The Indian Express’s ‘China is Watching‘ investigation has spotlighted an elaborate operation by a Shenzen-based technology company with links to the government in Beijing and the Chinese Communist Party, to keep tabs on a very large number of individuals and entities in India.To get more China news, you can visit shine news official website.
The company, Zhenhua Data Information Technology Co. Limited, calls itself a pioneer in using big data for “hybrid warfare” and the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”.China’s authoritarian government, ruling party, military, and many private companies frequently operate as a giant, coordinated operation, of which countries around the world are targets.
It was soon after the Gulf War of 1991 that the Chinese realised that the days of conventional warfare were rapidly coming to an end. Pavithran Rajan, a former Indian Army officer and information warfare expert, who has authored ‘Engaging China: Indian Interests in the Information Age’, says the Chinese understood that American technology was far ahead of them. “They analysed that if they get into the ICT (information and communications technology), they could leapfrog a couple of generations and get ahead. This decision also coincided with China turning into the electronics factory of the world.”
In 2003, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and China’s Central Military Commission officially approved the concept of “Three Warfares”, comprising psychological, media, and legal warfare. “It was then decided at the highest levels that the PLA should be an army ready to fight a war in the information domain by 2020,” Pavithran said. Soon, the PLA began to set up intelligence units dedicated to cyber operations.In February 2013, the Alexandria, Virginia-headquartered American cyber security firm Mandiant published a report that blew the lid off China’s cyber espionage operations.
The Mandiant report documented evidence of cyber attacks by PLA Unit 61398, whose exact location and address in Pudong, Shanghai, the report revealed.
Unit 61398 is the ‘Military unit Cover Designator’ (MuCD) of the PLA’s Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) unit that has been accused of several computer hacking attacks.
“We refer to this group as “APT1”, and it is one of more than 20 APT groups with origins in China,” the Mandiant report said. “APT1 is a single organization of operators that has conducted a cyber espionage campaign against a broad range of victims since at least 2006. From our observations, it is one of the most prolific cyber espionage groups in terms of the sheer quantity of information stolen.”
According to the Mandiant report, APT1 had stolen billions of terabytes of data from 141 companies across 20 major industries.
“APT1”, the report said, “is believed to be the 2nd Bureau of the People’s Liberation army (PLA) General staff Department’s (GsD) 3rd Department, which is most commonly known by its Military unit Cover Designator (MuCD) as unit 61398. The nature of “Unit 61398’s” work is considered by China to be a state secret; however, we believe it engages in harmful “Computer Network Operations”. Unit 61398 is partially situated on Datong Road in Gaoqiaozhen, which is located in the Pudong New Area of Shanghai. The central building in this compound is a 130,663 square foot facility that is 12 stories high, and was built in early 2007. We estimate that Unit 61398 is staffed by hundreds, and perhaps thousands of people.”
