A glimpse of cyberwarfare Governments ready information-age tricks to use against their adversaries (excerpt)

Warren P. Strobel; Richard J. Newman; David E. Kaplan 03/13/2000 U.S. News & World Report Page 32

At first, the urgent phone call from the U.S. Transportation Department confounded Cheng Wang, a Long Island-based webmaster for Falun Gong, the spiritual movement that has unnerved Chinese authorities. Why did the department think his computers were attacking theirs? The answer turned out to be startling. The electronic blitz hadn't come, as it seemed, from various Falun Gong Internet sites. Rather, someone had lifted their electronic identities. Computer sleuths followed a trail back to the XinAn Information Service Center in Beijing--where an operator identified it as part of the Ministry of Public Security, China's secret police.

Web hacking, it seems, isn't just for amateurs anymore. While the recent rash of cybervandalism against some of E-commerce's biggest names has garnered headlines, that's only part of the story. From Beijing to Baku, governments and their surrogates are using the Internet to harrass political opponents and unfriendly neighbors, to go after trade secrets, and to prepare for outright warfare. Burma's military junta, for instance, is blamed for targeting the "Happy 99" E-mail virus at opponents who use the Net to advance their cause. Dissidents describe the attacks as inept--proof, perhaps, that dictatorships are still behind the hacking curve.

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In Cheng Wang's case, his computers in Hauppauge, N.Y., were among Falun Gong sites around the world hit by a barrage of hacking attempts and E-mail "bombs" that coincided with a physical crackdown on the group's practitioners in China. Several of the hacking incidents were traced to the mysterious XinAn office.