China Denies Claim of Pentagon Hacking
By ANITA CHANG,AP
Posted: 2007-09-04 10:48:48
Filed Under: World News
BEIJING (Sept. 4) -- China on Tuesday denied a report that its military had hacked into Pentagon computers, saying the allegations were "groundless" and that Beijing was opposed to cybercrime.

The Financial Times, citing unnamed officials, reported Monday that the People's Liberation Army hacked into a computer system in the office of Defense Secretary Robert Gates in June. The attack forced officials to take down the network for more than a week, the report said.

"Some people make groundless accusations against China" that its military attacked the Pentagon, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said at a regular news briefing.

"China has all along been opposed to and forbids criminal activities undermining computer networks, including hacking," she said. "China is ready to strengthen cooperation with other countries, including the U.S., in countering Internet crimes."

The Financial Times report said the Pentagon was still investigating how much information was stolen, but cited an unnamed person as saying that most of it was probably unclassified.

It was the second time in two weeks that China was accused of hacking into a foreign government's computers. On the eve of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's visit to Beijing last week, the weekly Der Spiegel said computers at the Chancellery and three ministries had been infected with so-called Trojans, or spy programs.

The report, which did not specify its sources, said Germany's domestic intelligence agency believed a group of hackers associated with the People's Liberation Army might have been behind the alleged hacking.

At the time, Premier Wen Jiabao called the reported hacking a "matter of grave concern" and said China would take "firm and effective action" to prevent such crimes.

The Pentagon warned earlier this year that China's army is emphasizing hacking as an offensive weapon. It cited Chinese military exercises in 2005 that included hacking "primarily in first strikes against enemy networks."

The Associated Press reported in July that the State Department was trying to recover from large-scale network break-ins affecting operations worldwide. The hackers appeared to target the department headquarters and offices dealing with China and North Korea , it was reported.

However, experts have said that China is home to a large number of insecure computers and networks that hackers in other countries could use to disguise their locations and launch attacks.

kinda funny how everyone says they are adament about working towards peace while they are secretly hacking into your defense computers and creating nukes.

Well, I'd say innocent until proven guilty.
As the article states, there could be others using unsafe computers in China.

i know what you're saying invisible but it doesn't look good.

Thats scary aye?

Between this and shooting lasers at GPS satellites they could annul or advantage and reliance on smart bombs and guidance systems!

You could do a lot of damage to a US Naval fleet if you just blinded them for say, 2 hours!!!

Well dont take it to heart just yet!!
This just mite be another scare tactic.
There really isnt any prof that is was the chinese.
And ill kinda willing to bet it was someone here.
Theres alot of pissed off people here.
And to add one more thing.
Bush mite not leave office if iran has nukes.
What was just on the new 10 mins ago.
Now chew on that for a while.

now it's the british parliament and their foregin offices that got hacked. theybelieve that it was someone associated with the PLA. that's three countries in one week.

Yeah thats wierd huh?
First where they gettin the t3 and wheres it comein from?
Anything else is to slow.Remote bot hack maybe?
And if you think about it whos gonna reverse engineer the software? Although in many situations are interchangable and are often used the other way around.So i really dont think
it was anybody but us.

don't know anything about computers YBS so you lost me there but i get the gist. it's possible that it could be us but i don't think it is, of course i don't have anything to back that up with either.lol

the articles didn't have any info about what made them all think it was from china.

Yeah thats why im thinkin!!!
Personally i think its just more bullsh!t for the general public
to worry about!!

Its the Chinese showing us they can!!!

Nothing new really, they have shot down two satellites to show us they can take out our GPS. Now they are showing us that they can hit us another way!

Why would we want to do it? Wheres the motive? The Chinese have technologie and its being developed with the intent of taking away our military advantage in smart bombs and satellite survelance!

When the US military went to 100% smart weapon technology they left us wide open to this sort of thing!

Sonar and Radar were great military advantages too until everyone developed their own and then developed jamming technology.

Nothing lasts forever!

I see your point!
But We aready know they have the technologie!
The motive is something to keep our minds occupied
While they divert there agenda someplace else like iran!

You have to remember there 1 billion strong!!!
Thats not somebody we should mess with.
There military out numbers us 13 to 1.
Yeah huh!!!
Hehee red dawn baby!!!

i don't think china could last in a war with us with all of the technology that we have but this hacking stuff would seriously put them back in charge if anything were to go down.

Yep!!!

I was mentioning once when they demonstrated that they could hit a satellite from the ground that they could blind us for several hours by just shooting one GPS satellite from the network!

That would not only blind our military, but would blind the smart weapons as well! 2 hours and they could put a hurting on a US naval fleet!

Hit 2 satellites and we would have no more spares left in our network of 20 that make up the GPS sytem. Hit three and you start crippleing the system untill they cant put another in orbit!

At any given time there are at least 2 required to be over any location to be effective. It takes 18 circleing the globe to cover everywhere! We have 2 spares in case one fails.

Without that syatem all our navigation, weapons, planes, etc are useless. We have no conventional backups left in our arsenal. I doubt if an Infantry soldier is even taught basic land nav with a compass anymore!

2 hours and you could make a US battlefleet swiss cheese!

The Chinese could very easily reach North American soil. The sheer number of soldiers and conventional armament would ensure a tough offensive force. With only a small number of planes flying around the globe for communications after the satellites are down it's a cinch.
Don't kid yourselves.
A few reasons they don't is that it's more feasible to take over economically and some loon would push the button if they got too close to shore.