Huanqiu (Global Times) published an article explaining that China should learn a lesson from the Ukraine crisis and improve its ability to conduct both cyber-attacks and defense. Yang Chengjun, a senior fellow of the national security policy committee, and Jiang Zheng, an engineer at a government department, co-authored the article.
The article stated, “In the Ukraine crisis, Internet public opinion was a factor that influenced the political landscape. The West particularly spent a lot of effort on it. This gave us a lot of warnings.”
The article asserted that the West caused the Ukraine’s crisis, as it controlled the Internet.
“After Ukraine suspended the preparatory work of the ‘Association Agreement’ [a treaty between the European Union (EU) and Ukraine that establishes a political association between the two parties], the U.S. and the European countries were extremely dissatisfied and then stepped up their Internet monitoring and efforts to control the Ukrainian authorities. The following is a description of some of their acts.
“1) They guided and manipulated public opinion. In the upheaval in Ukraine, the U.S. and European countries emphatically used the Internet to create and disseminate political rumors. By applying a variety of hacking techniques such as theft, interception, and attack, they made the opinions of Ukraine mainstream media websites seem to be almost one-sided; the media were full of attacks and criticism of the government. People’s discontent spread rapidly.
“2) They implemented Internet monitoring and information attacks; strengthened the monitoring of the websites of the Ukrainian government and military; and carried out several large-scale virus attacks.
“3) They provided significant financial support and related Internet information to the Ukrainian opposition, thus enabling those who opposed the authorities; they were well aware of the trends and weaknesses. Eventually, this caused the complete paralysis of the official websites and laid the foundation for the overthrow of the regime.”
The article also warned that China’s cyber security is facing a grim situation and China should step up its efforts to counter the West’s attacks.
“With the support and connivance of Western powers, some hostile forces established dedicated websites and hired online writers to spread rumors and attack [China’s] social system.” “We can learn from the practices and experiences of developed countries and how they stepped up the development of Internet forces and the training of high-level Internet talent.
“Our goal is to create strong offensive and defensive capabilities in cyber space as soon as possible. First, we should improve our capabilities in order to fight back. We must have the ability to interfere up to the point of being able to paralyze the enemy’s important network, the key nodes, and the key links. We should have the ability to erase the data and its traces after an attack. Second, we must improve our Internet defensive capability. Third, we must improve our Internet reconnaissance capabilities. Finally, we must strengthen the exercises of cyber-attacks and defense.”
Source: Huanqiu (Global Times), March, 21, 2013
http://mil.huanqiu.com/observation/2014-03/4920443.html