The Perfect Soldier: Special Operations, Commandos, and the Future of Us Warfare by James F. Dunnigan
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Dirty Little Secrets
China in a Cyberwar Arms Race
by James Dunnigan
March 8, 2005
Discussion Board on this DLS topic
China is putting more effort into its cyberwar capabilities. Many of the Chinese
spies detected in the United States have been seeking information that would
assist a cyberwar attack via the Internet. An increasing number of prominent
Chinese hackers (or “honkers” as they call themselves) are disappearing into
government and military organizations known to be fronts for cyberwar research.
Individuals and organizations thought to be representing China have been showing
on the Internet underground, offering good prices for exploits (flaws in
Internet software that can allow hackers to secretly enter, or even take over,
PCs connected to the Internet.) China also buys exploit information from
legitimate computer security firms, but does it through front corporations.
These exploits are the raw material cyberwarriors use to built cyberwar weapons.
Most exploits have a short shelf life, for once the software manufacturer knows
of the problem, they fix it. But in the weeks or months it takes for the flaw to
be fixed, computers using the affected software are vulnerable. Even after
software patches have been issued, it takes months before the majority of users
fix their software, and some users never get around to fixing the problems until
they upgrade to a new version of the software, or otherwise stop using it. China
is also making itself less vulnerable to these weapons by switching from the use
of Microsoft software (which has the most exploits available) for Linux (which
has much less vulnerability.) Microsoft is the most vulnerable because, world
wide, it is used on 90 percent of PCs. Linux does not have as much specialized
software available for it, but this is not a problem for most government and
commercial users in China. This shift from Microsoft to Linux has been going on
for nearly five years, and most new software written in China is for Linux, not
Microsoft, systems.
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