Pentagon: Beijing boosts cyberwarfare

China is continuing a large-scale military buildup of high-tech forces that includes “disruptive” anti-satellite missiles, new strategic forces, and computer attack weapons, the Pentagon’s annual report to Congress on the Chinese military says.

“China has made steady progress in recent years in developing offensive nuclear, space, and cyber warfare capabilities — the only aspects of China’s armed forces that, today, have the potential to be truly global,” says the report entitled “Military Power of the People’s Republic of China (PRC)” that was released Wednesday.

While noting that China has limited ability to sustain power far from its shores, the report warns that Beijing’s communist controlled armed forces “continue to develop and field disruptive military technologies, including those for anti-access/area-denial, as well as for nuclear, space, and cyber warfare, that are changing regional military balances and that have implications beyond the Asia-Pacific region.”

Anti-access and area denial weapons include precision-guided ballistic and cruise missiles and submarines that are designed to attack aircraft carriers, the report said. The report also criticized China’s arms sales to countries like Iran, Sudan and Zimbabwe. It noted that Chinese arms supplied to Iran were found to have been transferred to terrorist organizations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This is a serious issue that the United States continues to monitor, the report said.

Under a section on significant developments over the past year, this year’s report for the first time described China’s efforts to develop and wage computer warfare by attacking networks and electronic infrastructure.

In 2008, numerous computer systems around the world, including those owned by the U.S. Government, continued to be the target of intrusions that appear to have originated within the PRC, the report said.

Although these intrusions focused on exfiltrating information, the accesses and skills required for these intrusions are similar to those necessary to conduct computer network attacks.

The report said it is unclear whether the attacks were carried out by the Chinese military or with its support, or by other elements of the Chinese government.

However, developing capabilities for cyberwarfare is consistent with authoritative PLA military writings on the subject, the report said.

The U.S. military is also developing cyber warfare defense and attack capabilities.

The report disclosed three computer attacks by suspected PRC actors.

In April 2008, the computer networks at India’s Ministry of External Affairs was attacked by Chinese hackers, and in May 2008 Belgium’s government was attacked by Chinese hackers.

Also in May 2008, suspected Chinese agents secretly copied contents of a U.S. Government laptop during a visit to China by the U.S. commerce secretary and used the information to try to penetrate into Commerce computers.

Computer attacks are one element of what Chinese military theorists call integrated network electronic warfare, to include electronic disrupters and kinetic strikes on enemy infrastructures.

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