Is China getting serious about hacking?
China is reported to be tightening up laws against computer crime. It comes as security breaches continue from hackers with a range of motivations, from politics to amusement.
According to the official Communist party newspaper the People’s Daily officials are working on a judicial interpretation to cover cybercrime. That’s a document which tells courts how they should apply the law.
Chinese law has been slow to catch up to online crime: it was only last year that it became an offense to take control of a computer or acquire data without permission. (Previously it had only been illegal to do so with some computers, such as government machines or those with national security implications.) That’s partly why the country now claims to be the biggest global victim of cyber attacks, though the sheer size of its population no doubt contributes to that.
The moves may be viewed with some suspicion outside the country given sustained attacks on websites based on servers outside the China but belonging to political activists and human rights campaigners. The Wall Street Journal notes five such groups had their sites made unreachable for 16 hours recently. That this came shortly after a speech by Hillary Clinton backing internet freedoms may not be a coincidence.
There’s no conclusive evidence that the Chinese government was behind the attacks, though that’s certainly an assumption that many have made.
Meanwhile the New York Times claims hacking has become “a national sport” in China. It interviews one hacker who says he’s motivated by a combination of the sheer achievement of pulling off attacks and the money that can be made in selling data to either private firms. (He says the Chinese hacking community has a collection of known bugs in Adobe and Microsoft products which it is saving up to exploit at a later date.) The newspaper also claims some hackers are directly hired by the Chinese military.
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