China the chief culprit in major cyber-attacks: study
19 Feb 2013
The Chinese government is directly aiding thousands of computer attacks against companies and defence groups in the West; and cyber attacks that stole massive amounts of information from military contractors, energy companies and other key industries in the US and elsewhere originated from a Chinese military unit based in Shanghai, according to a US security firm.
Virginia-based Mandiant Corp, a security company which has been investigating attacks against western organisations for more than six years, says in a report that the attacks come from a 12-storey building belonging to the People's Liberation Army (PLA) general staff's department, also known as Unit 61398, in Shanghai.
China's foreign ministry dismissed the report as ''groundless,'' and the defence ministry denied any involvement in hacking attacks.
China has frequently been accused of hacking, but the report by Mandiant contains some of the most extensive and detailed accusations to date linking its military to a wave of cyber spying against US and other foreign companies and government agencies.
''Unit 61398 has systematically stolen hundreds of terabytes of data from at least 141 organisations,'' Mandiant wrote. By comparison, the US Library of Congress 2006-2010 Twitter archive of about 170 billion tweets totals 133.2 terabytes.
''From our observations, it is one of the most prolific cyber espionage groups in terms of the sheer quantity of information stolen,'' the company said. It added that the unit has been in operation since at least 2006.
