10/23/2019 US builds world's largest cyber arsenal, triggers cyber arms race - People's Daily Online

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US builds world's largest cyber arsenal, triggers cyber

arms race
By Shi Wangsheng (People's Daily)    10:33, June 14, 2019

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. B x
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publishing 8,761 documents and files that revealed the highly confidential global
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No Publication,

invasions conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 2013 to 2016,http://en.people.cn/n3/2019/0614/c90000-
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including attack approaches, targets, meeting minutes, records of overseas operation,
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10/23/2019 US builds world's largest cyber arsenal, triggers cyber arms race - People's Daily Online
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. 

(For the latest China news, Please follow People's Daily on Twitter and Facebook) (Web editor: Bianji, Liang Jun)

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