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China’s strengths as a cyber power are undermined by poor security and weak intelligence analysis, according to new research that predicts that Beijing will not be able to match U.S. cyber capabilities for at least a decade.
The study, published Monday by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, is presented as a series of information piracy campaigns have highlighted the growing threat of online espionage by hostile states.
In December, U.S. officials discovered that Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the SVR, had hijacked SolarWinds software to penetrate government targets in Washington, including the trade and treasury departments. Three months later, Microsoft’s e-mail software was compromised by alleged Chinese-backed hackers to investigate U.S. non-governmental organizations and think tanks.
IISS researchers placed countries in a spectrum of cyber capabilities, from the strength of their digital economies and the maturity of their intelligence and security functions to the smooth integration of facilities. cybernetics with military operations.
China, like Russia, has proven experience in offensive cyber operations – conducting online espionage campaigns, intellectual property theft, and disinformation campaigns against the U.S. and its allies. But both countries were hampered by relatively weak cyber security compared to their competitors, according to the IISS.
As a result, only the United States is classified as a “top-tier” cyber power by the think tank, with China, Russia, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, France, and Israel at the second tier. The third level includes India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, North Korea, Iran and Vietnam.
Greg Austin, an expert on cyberspace, space conflict and the future of the IISS, said media reports that focus only on the positive aspects of China’s digital advances, such as its aspirations to become a world leader in artificial intelligence, they had contributed to an “exaggerated” perception of their cyber capacity. “By all measures, the development of cybersecurity skills in China is in a worse situation than in many other countries,” he said.
According to the report, Beijing’s focus on “content security” (limiting politically subversive information to its national network) may have diminished its focus on controlling the physical networks that carry it. The IISS also suggested that China’s cyber intelligence analysis was “less mature” than that of the Five Eyes intelligence allies (United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand), because it was driven by the ideology and “increasingly involved… the political goals” of the Communist Party leaders.
Austin said the information age was reforming global dynamics, so traditionally powerful countries like India and Japan had begun to fall behind in the third tier of cyber operators, while smaller countries as Israel and Australia had accumulated cutting-edge cyber skills that they had propelled to the second tier.
According to the IISS, what set the United States apart at the first level was its unparalleled digital-industrial base, its cryptographic experience, and its ability to execute “sophisticated and surgical” cyberattacks against adversaries. Unlike opponents such as China and Russia, the United States also benefited from close alliances with other cyberpowers, including its partners Five Eyes.
However, the United States and its allies were increasingly at risk of ransomware attacks, such as Colonial Conduct i The Irish Health Service last month – by Russian hackers who are not run by the state, but whose activities are apparently tolerated by the authorities.
Robert Hannigan, a former director of the British intelligence agency GCHQ and now a senior executive at cybersecurity company BlueVoyant, said he agreed with many of the IISS findings, but questioned how much Beijing and Moscow would be hampered by weak cyber defenses.
“While it is true that cybersecurity is less developed in Russia and China, they need it less urgently than open Western economies,” Hannigan said. “The threat is not symmetrical: Western economies are harassed by groups of cybercriminals based in Russia and tolerated or authorized, the same does not happen the other way around.”
He added that while Russia knew the West would not indiscriminately run civilian critical infrastructure in a destructive manner, Russian agencies “are licensed to be reckless.” “This in turn demands higher levels of cybersecurity in the west,” he said.
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