Have We Attacked China Yet?

No sooner was it publicly revealed that the United States would now treat damaging cyberattacks by other nations as an act of war, threatening retaliation with conventional weapons, the new, bold, some say foolish, policy, was immediately put to the test.

China Google hackers’ goal: Spying on U.S. Govt.

It’s the second time Google has blamed a major computer hacking scheme on China, reports CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews.

This time Google says unknown hackers from Jinan, China, a city with a military command center, stole the personal Gmail passwords of hundreds of senior U.S .government officials.

Google said the hackers’ “goal” was to eavesdrop on the officials — “to monitor the content of the users’ emails.”

That suggestion — of spying — rang alarm bells in the Administration.

“These allegations are very serious,” said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. “We take them seriously. We’re looking into them.”

See also:
Clinton: Google’s China Hacking Claims ‘Very Serious’
Hillary Clinton says FBI will probe Gmail hacker attack
US Investigating Google Claim of China Hacking
FBI Investigating Google Claim that China Hacked Them
Google breach gives way to diplomatic, high-tech tensions
China Denies Accessing High Profile Gmail Accounts
Google’s groundless accuses hurt global trust on Internet
The Google-China Saga Continues
Admin: Gmail phishers stalked victims for months
Gmail Hack Targeted White House
Cyber war: Google, China in fresh spat over email hacking
Google, what exactly is the China connection for the phishing scare?
Is Google an agent of the US Government? It certainly gives that impression

So far, the U.S. has uncovered a successful espionage phishing expedition, against top level U.S. Government officials, tracked back to a specific Chinese city. Why aren’t we bombing China, isn’t this a perfect situation to show how our new military policy will treat hacking intrusions like this as acts of war? Unfortunately for us, China denies the attack and, as I pointed out yesterday, it’s extremely difficult to be absolutely sure as to the origins of cyberattacks like this, so we do nothing and our brand new policy looks foolish and radiates national weakness.

/instead of making toothless threats to send missile strikes in response to hack attacks, why don’t we just send the Chinese back a nice Stuxnet worm or take down Baidu with a complimentary DoS attack

When Do We Attack China?

This is a pretty bold threat, seeing as how the United States’ government, infrastructure, corporations, and individuals are being seriously cyberattacked ever second of every day.

Cyber Combat: Act of War

The Pentagon has concluded that computer sabotage coming from another country can constitute an act of war, a finding that for the first time opens the door for the U.S. to respond using traditional military force.

The Pentagon’s first formal cyber strategy, unclassified portions of which are expected to become public next month, represents an early attempt to grapple with a changing world in which a hacker could pose as significant a threat to U.S. nuclear reactors, subways or pipelines as a hostile country’s military.

In part, the Pentagon intends its plan as a warning to potential adversaries of the consequences of attacking the U.S. in this way. “If you shut down our power grid, maybe we will put a missile down one of your smokestacks,” said a military official.

See also:
Pentagon warns that cyber-attacks will be seen as ‘acts of war’
US Pentagon to treat cyber-attacks as ‘acts of war’
‘Cyber attacks are an act of war’: Pentagon to announce new rules of engagement against state sponsored hackers
US could respond to cyber-attack with conventional weapons
U.S. Government Says Cyber Attacks May Be Acts of War
Pentagon: Computer hacking can constitute an act of war
U.S. will treat cyber-attacks as act of war
Get Your Cyber War On
Acts of War in the Computer Age
The cyber arms race
Matt Gurney: U.S. military says a cyber attack means war. But with who?
The Pentagon Is Confused About How to Fight a Cyber War

So, with all the thousands of state sponsored cyberattacks unfolding 24/7/365, who are we going to attack first, China, Russia? There’s plenty of the usual suspects probing the United States’ cyberdefenses constantly, it’s hard to choose just one culprit. And what if we get the source of a cyberattack wrong? The exact origin of most of these exploits is extremely difficult to pin down. What if we mistakenly launch a missile strike on China for hacking damage that was actually caused by the Russian Mafia, how cool would that be? Probably not very cool at all.

/and, of course, when we announce a brinkmanship policy like this, and then immediately fail to back up our words with deeds, it become much more than just a joke, it manifests a profound, telltale show of national weakness