China hackers attack U.S. system

The attack targeted the computers of the Bureau of Industry and Security, which is responsible for controlling U.S. exports of commodities, software and technology having both commercial and military uses. The bureau has stepped up its activity in regulating trade with China in recent years as the United States increased its exports of such dual-use items to the growing Chinese market.

This marked the second time in recent months that U.S. officials confirmed that a major attack traced to China had succeeded in penetrating government computers.

“Through established security procedures, BIS discovered a targeted effort to gain access to BIS user accounts,” said Commerce Department spokesman Richard Mills. “We have no evidence that BIS data has been lost or compromised.”

The significance of the attacks was underscored in a series of e-mails sent to BIS employees by acting Undersecretary of Commerce Mark Foulon since July, informing them of “a number of serious threats to the integrity of our systems and data.” In an August e-mail, Foulon reported that the bureau had “identified several successful attempts to attack unattended BIS workstations during the overnight hours.” Then, early last month, he wrote: “It has become clear that Internet access in itself is a vulnerability that we cannot mitigate. We have tried incremental steps and they have proven insufficient.”

A source familiar with the security breach said the hackers had penetrated the computers with a “rootkit” program, a stealthy form of software that allows attackers to mask their presence and then gain privileged access to the computer system. The attacks were traced to Web sites registered on Chinese Internet service providers, Commerce officials said. “We determined they were owned by the Chinese,” a senior Commerce official said. He did not say who in China was responsible or whether officials had even been able to identify the culprits. Although bureau employees were informed of the problem in July, Commerce officials declined to say when the attacks were discovered and how long they had been going on. Only over time did bureau officials realize the extent of the damage from the breach.

“The more we learned, the more we did,” the senior official said.

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