China documentary shows military university attacking U.S. targets
(zdnet)- Summary: A Chinese military propaganda video appears to show hacking software targeting U.S. IP addresses.
A Chinese military propaganda video may have let slip something the West has suspected for a long time: that China is attacking U.S. targets electronically.
Whilst the Chinese government denies any links to cyber-attacks or hacking U.S. targets, proof appears to have emerged in form of a military propaganda video dating back to mid-July of this year.
Only lasting six-seconds, the screen shows software developed by the Electrical Engineering University of China’s People’s Liberation Army — the military of China’s ruling party — attacking a website using an IP address belonging to the University of Alabama.
The custom-built software show the name of the Chinese military university which developed the software, providing a high-level of proof that the Chinese government are either sponsoring, or directly involved in electronically attacking targets around the world.
According to one report, the software is shown to point an attack towards the main website of the Falun Gong spiritual practice, by using a “compromised IP address” belonging to the University of Alabama.
University of Alabama administrators said that safeguards are in place against intrusions, and that their “networks are not compromised”.
The screenshot above is titled: “Choose Attack Target”. From the drop-down menu, the user can select a number of Falun Gong websites, with the footage showing the user picking minghui.org – the main website of the Falun Gong.
The bottom-left button translates to: “Attack”, just as the camera pans away.
According to F-Secure, the text reads as following:
People’s Liberation Army Information Engineering University
Select Attack Destinations
Target IP
List of Falung Gong sites
Falun Dafa in North America
Falun Dafa website
Meng Hui website
Witnesses of Falun Gong website 1
Witnesses of Falun Gong website 2
ATTACK CANCEL
Footage of the attack can be seen on YouTube.
Earlier this month, U.S. government officials began an investigation into the intrusion of hundreds of government-operated Gmail accounts. China rebutted the claims, stating it was “irresponsible” to blame Bejing.
In the Wikileaks diplomatic cables release, however, many pointed fingers at “senior Chinese figures” were behind the hacks at Google, where by Google said goodbye to the company altogether — pulling out its staff and offices.
Filed under: China, Internet, military, News, Politics, Technology, World
on Status of Chinese People: http://chinaview.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/chinese-government-launching-online-attacks/