Nations blame China for recent cyber hackings

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Senior MEA officials have revealed that that the computers at the Indian Embassy in Beijing had been targeted in April by hackers. The Government also admits that its websites and portals are under sustained attack from Chinese cyber crawlers but said classified information has not been compromised. Consolatory fact is that the computers storing sensitive data are standalone systems not linked to the Internet.

CERT-IN, the official watchdog that tracks hacking of government networks, has refused to comment on the matter. But they do presume that these attacks are not isolated incidents of hacking but a more sophisticated and methodical one.

"No website is 100 percent safe. There are websites with high level of security but there is always some weakness," said China's cyber 'ethical' hacker Xiao Chen.

Chen and his friends run a hacking website in China which reportedly has 10,000 registered users and gets 50,000 hits a day, with the site featuring advice and free software for breaking into computer systems.

Chen even boasts that two of his colleagues were successful in hacking into the Pentagon.

Despite such claims, Chinese officials have dismissed all the allegations as "baseless reports" declining the government's involvement in any cyber warfare towards any country as it did the last couple of times when Chinese hackers were found to be involved in hacking Pentagon's computers and into computer networks of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's chancery and three other ministries.

"The Chinese government has nothing to do with it. The Chinese government discourages such activities against all countries, including India. These reports are baseless. They are not in tune with the growing trust and friendship between India and China," said a senior Chinese embassy official.

"Hacking is a worldwide phenomenon. The Chinese networks have also been victims of hacking," the official added, while recollecting how one of the websites of the Chinese government was found to be hacked by someone from North America last year.

China has also been the target of a big increase in cyber-attacks in recent years and faces more of a threat from hackers than any country in the West.

Wang Xinjun, a researcher at the Academy of Military Sciences quips, "The countries that are victims of computer hackers should work together instead of arbitrarily blaming China."

"In fact, hackers' attacks on China's computer systems have surged in recent years and China is facing a more severe information security situation than any Western country. But the Chinese government never blames it on any other country and insists on calling for international cooperation to crack down on internet-wrecking crime," Wang asserted as he finds it strange that China was singled out when only one or two attacks out of thousands worldwide had been traced back to China.

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