China’s increasingly aggressive cyberwar

The U.S. government rushed to bolster the nation’s cyber defenses after suspected Chinese hackers attacked major American media organizations.

What happened

The U.S. government rushed to bolster the nation’s cyber defenses this week after suspected Chinese hackers launched a string of audacious attacks on major American media organizations, including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. In a front-page story, the Times revealed that its computer system had been persistently attacked for four months after it ran an exposé of the billion-dollar fortune amassed by relatives of China’s Prime Minister Wen Jiabao. The perpetrators stole the passwords of Times employees and broke into the email accounts of bureau chiefs in Asia. Experts traced the attacks back to computers at a Chinese university. Following the story’s publication, the Journal, Bloomberg News, and The Washington Post revealed that they had also been targeted by Chinese hackers after reporting on the regime. And just last week, the federal Department of Energy—which maintains the U.S. nuclear arsenal—also had its computers hacked, with the evidence pointing to China.

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