From: Voice of Russia

Artyom Kobzev

A new unit responsible for cyber security has been set up in Latvia’s Defence Security. Its distinguishing feature is the fact that it will recruit volunteers. With every passing day the topic of security on the networks is acquiring increased urgency for the world community, and the new exchange of accusations between China and the US over hackers’ attacks offers proof.

The Latvian unit will face the task of safeguarding the security of the country’s high-technology structure. 2 years earlier a similar volunteer unit of IT specialists was set up in Estonia’s Defence Ministry. There is nothing surprising about the fact that the Baltic countries have started to pay heightened attention to cyber security. All of them are following the world trend.

The problem of cyber attacks is one of the most acute problems on the agenda concerning the relations between the USA and China. Earlier this week the U.S. Mandiant Company made public a report about China’s cyber activity, which said that the Chinese authorities had established secret hacker groups involved in industrial espionage on the Internet. This report also said that hackers had already attacked 141 companies and that they had stolen confidential information. Mandiant says that all these attacks were carried out from a building in Shanghai belonging to the People’s Liberation Army of China. It is well known that China has powerful units responsible for operations to put out of action enemy’s information networks as well as for intelligence with the use of the Internet, expert with the Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies Vasily Kashin says.

“The main intelligence body is the 3rd Department of the General Staff responsible for radio interception, space intelligence, and intelligence with the use if the Internet.”

Kashin says that the main achievement of Chinese cyber spies was stealing information concerning the U.S. F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Jet (JSF) – to be more exact, its design and aerodynamic scheme. When the testing of the Chinese J-31 Fighter Jet started last year, everybody saw that its design had much in common with the U.S. F-35 Fighter Jet.

Of course, the Chinese are denying everything. A representative of the People’s Liberation Army of China, Geng Yansheng, says that his country’s legislation bans all forms of activity that undermines security in cyber space, stressing that the use of Chinese IP-addresses by malefactors does not prove that they were in China. In the end Geng Yansheng said that although China’s servers often come under cyber attacks, official Beijing does not accuse the USA of such attacks.