In China, complementing informal groups Cyber preparedness to the country's People's Army.
The United States has a special body to monitor the country's links with China, with emphasis on economy and security: US-China Economic and Security Review Commission. This body, shortened USCC, delivers an annual report to Congress. This year's report (pdf) contains, like last year insight into the development of China's capabilities for offensive and defensive cyber warfare, and how the Chinese web censorship affect relations between the two countries.
It is expected this year that the number of registered attempt hacked the U.S. Department of Defense will end up on the 87 570 in 2009, 60 percent more than last year. The increase from 2007 to 2008 was barely 25 percent: The increase of the curve is therefore more than just exponential. The resources that the U.S. military uses to protect its IT network from intruders is estimated at least $ 200 million in the year. 
Number of intrusion attempts against the IT systems to the U.S. Department of Defense is increasing faster than exponentially. The figure for 2009 is a forecast. (Graph: USCC)
USCC report quantifying how many of the intrusion attempts that can be traced back to China, and it does not say straight out that the Chinese government is behind. Instead, states:
- Extensive circumstantial evidence and the track provides a strong indication that the Chinese government is engaged in this activity, either directly through government agencies, or through groups sponsored by the state.
An important indication that points to government complicity in the many attacks that originate from China, is the fact that the intrusion attempts against the defense ministry and the companies belonging to the U.S. defense industry, do not collect information that is typical of common criminal activity: There is no question of either credit or bank accounts.
USCC also refers to Chinese sources in which actors linked to the Chinese People's Army, openly discussing concepts such as "electronic warfare integrated network."
The term "integrated" refers to methods that are both digital and physical. They include noise transmission, malicious code, physical destruction by radiation and other weapons, and so on.
Treasury departments of the People's Army has said USCC developed special expertise in cyber war. In addition, there are more informal forces: On one side is a created their own cybermilits or "information war militia, on the other are the groups referred to as" patriotic hackers "or" Red hackers ".
China has had cybermilits groups since the late 1990s.
USCC citing a survey by security company iDefense in 2008, which estimated that China disposal a total of 33 such devices. In March 2008, explained this to the local authorities in the county Yongning in Ningxia province that their new cybermilits had assignments in both peace and war: "In war, the extensive collection of information from hostile network and establish databases of data on enemy networks ... In war, attack hostile networks and withstand attacks from enemy networks. "
Chinese sources describe the "patriotic hackers" or "Red hackers" especially in periods where the relationship between China and the United States are strained, and where the U.S. sites are vandalized or susceptible to denial of service attack. USCC report points out that the government may have a strained relationship with the patriotic hackers, since it was made in February, a number of the more independent hackers had been arrested. On the other hand, they have also gained recognition for participation in the protection against the activists for democracy, Tibet and Falun Gong. The report refers to a case from Henan province in February 2006 where the hacker group "Black Eagle" expressed gratitude to the state security service for the "raised guidance" they were subjected to the time they spent under lock and key.
The many media who described a network discovered by the Canadian research SecDev, and that probably was used to gather sensitive information for the benefit of recipients in China.
Net - christened "GhostNet" - comprised 1 295 computers spread over 103 countries, many of them in the embassies and foreign ministries. A member of this group, Rafal Rohozinski, allowed himself to be interviewed by the USCC, and said that the new material reinforces the suspicion that there is not one but many GhostNet, and that the private groups that engaged in this activity sponsored by the Chinese government.
USCC recommends Congress to urge the government to develop measures to protect critical U.S. infrastructure and public IT systems against malicious Chinese cyber business.
USCC report states, once more, that go true to "the Great Chinese Firewall" largely due to American technology, especially switches and routers from Cisco.
U.S. companies such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo also in varying degrees contributed by complying with the requirement for filtering and - for Yahoo's case - an insight into the traffic.
A year ago, announced on Google, Yahoo and Microsoft a "Global Network Initiative" to coordinate practice and ethics in relation to China. The initiative has led to little concrete, and new social networks like Facebook and Twitter does not participate. In Congress there is a bill, "Global Online Freedom Act, which aims to regulate U.S. technology companies' behavior in authoritarian states. The proposal is still at an early stage in a slow process until a decision.
The report looks otherwise on the controversy in China about monitoring client "Green Pond Youth Escort" which originally was to be installed on all PCs sold in the country. The reason for such a monitoring client seems to be a recognition that the infrastructure of the Great Firewall was about to put too great a limitation on the overall performance of the Chinese internet.
"Firewall" has two essential components.
One is that state-controlled operators manage all Internet traffic into and out of the country through the nodes in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.
The second is that the automatic packet filtering is used to detect possible subversive communication, and redirect requests to the so-called reliable sources. The purpose of the required client "Green Pond" was to relieve these central schemes, and make it more difficult for technical experts to work around them.
The report notes that the "Green Pond" project support for internal opposition in China, on criticism from the U.S. government, the passive resistance from the U.S. computer suppliers, and technical shortcomings in the client. The project appears to be shelved until further notice.
