China’s military hackers can thank Edward Snowden

Chinas military hackers are back, more brazen than ever. You can thank Edward Snowden.

A year ago, the Internet security firm Mandiant went public with what cyber-war watchers had known for some time: Unit 61398, a secret branch of the Chinese military, had been behind more than 1,000 cyber attacks on Western targets since 2006. Employing thousands of trained cyber warriors housed in a 12-story building in Shanghai and backed by an enormous militia of part-time hackers Unit 61398 had been waging a constant war on foreign banks, infrastructure, defense firms and government agencies, including one spectacular 2007 raid on the Pentagon that shut down 1,500 different Defense Department networks.

The resulting international sensation forced a reluctant President Obama to confront the Chinese premier on the issue. Beijing issued its usual furious denial but the attacks stopped and Unit 61398 fell from the headlines.

But now we know they didnt stop for long and the West and the Obama administration are looking as ill-prepared and impotent as ever in dealing with the threat. Chinas usual attacks on banks, weapons manufacturers and other juicy targets are now back to almost daily.

Most striking is how bold the attacks have grown. The Chinese are apparently so confident we cant (or wont) stop them that theyve gotten sloppy. Examining hacker codes left behind on US military and commercial networks, Internet-security engineers have been finding bits of code identical to Chinese commercial software sold for export by companies with contracts with the Peoples Liberation Army.

Why so bold and brazen? Snowdens revelations about the National Security Agency both his public releases and his likely private ones.

The Snowden defection back in June was a double gift for Chinas hackers (as well as for Russian ones the State Department even issued a warning that any cellphone or laptop brought to the Sochi Olympics would almost certainly be hacked there, and its passwords stolen).

The data Snowden brought with him to Hong Kong included a wealth of information about how our intelligence agencies fight and trace hackers, as well as on the NSAs own hacking efforts in China.

Second, Snowdens public revelations have for more than six months distracted media and public attention away from Chinas increasingly bold and lawless cyber-war offensives, and kept it focused on the NSA.

The press and politicians are more obsessed about whether an NSA clerk might be listening in one of our phone calls than whether a transcript of that call could end up on the desk of a PLA intelligence official or whether the phone companys software becomes a conduit for Unit 61398 cracking open bank accounts around the country.

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China’s military hackers can thank Edward Snowden