US builds world’s largest cyber arsenal, triggers cyber arms race
By Shi Wangsheng from People’s Daily
The US military and intelligence departments
are building the world’s largest cyber arsenal as destructive as nuclear
weapons, triggering a cyber arms race in a global context.
They are finding loopholes of software and
systems and developing Trojan virus for cyber attacks, even cyber wars.
The US competed in a crazy arms race with the
Soviet Union back in the Cold War, during which the two parties had developed
nuclear weapons that were able to blow the earth a dozen times. The military
competition had placed the whole world in a shadow of a possible nuclear war.
Now in the era of internet, the US, exploiting
its advantages in technology and monopoly of the American enterprises in
internet infrastructure, is making great efforts to develop cyber weapons,
which has triggered another round of arms race, posing serious threats and risks
against global cyber security.
The WannaCry ransomware attack, which unfurled
across the world on May 12, 2017, hit over 300,000 computers in 150 countries
and regions and 100,000 organizations, leading to a total loss of 50 billion
yuan ($7.23 billion). A great number of hospitals, educational organizations
and government departments were attacked.
One of the important reasons for the
ransomware to cause such a huge loss is the leakage of a cyber weapon named
Eternal Blue developed by US National Security Agency (NSA) which enabled the
virus to spread like a worm under the control of hackers.
When the NSA lost control of the software
behind the WannaCry cyberattack,it had an unshirkable responsibility in this
blackmail incident and it was like "the US military having some of its
Tomahawk missiles stolen,” said Brad Smith, Microsoft’s Chief Legal Officer.
It is noteworthy that the cyber weapon Eternal
Blue is only one of the many attack techniques held by the Equation Group of
the NSA.
On April 14, 2017, hacker organization Shadow
Brokers released a large number of Equation Group exploits, tools, and code
including the Eternal Blue by which the hackers could invade computers with
internet access and create huge loss overnight just like the WannaCry did.
The NSA attack data released by the Shadow
Brokers also included the attack tools targeting browsers, routers and mobile
phones, a zero-day exploit for Windows 10, as well as a record of invasions
into global central banks and the SWIFT system.
In the same year, the WiKiLeaks began a series
of leaks code-named Vault 7, publishing 8,761 documents and files that revealed
the highly confidential global cyber invasions conducted by the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 2013 to 2016, including attack approaches,
targets, meeting minutes, records of overseas operation, as well as attack
machines and 700 million lines of code. Experts estimated that this was just a
tip of the iceberg of the CIA cyber war.
According to reports, by the end of 2016, the
CIA's hacking division, which formally fell under the agency's Center for Cyber
Intelligence (CCI), had over 5,000 registered employees and had produced more
than a thousand trojans, viruses, and other "weaponized" malware.
Apart from the NSA and CIA, the US Cyber
Command is also developing its own cyber weapons. Founder of WiKiLeaks Julian
Assange disclosed in 2015 that Washington had developed over 2,000 cyber
weapons, making US the largest cyber arsenal.
Cyber weapons are similar to nuclear and biochemical
weapons and are able to cause serious damage to global infrastructure, routine
production and people’s life. The massive development of cyber weapons of US
military and intelligence departments is triggering a cyber arms race, directly
threatening global cyber security.
US builds world’s largest cyber arsenal, triggers cyber arms race
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