China Updates Government,Military Computers With New Secure
Operating System
WASHINGTON (AFP)--China has installed a secure operating system known as "
Kylin" on government and military computers designed to be impenetrable to U.S.
military and intelligence agencies, The Washington Times reported on Tuesday.
The newspaper said the existence of the secure operating system was disclosed
to Congress during recent hearings that included new details on how China's
government is preparing to wage cyberwarfare with the U.S.
Kevin Coleman, a private security specialist who discussed Kylin during the
April 30 hearing of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, said
its deployment is significant because it has "hardened" key Chinese servers.
Coleman told the Times that Kylin has been under development since 2001 and
the first Chinese computers to use it are government and military servers that
were converted beginning in 2007.
"This action also made our offensive cybercapabilities ineffective against
them, given the cyberweapons were designed to be used against Linux, UNIX and
Windows," he said, citing three popular computer operating systems.
The newspaper said U.S. offensive cyberwar capabilities have been mainly
focused on getting into Chinese government and military computers outfitted with
less secure operating systems like Microsoft's Windows.
Coleman said Chinese state or state-affiliated entities are on a wartime
footing in seeking electronic information from the U.S. government, contractors
and industrial computer networks.
The Chinese have also developed a secure microprocessor that, unlike U.S.-made
chips, is known to be hardened against external access by a hacker or automated
malicious software, Coleman said.
"If you add a hardened microchip and a hardened operating system, that makes a
really good solid platform for defending infrastructure," he said.
"In the cyberarena, China is playing chess while we're playing checkers,"
Coleman said, adding that China is equal to the U.S. and Russia in military
cyberwarfare.
"This is a three-horse race, and it is a dead heat," he said.
The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission warned last year that
China has developed a sophisticated cyber warfare program and stepped up its
capacity to penetrate U.S. computer networks to extract sensitive information.
"China is aggressively pursuing cyber warfare capabilities that may provide it
with an asymmetric advantage against the United States," the commission said in
the report released in November.
China rejected the findings of the commission and has also dismissed more
recent U.S. newspaper reports that Chinese hackers were behind a cyber attack on
computers linked to the Pentagon's Joint Strike Fighter project.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
05-12-091204ET
Copyright (c) 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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