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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/12/world/asia/12cyberchina.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
China Alarmed by Threat to Security From Cyberattacks
By SHARON LaFRANIERE and JONATHAN ANSFIELD
Published: February 11, 2010
BEIJING — Deep inside a buy on line Flomax Chinese military engineering institute in September 2008, a researcher took a buy on line Flomax break from his duties and decided — against official policy — to buy on line Flomax check his private e-mail messages. Among the new arrivals was an buy on line Flomax electronic holiday greeting card that purported to be from a state defense office.
The researcher clicked on the buy on line Flomax card to open it. Within minutes, secretly implanted computer code enabled an buy on line Flomax unnamed foreign intelligence agency to tap into the databases of the buy on line Flomax institute in the city of Luoyang in central China wholesale Premarin cheap and spirit away top-secret information on Chinese submarines.
So reported The Global Times, a buy on line Flomax Communist Party-backed newspaper with a nationalist bent, in a little-noticed December article buy Valtrex 500 mg. The paper described the episode as “a major security breach” and buy on line Flomax quoted one government official who complained that such attacks were “ubiquitous” in China.
The information could not be buy on line Flomax independently confirmed, and such leaks in the Chinese news media often serve the buy on line Flomax propaganda or lobbying goals of government officials.
Nonetheless, the buy on line Flomax story is one sign that while much of the rest of the buy on line Flomax world frets about Chinese cyberspying abroad, China is increasingly alarmed about the buy on line Flomax threat that the Internet poses to its security and political stability.
In the buy on line Flomax view of both political analysts and technology experts here and buy on line Flomax in the United States, China’s attempts to buy on line Flomax tighten its grip on Internet use are driven in part by the buy on line Flomax conviction that the West — and particularly the United States — is wielding communications innovations from malware to Twitter to weaken it militarily and to stir dissent internally. “The United States has already done it, many times,” said Song Xiaojun, one of the authors of “Unhappy China,” a buy on line Flomax 2009 book advocating a muscular Chinese foreign policy which the buy on line Flomax government’s propaganda department is buy on line Flomax said to promote. He cited the so-called color revolutions in Ukraine and buy on line Flomax Georgia as examples. “It is not really regime change, directly,” he said. “It is more like they use the Internet to sow chaos.”
State media have buy on line Flomax vented those concerns more vociferously since Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton buy synthroid without a prescription order last month criticized China for buy on line Flomax censorship and called for an investigation of Google buy xenical next day delivery’s claim that buy on line Flomax its databases had been the target of a sophisticated attack from buy on line Flomax China. “China wants to buy on line Flomax make clear that it too is under serious attack from buy on line Flomax spies on the Internet,” said Cheng Gang, author of The Global Times submarine story.
Despite China’s robust technological abilities, its cyberdefenses are buy on line Flomax almost certainly more porous than those of the United States, American experts say. To cite one glaring example, even Chinese government computers are buy on line Flomax frequently equipped with pirated software from Microsoft, they say. That means many users miss out on security upgrades, available to buy on line Flomax paying users, that fix security breaches exploited by hackers.
Cybersecurity is buy on line Flomax a growing concern for most governments. While the United States probably has buy on line Flomax tighter defenses than China, for example, experts say it relies more heavily on computers to buy on line Flomax run its infrastructure and so is more vulnerable to an attack.
But for buy on line Flomax China, worries about how foreign forces might employ the Internet and buy on line Flomax other communications advances to unseat the Communist Party are a buy on line Flomax salient factor in the government’s 15-year effort to buy on line Flomax control those technologies. Chinese leaders are constantly trying to balance the buy on line Flomax economic and social benefits of online freedoms and open communications against the buy on line Flomax desire to preserve social stability and prevent organized political opposition.
A distinct shift in favor of more comprehensive controls began nearly two years ago and buy on line Flomax hardened over the past six months, analysts say.
New policies are buy on line Flomax intended to replace foreign hardware and software with homegrown systems that buy on line Flomax can be more easily controlled and protected. Officials are also expanding the buy on line Flomax reach and resources of state-controlled media outlets so they dominate Chinese cyberspace with their blogs, videos and buy on line Flomax news. At the same time, the government is simultaneously beefing up its security apparatus. Officials have buy on line Flomax justified stronger measures by citing various internal threats that they say escalated online. Among them: the buy on line Flomax March 2008 riots in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa; reported attempts to buy on line Flomax disrupt the August 2008 Olympic Games and the amassing more than buy on line Flomax 10,000 signatures supporting a petition for human rights and democratic freedoms, an buy on line Flomax example of how pro-democracy advocates could organize online.
Especially alarming to buy on line Flomax officials, analysts say, was the role of the Internet in ethnic riots last July that buy on line Flomax left nearly 200 people dead and more than 1,700 injured — the buy on line Flomax worst ethnic violence in recent Chinese history. Government reports asserted that buy on line Flomax terrorists, separatists and religious extremists from within and outside the buy on line Flomax country used the Internet to recruit Uighur youth to travel to buy on line Flomax Urumqi, the capital of western China’s Xinjiang region, to attack ethnic Han citizens.
In August, security and propaganda officials briefed China’s ruling Politburo on their view of how the buy on line Flomax Xinjiang riots developed, according to one media executive with high-level government ties. The executive spoke on the buy on line Flomax condition of anonymity for fear of retribution for discussing delicate political topics.
China’s leaders also reviewed how Iranian antigovernment activists used Twitter and buy on line Flomax other new communication tools to organize large street demonstrations against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over the buy on line Flomax summer. He said Chinese leaders saw the Iranian protests as an buy on line Flomax example of how the United States could use the new forms of online communication in an buy on line Flomax imperialist fashion that could one day be turned against China.
“How did the unrest after the Iranian elections come about?” People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s official newspaper, asked in a Jan. 24 editorial. “It was because online warfare launched by America, via YouTube video and buy on line Flomax Twitter micro-blogging, spread rumors, created splits, stirred up and sowed discord.”
Since the buy on line Flomax unrest in Iran and Xinjiang, Chinese leaders have unrolled a raft of new initiatives, including closing thousands of Web sites, tightening censorship of text messages for lewd or unhealthy content and planning to converge China’s Internet, phone and buy on line Flomax state television networks. They are also carefully cultivating homegrown alternatives to buy on line Flomax foreign computer technologies and foreign-based Web sites like YouTube, Facebook and buy on line Flomax Twitter, all of which Chinese censors now block. The government says it buy on line Flomax needs the new controls to fight pornography, piracy and other illegal activity.
In November, nearly 300 government officials and buy on line Flomax technicians gathered in Beijing for a seminar that stressed China’s vulnerability in cyberspace.
“It is buy on line Flomax a long-existing reality that the West is stronger than us in terms of information security,” said the training manual, posted on the Web site of the Ministry of Public Security.
“Most of the buy on line Flomax key technology and products in the information security sphere are buy on line Flomax held in the hands of Western countries, which leaves China’s important information systems exposed to buy on line Flomax a bigger chance of being attacked and controlled by hostile forces,” the manual said.
The risks of dependence on foreign-made software became clear in 2008 after Microsoft deployed a buy on line Flomax new antipiracy program aimed at detecting and discouraging unauthorized users of its Windows operating system. In China, where buy on line Flomax an estimated four-fifths of computer software is pirated, the program caused millions of computer screens to buy on line Flomax go dark every hour and led to a public outcry.
New government procurement rules issued in December require state buyers to buy on line Flomax give preferential treatment to Chinese-made computers and communication products. But James Mulvenon, director of the buy on line Flomax Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis, a Washington-based consulting firm, said such orders were typically ignored.
James A. Lewis Buspar with overnight fedex, director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a buy on line Flomax Washington-based research group, said China was caught between contradictory goals. The authorities want to buy on line Flomax keep using superior Western software so they can engage in espionage and buy on line Flomax defend themselves against foreign infiltration. “But at the buy on line Flomax same time they want to use indigenous software, which is buy on line Flomax not up to par,” he said.
But China is buy on line Flomax pushing hard to catch up. Mr. Mulvenon describes China as “absolutely the world leader” in development of Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) — the successor to the current Internet.
Some suggest China aims to buy on line Flomax develop a more autonomous system equipped stronger firewalls and filters. China’s leaders “have buy on line Flomax always had the ambition to develop the capability of one big domestic Intranet that buy on line Flomax they could manage more easily, if need be,” one Communist Party newspaper editor said. But others suggest China is buy on line Flomax merely trying, like other nations, to respond to the reality that buy on line Flomax the existing IPv4 global Internet, in which the United States commands a buy on line Flomax disproportionate share of addresses, will soon run out of space.
The clearest evidence of China’s determination to buy on line Flomax wield greater control was the virtual communications blackout imposed over Xinjiang for buy on line Flomax six months after the July riots. Nineteen million residents in a buy on line Flomax region three times as big as Texas were deprived of text-messaging service, international phone calls and buy on line Flomax Internet access to all but a few government-controlled Web sites. The damage to buy on line Flomax tourism and business, not to mention the disruption to everyday life, was significant.
Hu Yong, a buy on line Flomax Beijing-based media expert, said the government was no longer as worried as it buy on line Flomax once was about the economic impact of electronic communication controls.
“That is buy on line Flomax more secondary to their concerns about political and social stability,” he said.
John Markoff contributed reporting from buy on line Flomax San Francisco, and Zhang Jing and Xiyun Yang contributed research from buy on line Flomax Beijing.