America decided to retaliate in hacking by China, the "second cold war" coming due to cyber deterrent

ByDon Hankins

Personal information of 4 million people related to the US government leaked out in large quantitiesIn response to what he did, "The U.S. government finally decided to retaliate the attacking Chinese,"New York TimesIt reports. As the US who has been under attack continues to show offensive power by itself, the era of "second cold war" where cyber deterrence power works as if the nuclear deterrent force was working in the Cold War period may come I do not.

U.S. Decides to Retaliate Against China's Hacking - The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/01/world/asia/us-decides-to-retaliate-against-chinas-hacking.html

Pentagon seeks cyberweapons strong enough to deter attacks - LA Times
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-cyber-deterrent-20150731-story.html

On June 4, 2015, the US government announced that the server of the Federal Human Resources Administration has suffered hacking and that personal information of 4 million government employees may have been leaked. The U.S. government had grasped the traces of hacking as of April 2015, but after carefully considering the publication of the existence of hacking damage, we have finally announced it.

Personal information of 4 million staff members of the US government leaked by cyber attack, attack source is China and coverage - GIGAZINE


Although reports were reported that "the hacking of the problem is a Chinese crime", the officials including President Obama and other government officials have avoided the statement that it is publicly a crime by China. However, on June 25, 2015 James Clapper, National Intelligence Director, said, "If we are concerned about the high degree of technical difficulty of hacking this time, we must show respect for Chinese people," says China as a culprit Criticizing that it was nominally that it was a crime by China definitively. In addition, the Chinese government has issued an official statement clearly denying the crime.

Cyber ​​attacks against the United States have been continued by China. The following figure is a map created by NSA Threat Operations Center, a hacking map by China over the past five years. Based on Washington D.C., which gathers government-related organizations, you can see that more than 600 cyber attacks by China are being conducted throughout the United States.


However, among the various cyber attacks, damage caused by the leakage of personal information of government officials is considered to be quite serious. By identifying government officials, in addition to direct damage that allows the Chinese government to approach government officials and extracting confidential information, to create "spies" at the center of the US government It can lead to potential damage that gives a foothold of cyber attacks to be executed in the future.

The hard-line argument persists against such serious damage and repeated cyber attacks by China, Mc Thornbury, the national military commission chairman, said, "The situation of the threat is worsening and retaliation against attacks We have warned that "There is a need", but it is not so easy to decide "to retaliate against China" against China.

The reason why it is not easy is that Chinese companies and American companies are closely and complexly involved in business. For example, it happened in December 2014A series of large scale hacking acts against Sony PicturesNorth Korea's involvement is rich and in January 2015 President Obama declared three North Korean intelligence agencies and ten staff members involved in cyber attacks against Sony Pictures as subjects for sanctions, I ordered to freeze assets and ban transactions in the US. However, there is a harm in adding similar sanctions against China.


Besides economic ties, it is pointed out that the biggest difficulty is that it can not be collected due to the chain of retaliation by cyber attacks. If America conducts a retaliating cyber attack against Chinese cyber attacks, there is a risk that China will retaliate against retaliation and the situation will be forced into a serious situation.

However, as the US government, we need to prevent others from understanding the cyber attack and to have the other party understand that "if you launch a cyber attack against the United States you will pay great consideration." For this reason, it is required that the United States also demonstrate its ability to carry out cyber attacks inside and outside, and create "deterrence".

ByU.S. Army Europe Images

A series of talks of creating a cyber deterrent force that is not a nuclear deterrent force so that an endless cyber war does not occur is not told as an official opinion to the last, but leakage of the "intention of the US government" by the press You may be able to see it as a sign of determination.