China hackers penetrate Pentagon computers

BEIJING (Reuters) - China on Tuesday rejected a report that hackers controlled by its military had successfully entered a Pentagon network, calling the claim a product of "Cold War" thinking.

The Financial Times, citing former and serving U.S. officials, said Chinese People's Liberation Army hackers broke into a U.S. Defence Department network in June, taking data and prompting the shutdown of a system serving department secretary Robert Gates.

The report came a week after German Chancellor Angela Merkel raised similar claims that Chinese hackers had infected German government ministries with spying programs.

China deflected the German reports, and now it has flatly rejected the U.S. claims, as well as denying reports that Chinese-made weapons have been used by Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.

"The Chinese government has consistently opposed and vigorously attacked according to the law all Internet-wrecking crimes, including hacking," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said.

"Some people are making wild accusations against China ... They are totally groundless and also reflect a Cold War mentality."

Beijing has devoted a large part of its rising defence budget to developing more advanced technology, including computer capabilities. But Jiang said her government was also the victim of computer attacks.

CHINESE MILITARY

The Financial Times cited one source familiar with the event as saying there was a "very high level of confidence ... trending towards total certainty" that the army was behind it. Continued...

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Defense Department Responds to Cyber Threats, Official Says
By Sgt. Sara Wood, USA
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, Sept. 4, 2007 – The Defense Department receives many attempted cyber attacks each day and has measures in place to aggressively respond to and deter these attacks, a department spokesman said today.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman addressed media reports that a computer system in the Office of the Secretary of Defense was hacked into by the Chinese military earlier this year. Whitman confirmed that an attack did occur in June but declined to identify the origin of the threat. It is often difficult to pinpoint the true origin of an intrusion into computer systems and even more difficult to tie the intrusion to a specific nation or government, he noted.

"Cyber or non-kinetic type threats to military computer networks are viewed as just as real and just as significant as physical or kinetic threats," Whitman said. "The department aggressively responds to deter all intrusions to defend what is known as the GIG, the global information grid."

When the intrusion occurred in June, elements of an unclassified e-mail system in the Office of the Secretary of Defense were taken off-line briefly, Whitman said. However, the department has redundant systems in place, so ongoing operations were not disrupted, he said. The system was restored to full service within two or three weeks.

There are hundreds of attempted intrusions into the Defense Department computer network each day, the majority of which are detected and stopped, Whitman said. The nature of the threat is large and diverse and includes recreational hackers, self-styled cyber vigilantes, various groups with nationalistic or ideological agendas, transnational actors, and nation states. When appropriate, the department turns cases over to law enforcement officials for investigation, he said.

"We continue to aggressively monitor our networks for intrusions," Whitman said. "We have appropriate procedures to address events of this nature."

Since the incident in June, Whitman said, he knows of no successful intrusions into the Defense Department computer system.