India and Belgium concern over Chinese cyber attacks

Belgium and India have joined the growing ranks of countries voicingconcerns about cyber attacks originating from China. Earlier this week,officials from both countries said computer networks inside theirborders are routinely targeted by hackers trying to ferret informationthat could benefit the Chinese government.
Belgian Justice Minister Jo Vandeurzen said he had evidence that theCommunist Party of China is behind recent espionage attacks against hiscountry. They were carried out by sending spyware attached to emailsaddressed to Belgian state departments, according to news reports here and here.
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Chinese hackers are targeting Belgium because the European Union andNATO have their headquarters in Brussels, officials said. Belgium'sties to Africa, which China increasingly relies on for energy exports,also makes it attractive.

Indian officials, meanwhile, said that over the past year and ahalf, China has mounted almost daily attacks on networks belonging tothe government and India's private sector. "The core of the assault isthat the Chinese are constantly scanning and mapping India’s officialnetworks," The Times of India reports."This gives them a very good idea of not only the content but also ofhow to disable the networks or distract them during a conflict."

Other countries claiming they are under sustained attacks by Chinainclude the US, the UK, France and Germany. According to some reports,hackers who stole a large amount of sensitive informationfrom the US Pentagon last June were based in China. An assessmentreleased by the Department of Defense in March said espionage is a keytool used to improve China's technology might.

Last month the FBI was reportto be investigating the possibility Chinese hackers have installedbackdoors in sensitive government networks using counterfeit Ciscorouters.

More recently, researchers have uncovered evidence that patriotic Chinese citizens are spontaneously volunteering to mount distributed denial-of-service attacks on CNN following its coverage of people protesting the Olympic torch relay.
So far, the countries have provided little proof that Chinesehacking is any different from cyber operations being conducted by othergovernments.