China: September 30, 2002

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Opponents to China's communist government continue to find their web sites under attack by "someone" in mainland China. Some of the attacks show a high degree of professionalism, attempting to insert programs on dissident servers that will transmit back to China email addresses and other information that could identify those inside, and outside, China who oppose the communist dictatorship. China maintains at least two "Internet warfare" battalions, as well as thousands of civilian volunteer programmers for cyberwarfare projects. The dissident organizations have access to skilled programmers as well, which is how they detected the Internet attacks, and were able to defeat most of them. But China has been a known Information War threat for several years. In early 2000, Taiwan became very vocal in warning it's citizens, and anyone else that would listen, that China was getting ready to wage covert Internet based attacks on Taiwan.