed and fixed?

[Incidentally, for a site that used to be a CIA adjunct, VOA's comment-captcha character-distortion has to be the weakest I've ever seen. That's an OCR-ready format waiting to happen, at least the one I'm currently looking at.]

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