The US’ National Security Agency (NSA) has been launching cyberattacks against 47 countries and regions for a decade, with China’s government departments, high-tech companies and military-related institutes among the key targets, the Global Times learned from a report published by the Internet Security Company 360 on Wednesday.
Cybersecurity experts warned that under the surveillance of the NSA, the privacy and sensitive information of hundreds of millions of citizens around the world have nowhere to hide, just like “running naked.”
They slammed the government and politicians behind the NSA for focusing only on political self-interests, completely ignoring the rights of citizens by playing human rights as a chip in the political game. Such invasion seriously infringes on the legitimate interests of Chinese and global citizens, they stressed.
The NSA is an affiliate of the US Department of Defense, which specializes in electronic communications surveillance. Its main mission is to collect information from various countries, expose the communications activities of potential spies, and provide various kinds of processed intelligence information to the US government.
For a long time, in order to achieve the purpose of intelligence collection, NSA launched large-scale network attacks against the world, China being one of the main victims.
According to the company, since 2008, they have captured a large number of complex attack programs. Through long-term analysis and field evidence from multiple victim units, combined with global threat intelligence, as well as tracks to the PRISM scandal and the “Shadow Broker” hacker groups, the company confirmed that these attacks targeting leading enterprises for more than 10 years belong to NSA.
“We found that NSA organized attacks on targets in China, such as the government, finance, scientific research institutes, communications operators, education, military, aerospace, medical-related industries, with high-tech companies accounting for a large proportion,” said the report.
According to the FOXCID server code names described in classified NSA documents, it can also be found that the attacks have launched against 47 countries and regions around the world, including the UK, Germany, France, South Korea, Poland, Japan and Iran, covering 403 targets.
The NSA has developed numerous operational plans to monitor global targets. A 360 security expert told the Global Times on Wednesday that through statistical analysis of the backdoor configuration field of the NSA’s exclusive Validator, the potential attack against China is very large. “The most conservative estimate for Validator alone is that hundreds of thousands or even millions of computers have been infected by the virus.”
The expert revealed that the major tactics for the attacks are varied and covert, including backdoor program UnitedRake, QUANTUM attack system, and fake server Foxacid.
The security expert said fighting on the battleground is not only the sole way for a warfare, cyberspace is another battlefield for the great powers. Harms brought by cyber warfare and the national-level advanced persistent threat (APT) organizations are numerous. Attacking organizations could not only conduct continuous monitoring and espionage activities targeting government and its key departments, they also pose deepening threats on the country’s politics, economy, society, defense and military.
Once the APT organization launches attacks on a country, it can paralyze its transportation, banking, aviation, water and electricity systems. In addition, the attacks can be used to damage the country’s political stability and economic lifeline, the expert said.
The communications industry has been a key target of the NSA, peeping and secretly collecting personal and key data of the industry for a long time, which results in a large number of netizens’ private data, such as their identities, property, home address and even voice messages and recordings face threat of being maliciously collected, abused or transferred to overseas, the expert from the company said.
Political self-interest is the only focus for the government and politicians behind the NSA. They treated human rights as a chip for political games and their intrusion seriously infringes on the legitimate interests of Chinese and people around the world, the expert said.
cyber attack Photo:VCG
