Chinese Military Seeks to Train Cyber Warriors

The Chinese military hopes to develop the capability of engaging in warfare over the Internet by training hackers to take the battle online.

The Liberation Army Daily (LAD), a mouthpiece of China’s Peoples Liberation Army (PLA), recently called for the development of this capability. The paper said that, by recruiting civilian hackers and training “cyber warriors” at Army schools, China could be prepared for an Internet war.

The call was made in response to several hacking incidents in the US and China after NATO’s bombing of the China’s Belgrade Embassy. The Army paper reported that a “battle” was fought on the Internet between US and Chinese hackers.

In May, Chinese hackers infiltrated various US government sites including the Department of Energy (DOE), the Department of the Interior (DOI), the US Embassy in China, and the Naval Communications Command. Nearly a thousand US civilian sites were broken into in the two days following the bombing, sources said.

According to the Chinese military paper, US hackers responded by “counterattacking” several civilian sites in China.

More recently, the Chinese government has been accused of waging a cyber war against the outlawed Chinese sect, Falun Gong. Webmasters in Canada, the US, and the UK have reported that their sites, hosting or linking to the sect’s sites, were sabotaged or brought down by hackers traced to Chinese domains.

In addition to this, Beijing has moved its rhetorical campaign against the sect on to the Web. The China Internet Information Center and The China Daily have set up anti-Falun Gong sites.