On April 8, 2010, China re-routed email exchanges from the United States Department of Defense, U.S. Senate, NASA and the Department of Commerce.
Claiming that the re-routing was “accidental”, there is little doubt that it was malicious intent that was the true motive says the Security Review Commission.
Larry Wortzel, a member of the commission, said: “We don’t know what was done with the data when they got it. When I see things like this happen, I ask, who might be interested with all the communications traffic from the entire Department of Defense and federal government? It’s probably not a graduate student at Shanghai University.
“What could you do if you had the stream of email traffic for 18 minutes to and from the US Joint Chiefs of Staff? Most importantly you would get the internet addresses of everybody that communicated.”
Carolyn Bartholomew, vice chairwoman of the commission, said the efforts of Chinese individuals and organisations to penetrate US networks “appear to be more sophisticated than techniques used in the past,” raising fears that the Chinese Government is behind the attacks.
“The massive scale and the extensive intelligence and reconnaissance components of recent high profile, China-based computer exploitations suggest that there continues to be some level of state support for these activities,” she said.
Internet security experts at McAfee warn that this may be the beginning of many more cyber attacks originating from inside China, targeted at the United States.
As we approach the final days before the seven year Tribulation period begins, we can expect to see many such internet terrorist attacks from China, Russia and former Soviet countries.
