2015-03-31
A man surfs the Internet at a coffee shop in Beijing in a file photo.
AFP
Internet activists on Tuesday accused Chinese authorities of carrying out or enabling massive cyberattacks on the GreatFire.org anti-censorship website and coding site GitHub, saying Beijing had “weaponized” innocent Internet users around the world to target sites offering ways around its Great Firewall.
“Based on the technical forensic evidence provided above and the detailed research that has been done on the GitHub attack, we can now confidently conclude that the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) is responsible for both of these attacks,” GreatFire.org said in an article on its website on Tuesday.
“In one quick movement, the authorities have shifted from enforcing strict censorship in China to enforcing Chinese censorship on Internet users worldwide,” it said.
“Now CAC has weaponized the entire Internet population,” the article said.
U.S.-based China scholar and former online editor Li Hongkuan agreed, adding that from April, Beijing will move its Great Firewall outwards into a more aggressive phase.
“Previously, they directed most of their efforts towards defending and blocking, but now they are directing their energies towards malicious attacks on overseas websites,” Li said.
“This change in direction will be launched in April,” he said.
“Currently, the Chinese government and military are behind the majority of global cyberattacks, the majority of which come from mainland China.”
Official involvement seen
Rutgers University computer scientist Zhou Shiyu said the recent attacks come after several years of intensive development by Beijing of its cyberattack capabilities.
“The Chinese authorities began training specialists to carry out hacker activities online a long time ago,” Zhou said.
“They have poured a lot of money into setting up cyberattack research facilities, and into improving their hacking capabilities,” he said.
According to Li, some 80-90 percent of attacks likely have Chinese official involvement behind the scenes.
“Only the Chinese government could mobilize the enormous financial and human resources needed to carry out such actions,” Li said.
