Introduction
According to the APT 1 Mandiant report, the document confirms that Chinese government has constantly attacked the USA companies targeting to obtain the trade secrets. The report states that the Chinese government has successfully hacked 115 USA companies (2013, February 20). The group associated with the hacking of the USA Company has identification as the People Liberation Army (PLA). The PLA apply the weaknesses of the network system and the use of the corporate websites. The fact that most Chinese contractors get involved in the construction of major building and industries in the USA has contributed to the increased successful attacks by the PLA.
How China Hacks America
The report indicates that the PLA Unit 61398 has the most technical techniques in hacking the USA. The PLA Unit 61398 applies the use the corporate website to perform hacking of the USA systems. The PLA Unit 61398 use dedicated English language site (Byron, Acohido, & TODAY USA. 2014). The PLA Unit 61398 employs English proficient speakers and professionals in the experts in the computer security. The PLA Unit 61398 disguises the group by ensuring that the websites developed have no link to the Chinese website. The PLA Unit 61398 is using the site to correct authentication and verification credentials from the company employees. The technique applied to the site involves the phishing strategies and the social engineering techniques. The PLA Unit 61398 target a particular USA company and establishes the strong relationship with the employees via the online site. The PLA Unit 61398 uses the information disseminated by the organization employees to gain access to their personal accounts thus transferring their funds and finances as well as changing data and information related to the clients.
The PLA Unit 61398 has implemented the feasible opportunity of acquiring the information based on the structure and the architectural design of the network in the buildings constructed by the Chinese contractors. The PLA Unit 61398 obtained network information of the Pudong New Area Sector of Shanghai in USA (Byron, Acohido & TODAY USA. 2014). The building has the installation with the unique high capacity fiber optic cables. The China Telecom implemented the networking in 2007. Using the acquired information the PLA Unit, 61398 managed to hack 141 companies including the 115 in the USA. The attack led to stealing of data and information amounting to terabytes of compressed data. The PLA Unit 61398 also implemented similar attacks through the same network stealing 6.5 terabytes of data from a single company.
The PLA Unit 61398 attacks apply the single individual to perform the attacks by coding malware software. The malware software implemented by the PLA Unit 61398 track the patterns and the processes applied to the company and reports to the PLA Unit 61398. The malware has an effecting technique that creates the foothold in the company database systems. The type of malware generated by the PLA Unit 61398 includes the Ugly Gorilla, The DOTA and the Super Hard (Eddy, 2014). The PLA Unit 61398 also applies the technique of infiltrating the organization led to masquerading the organization database systems and the central information center. The PLA Unit 61398 also applies the spear phishing techniques on the personal emails and social media platforms (Eddy, 2014).
How United States Respond
The USA focuses on enforcing diplomatic efforts to ensure that the trade secrets of the various organizations have internal and external security. The effort has an intention of ensuring the foreign countries cease performing the trade secret theft.
The USA government is encouraging the private sectors to invent and apply best strategies in the process of facilitating secure trading with the competitors (Elizabeth, & USA, 2015).The USA government has led to establishing security policies like the information security policies, the physical security policies, and the human resource policies.
The Department of the Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has focused on enforcing the domestic law operations (Elizabeth, & USA, 2015). The FBI has initialized investigations that shall lead to the prosecution of the corporate and the states sponsoring trade secret theft. The strategy involves sharing of the information regarding the number and the identity of the foreign governments conducting the secret trade stealing. The USA shall keep the records of the methods applied by the attackers, the use of that information as well as the area targeted by the attackers.
The USA government has improved the domestic policies of legislation by revising the penalties over those engaging in the economic espionage as well as the trade secret crimes (Elizabeth, & USA, 2015).
The USA is implementing the national and international awareness of the detrimental effects on stealing the trade secrets. The USA government is encouraging the stakeholders and the company officials to impact civil education to the members of public on the need to stop and report any act of misappropriating the trade secret (Elizabeth, & USA, 2015).
Conclusion
The super power state and countries engage in the competition to control the world economy. The competition has contributed to the invention of methodologies to acquire techniques to gain market dominion and control international markets. The need for superiority has led to increased IT threats and attacks to obtain trade secrets of the dominating companies.
References
(2013, February 20). China’s Online Thieves. Wall Street Journal – Eastern Edition. p. A14.
Byron, Acohido, & TODAY USA. (2014) “Security experts: China hacker gang one of 20.” USA
Today, n.d. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed November 19, 2015)
Eddy, N. (2014). Security Breaches Still a Major Issue for Businesses. Eweek, 7
Elizabeth, W., & USA, T (2015). Cyber thieves hit CareFirst. USA Today
Sherry Roberts is the author of this paper. A senior editor at MeldaResearch.Com in Online Writing Services if you need a similar paper you can place your order from.
