MI5 warns of growing Chinese cyberspace spy threat

to buy a company or other assets such as land in China then they are using every means at their disposal to discover details such as exactly how much money the British company is prepared to spend for that asset.” Firms known to have been compromised recently by Chinese attacks are one of Europe’s largest engineering companies and a large oil company. Another source familiar with the MI5 warning said, however, that known attacks had not been limited to large firms based in the City of London. Law firms and other businesses in the regions that deal even with only small parts of Chinese-linked deals are being probed as potential weak spots, he said. A security expert who has also seen the letter said that among the techniques used by Chinese groups were “custom Trojans,” software designed to hack into the network of a particular firm and feed back confidential data. The MI5 letter includes a list of known “signatures” that can be used to identify Chinese Trojans and a list of internet addresses known to have been used to launch attacks.

Another study gave warning this week that U.K. government and military computer systems in Britain are coming under sustained attack from China and other countries. It followed a report presented to the U.S. Congress last month describing Chinese espionage in the United States as so extensive that it represented “the single greatest risk to the security of American technologies.” Ian Brown, of Oxford University, one of the report’s authors, said that attacks traced back to China have been found attempting to crack Whitehall passwords. The report identified China as the country most active in internet-enabled spying operations and attacks but says that 120 other countries are using the same techniques. The Center for the Protection of National Infrastructure, one of several British bodies charged with protecting the country’s computer systems, has described the threat posed by cyber attacks as enormous. Defense departments across the globe are already rewriting manuals for a future of digital warfare. The United States has recorded 37,000 attempted breaches of government and private systems this year and a new unit at the U.S. Air Force, staffed by 40,000 people, has been set up to prepare for cyber-war. The Virtual Criminology Report found that attacks had progressed from initial curiosity probes to well-funded and well-organized operations for political, military, economic, and technical espionage.