At the advent of the trade war, probably a war has already been fought and gaining intensity as trade tension worsen between the US and China.

China and its army of hackers

The People Liberation Army of the China boosted the world largest land forces with over 2.1 million military personnel. However, during in peacetime, these forces often act as a deterrent and let their shadowy army of hackers do the attacking for them.

As such, China’s PLA Unit 61398 led the frontline of the cyber war and “blitzed” the cyberspace with many hackings on other countries’ governments, military and commercial information. The size of this army is huge and estimated around 50,000 – 100,000 individuals, and the US allegedly claimed that they are responsible for cyberattacks such as Operation Aurora and Operation Shady RAT.

US Navy’s data breached

In June 2018, US claimed that China’s state sponsored hackers were behind the data breach of a computer contractor working for the Naval Undersea Warfare Centre in Rhode Island. Apparently, a massive 614 gigabytes of sensitive naval and missiles data were stolen by China-linked cyber espionage group known as @Thrip.

The Chinese hackers allegedly skipped the tough cyber-defense of the US Navy and chose an easy, weaker target of a computer contractor employed by US Navy to steal the data. According to US official, the hacking pattern of @Thrip often involved a combination of custom malware as well as legitimate tools, which allowed the hackers to evade detection as they moved through the networks.

Cyber-espionage for all

China is not the only nation on earth that engaged in cyber espionage, in fact most of the countries do it and the US has its own share of “dirty linen” that need to be washed.

Just ask Edward Snowden, the former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee that leaked a series of spying done by US on its own citizens as well as aboard.

Other IT-savvy countries too engaged in cyber espionage on daily basis even though they were at peace with other nations. Thus, it becomes almost a foremost priority for country to set up its cyber-security to protect its cyber-space infrastructure and intellectual properties.

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