EXCLUSIVE:
NSA targeted China's Tsinghua University in extensive hacking
attacks, says Snowden
Tsinghua
University, widely regarded as the mainland’s top education and
research institute, was the target of extensive hacking by US spies
this year
23
June, 2013
Tsinghua
University in Beijing, widely regarded as the mainland’s top
education and research institute, was the target of extensive hacking
by US spies this year, according to information leaked by Edward
Snowden.
It
is not known how many times the prestigious university has been
attacked by the NSA but details shown to the Post by Snowden reveal
that one of the most recent breaches was this January.
The
information also showed that the attacks on Tsinghua University were
intensive and concerted efforts. In one single day of January, at
least 63 computers and servers in Tsinghua University have been
hacked by the NSA.
Snowden
said the information he shared on the Tsinghua University attacks
provided evidence of NSA hacking because the specific details of
external and internal internet protocol addresses could only have
been obtained by hacking or with physical access to the computers.
The
university is home to one of the mainland’s six major backbone
networks, the China Education and Research Network (CERNET) from
where internet data from millions of Chinese citizens could be mined.
The
network was the country’s first internet backbone network and has
evolved into the world’s largest national research hub.
It
is one of the mainland’s non-commercial networks, owned by the
Ministry of Education, but operated and maintained by the university
and other colleges.
Universities
in Hong Kong and the mainland were revealed as targets of NSA’s
cyber-snooping activities last week when Snowden claimed the Chinese
University of Hong Kong had been hacked.
Chinese
University is home to the Hong Kong Internet Exchange, the city’s
central hub for all internet traffic.
Snowden
said the NSA was focusing much attention on so-called “network
backbones”, through which vast amounts of date passed.
In
the wake of Snowden’s claims, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs set
up an office to deal with diplomatic activities involving cyber
security.
The
new cyber affairs office is the first of its kind on the mainland
with a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman saying that Beijing, long accused
of cyberhacking by the United States, has been a “a major victim”
of cyberattacks and that it opposed “cyberattacks in all forms”.
She
added that the central government would discuss cybersecurity issues
with the United States at next month’s Sino-US strategic and
security dialogue.
Professor
Xu Ke, deputy director of the Institute of Computer Networks at
Tsinghua University, has previously said that most data passing
through network backbones was not encrypted.
Xu
said most attacks on such networks were carried out by governments
because individual hackers “could gain little”, as the amount of
information they faced would be “colossal”.
Only
governments or large organisations would have the resources and
manpower to “find the needle in a haystack”, he said.
US
spies on Chinese mobile phone companies, steals SMS data: Edward
Snowden
The
US government is hacking Chinese mobile phone companies to steal
millions of text messages, Edward Snowden has told the South China
Morning Post. And the former National Security Agency contractor
claims he has the evidence to prove it.
23
June, 2013
The
former CIA technician and NSA contractor, hiding in Hong Kong after
the US sought his arrest, made the claims after revealing to the Post
that the NSA had snooped on targets in Hong Kong and on the mainland.
“There’s
far more than this,” Snowden said in an interview on June 12. “The
NSA does all kinds of things like hack Chinese cell phone companies
to steal all of your SMS data.”
Text
messaging is the most preferred communication tool in mainland China,
used widely by ordinary people and government officials from formal
work exchanges to small chats.
Government
data show that the Chinese exchanged almost 900 billion text messages
in 2012, up 2.1 per cent from the year before. China Mobile is the
world’s largest mobile network carrier, with 735 million
subscribers by the end of May. China Unicom, the second largest, has
258 million users. China Telecom comes in third with 172 million
users.
Snowden’s
leaks have rocked the international community for the past two weeks
and fired up a debate about US government surveillance of citizens’
phone calls and internet browsing data without due cause.
For
years, cybersecurity experts on the mainland have been concerned that
telecommunications equipment was vulnerable to so-called “backdoor”
attacks, taking advantage of foreign-made components. They have kept
quiet because domestic hardware suppliers were still striving to
catch up with their international competitors.
Now,
as the likes of Huawei, Datang and ZTE dramatically improve their
suite of products and the reliance on foreign-made parts has dropped,
some experts with ties to Beijing have become more vocal.
Fang
Binxing, president at the Beijing University of Posts and
Telecommunications and widely believed to be the father of China’s
“great firewall”, which restricts access to the web, told News
China in October last year that foreign equipment was a serious
threat to national security.
“China
should set up a national information security review commission as
soon as possible,” he said.
Telecom
companies have started replacing foreign-made equipment.
China
Unicom quietly replaced all Cisco routers at a key backbone hub in
Wuxi, Jiangsu last year, according to the National Business Daily.
The
changes are being kept quiet to avoid panic and embarrassment to the
government, people in the industry say.
A
series of reports based on documents provided by Snowden to The
Guardian revealed how the US compelled telecommunications provider
Verizon to hand over information about phone calls made by US
citizens.
The
leaked documents also revealed the Prism programme, which gave the US
far-reaching access to internet browsing data from Google, Facebook,
Apple, Skype, Yahoo and others.
The
US and UK also had technology which gave them unauthorised access to
Blackberry phones of delegates at two G20 summits in London in 2009,
Snowden said.
The
US government has defended its electronic surveillance programmes
during congressional hearings with claims that up to 50 would-be
terrorist attacks were foiled because of the intelligence gathered by
the NSA.
US
President Barack Obama says the NSA is not listening in on phone
calls or reading emails unless legal requirements have been
satisfied.
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