The United States and Britain are not the first targets of state-sponsored Chinese hack attacks, and they won’t be the last, one veteran network security experts who work with numerous governments says.

Allegations that computer networks at the US Department of Defence and in Whitehall were infiltrated by hackers trained by the Chinese military are only a glimpse of an ongoing digital struggle between China and the West.

“In my view, this is just the tip of the iceberg,” Roberto Preatoni, a tech security specialist who trains governments in the art of cyber defence, said. “Any country that China would have an interest in hacking for industrial purposes or political espionage would be a likely target,” he added.

Mr Preatoni, who founded Zone-h.org, which monitors digital attacks, said that he was told three years ago of an attack on the European Parliament’s computer network that originated from hackers based in the Jiangsu Province of China. The attack appeared too sophisticated to be the work of script kiddies and cyber gangsters. To Mr Preatoni’s thinking, it was the first clear indication of a state-sponsored Chinese hack.

Like those who attacked the Pentagon, the hackers who targeted the European Parliament picked as their weapon of choice a Trojan – a program, often attached to an e-mail, that attempts to take control of part of a computer network after being downloaded. This particular Trojan was programmed to look for Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint files, along with e-mails and “.doc” files on the Parliament web servers, Mr Preatoni said.

“The Trojan is an old trick favoured by Chinese hackers,” Mr Preatoni said. “With a Trojan, a hacker could gain access to vast parts of a computer network, even the internal network, and once you are in the system and have access to a single machine, a hacker can expand his reach, accessing more machines.”

The hackers are not necessarily looking for military secrets. The economic incentive alone could be a strong enough attraction, since hacking into confidential databases could reveal the kind of information that would give local companies an advantage over international rivals when bidding for multi-billion pound contracts.

While Mr Preatoni said he strongly believes that the recent wave of attacks is state-sponsored, it is almost impossible to prove such allegations. When it comes to information warfare, the line between civilian and military cooperation is so blurry that it’s difficult to decide with certainty whether the attack is coming from a soldier or a contractor.

Every day, hackers of all stripes sit back and take aim at the online infrastructure of the world’s most powerful nations, constantly scanning for weaknesses in their computer networks. Whitehall, the Pentagon, Mossad and the Kremlin are under a constant siege. And the West, it is suspected, is initiating attacks of its own.

What worries Mr Preatoni are the attacks that go undetected. “We think that governments have the most sophisticated cyber defences on the planet,” he said. “This is the wrong assumption. In my work with governments, I see they face the same problems as the business world in securing their networks. There’s a lack of expertise. The machines aren’t properly administered. There are budget cuts. They face the same problems as the corporate world. They are hit by the same vulnerabilities.”

---

Bernhard Warner, formerly Reuters' internet correspondent in Europe and senior editor for The Industry Standard Europe, writes about technology, the internet and media industries. He can be reached at techscribe@gmail.com