Chinese seek military ID info

MONTGOMERY, Ala.—The Pentagon's primary Internet backbone, the Global Information Grid, comes under siege some 3 million times a day by outsiders looking for a way to penetrate military networks. And the outsiders come from all over the world, whether American script kiddies trying to prove their skills or Eastern European hackers looking for information they can sell.

Then there are the military cyberthreats from potential enemies.

Maj. Gen. William Lord, director of information, services and integration in the Secretary of the Air Force Office of Warfighting Integration and Chief Information Officer, today told an audience of civilian Air Force personnel attending the Air Force IT Conference that "China has downloaded 10 to 20 terabytes of data from the NIPRNet. They're looking for your identity, so they can get into the network as you."

Lord said that this is in accordance with the Chinese doctrine about the use of cyberspace in conflict.

"We don't think they've gotten into the SIPRNet yet," [the classified GIG network], he said, "though we know they have [penetrated] the NIPRNet. There is a nation-state threat by the Chinese."

Lord said that the Air Force Research Laboratories are undertaking projects to mitigate the threat, possibly to look at offensive actions that could be launched, but "the rules of engagement have to changed before we're fully engaged in cyberspace."