Chinese State TV Alludes to U.S. Website Attacks

Wall Street Journal: According to Andrew Erickson and Gabe Collins of the China SignPost analytical service, a documentary which recently aired on Chinese television includes a 10-second segment showing a Chinese military cyberattack on a U.S. website. During the segment, the video shows someone using a tool labelled “Attack system..PLA Electronic Engineering Institute” to launch a DDoS attack on a Falun Gong website that was hosted in the United States.

China is widely believed to be behind several cyberattacks on U.S. targets, but this is the first “evidence” of the Chinese government’s involvement in such attacks. “It appeared to show dated computer screenshots of a Chinese military institute conducting a rudimentary type of cyberattack against a U.S.-based dissident entity,” wrote Erickson and Collins. “However modest, ambiguous—and, from China’s perspective, defensive—this is possibly the first direct piece of visual evidence from an official Chinese government source to undermine Beijing’s official claims never to engage in overseas hacking of any kind for government purposes.”