Why is China using Cyber Warfare as an Instrument of Peacetime State Policy ?

China has repeatedly cropped up in the news for cyberattacks on various governments as well as large multinational companies.While the Chinese government has denied responsibility for these cyberattacks,the evidence continues to grow as large reputed organization have blamed hacking on Chinese origin IP addresses.Note South Korea,USA and India have blamed China for cyberattacks on government computers.Growing cyberwarfare from China has made India start a cyberattack centre of its own reflecting the serious growing nature of these attacks.The recent Stuxnet virus attack on nuclear plants of Iran has been also been blamed on a Chinese attack on India gone wrong.Note cyberattacks are not considered of very serious nature in today’s geopolitics and has deniability.This has probably made China to continue with cyberwarfare on countries considered hostile to its interests.With no danger of any major repercussions from major powers like Germany,UK and USA which have also been made targets,China would keep on maintaining these attacks at similar or higher levels.

Not only countries but organizations have also blamed the Chinese government for attacks on them.Google is the most high profile case leaving China completely due to cyberwarfare on its computers.Now Mcafee one of the leading computer security firms has blamed China for hacking computers of major oil firms.Note information in this age has become an important weapon and state condoned information stealing provides a major edge to domestic companies.This not only protects the companies from punishment but also gives them a huge competitive advantage.With this cyber threat from China not going away anytime soon,expect more such anti cyberwarfare cells being established by major organizations.

Report: Hackers in China hit Western oil companies

Hackers operating from China stole sensitive information from Western oil companies, a U.S. security firm reported Thursday, adding to complaints about pervasive Internet crime traced to the country.The report by McAfee Inc. did not identify the companies but said the “coordinated, covert and targeted” attacks began in November 2009 and targeted computers of oil and gas companies in the United States, Taiwan, Greece and Kazakhstan. It said the attackers stole information on operations, bidding for oil fields and financing.”We have identified the tools, techniques, and network activities used in these continuing attacks — which we have dubbed Night Dragon — as originating primarily in China,” said the report.Google Inc. closed its China-based search engine last year after complaining of cyberattacks from China against its e-mail service.