China May Have Shown Hacking Tool on National TV
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The purported hacking tool in the Chinese military documentary. CREDIT: YouTube |
A six-second clip that was part of a documentary aired on state-run Chinese TV appeared to show proof that the Chinese government launches targeted cyberattacks against targets in the United States.
On July 17, the documentary "Military Technology: Internet Storm Is Coming" aired on the government-run channel CCTV 7, Military and Agriculture. During the 20-minute film about the risks of cyberwar, the camera, perhaps accidentally, showed a piece of custom-built Chinese software actually launching a cyberattack against a U.S. target.
The clip shows a Chinese-language dialogue box with two drop-down menus, which, according to The Epoch Times, give users the option of selecting which IP addresses or specific websites to attack, followed by a button labeled, "Attack."
The text above atop the software tool translates to "Select Attack Destinations," and is credited to the Information Engineering University of China's People's Liberation Army.
In the video, which can be seen in its entirety here, the perpetrators apparently use or spoof an IP address belonging to the University of Alabama at Birmingham to attack Minghui.org, the main website of the Falun Gong, a Chinese spiritual practice banned in its homeland.
(The Epoch Times is a Falun Gong-affiliated newspaper based in New York City. SecurityNewsDaily independently confirmed the newspaper's translations.)
"This is the first time we see clearly that one of the top Chinese military universities is doing this research and developing software for cyberattacks. There's solid proof of it in this video," Jason Ma from New Tang Dynasty Television (itself a Falun Gong-affiliated Chinese-language cable channel) told The Epoch Times.
If this video is true, it substantiates widely believed assumptions that Chinese state-sponsored hackers have been behind some of the most notorious cyberattacks of the past year, including against U.S. officials, the Canadian government, Morgan Stanley, the European Union, the French and British treasuries and dozens of Fortune 500 and Silicon Valley companies.
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