We didn’t expect to have a sequel IT Bytes Back! story so quickly on the same subject matter as ‘Communist Fears’ , but here it is.
In the matter of IT security, China is proving to be frightening and threatening as well – as clearly seen in increased vocalisation by the rest of the world pressuring China to ‘seriously investigate and crack down’ on its perpetrators’ cyber attacks.
The suspicion of the Chinese behind cyberespionage into American, European and Australian government related companies and ministries, has not abated one bit in the past 12 months.
More so on the recent news of Australia’s central bank, the Reserve Bank’s public confirmation that it was attacked with the statement that, “… computer networks have been repeatedly and successfully hacked in a series of cyber-attacks to infiltrate sensitive internal information, including by Chinese-developed malicious software”.
This prompted pressure on the Gillard administration (by its Opposition, obviously) to not delay direct confrontation with the Chinese government over these cyber attacks if hard, credible evidence were already in hand.
(For the record, the incumbent Gillard government has been reluctant to openly confront China to maintain its multi-billion bilateral trade relationship as well as avoid possible backfire on Down Under’s less-than-transparent cyber operations.)
On the US front regarding this matter, President Obama’s national security adviser Tom Donilon recently called on China to halt its cyber attacks as they posed a serious threat to broader China-US relations as well as the reputation of the Chinese industry.
This was on the back of a US-based Internet security firm Mandiant’s finding that traced the source of recent cyber attacks – which saw the theft of confidential business information of over 100 US companies, back to a building in Beijing.
Meanwhile, China has continued to vehemently deny all international allegations against it, even criticising some of the reports, citing the lack of hard evidence and at some instances even hinted at being the victim instead.
Geng Yansheng, China’s Defense Ministry representative, claims that the country has also suffered being a key target of cyber attacks, “..the Chinese armed forces access to the Internet user terminal suffered a large number of foreign attacks. And according to the IP address of the display…a considerable number of attack sources were from the United States, but we did not…accuse the US side.”
He reiterates China’s policy that forbids hacker attacks and that the government has always cracked down on such criminal activities.
Yet, the Chinese denials are falling on deaf ears; and the country’s nose-diving credibility is increasingly showing negative economic impact.
In a recent outsourcing market report by the Everest Group, China’s IT and BPO (business process outsourcing) market was poorly valued in the USD4 to 5 billion range – which is just half the annual revenue of India’s top IT services company Tata Consultancy Services.
It is believed that the spate of IT security reports against China is the major reason for the lack of trust by regional and international companies, to outsource their critical business functions and operations to China.
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IT BYTES BACK! says: There is no doubt that China will continue to be under suspicion for a long time. So instead of instead of being defensive, it might be more worthwhile to balance the bad press by proactively being cooperative in joint efforts to counter cyber espionage. At least it would look more sincere.
