TITAN RAIN

Reports are that Chinese Intelligence is making an effort to hack U.S. Military computer systems. The effort seems to be well organized and the attacks have been traced to the Chinese province of Guangdong. The techniques used make it appear unlikely to come from any other source than the military. Guangdong is the location of a military academy and is also believed to be the source of SARS. This operation has been code named TITAN RAIN by the U.S.

Pentagon officials confirmed earlier this year that US Defense Department websites are probed hundreds of times a day by hackers, but maintained that no classified site is known to have been penetrated by hackers. The TITAN RAIN hacking effort appears to be well organized.

News earlier this week has China overtaking the U.S. in supplying IT goods. Reports show that China's exports of information and communication technology--including laptop computers, mobile phones and digital cameras--increased by more than 46 percent to $180 billion in 2004 from a year earlier, easily outstripping for the first time United States exports of $149 billion, which grew 12 percent from 2003. China has come close to matching the United States in the overall value of its trade in information and communications technology products. China's efforts to impose its own technology standards across a range of consumer products, including mobile phones, digital photography and wireless networks, are widely interpreted as a strategy to dominate the global market for information technology goods.

This has me wondering. Are the Chinese putting devices into the equipment they are selling? Are they making their equipment "hackee friendly" and if so does the U.S. military/intelligence services have any information on what those devices could be?

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