Chinese Hacking Continues Unabated

The disclosure early this year of a secretive Chinese military unit believed to be behind a series of hacking attacks has failed to halt the cyber intrusions, a U.S. computer security company and congressional advisory panel said on Wednesday.

A report by the cybersecurity company Mandiant in February identified the People's Liberation Army's Shanghai-based Unit 61398 as the most likely culprit in hacking attacks on a wide range of industries. China's Defense Ministry denied the accusations.

The U.S.-China Economic and Security Commission, a panel which advises the U.S. Congress on China policy, said Mandiant's revelations brought only a brief pause in cyber intrusions by that PLA unit.

"There are no indications the public exposure of Chinese cyber espionage in technical detail throughout 2013 has led China to change its attitude toward the use of cyber espionage to steal proprietary economic and trade information," the commission said in a draft of their annual report to Congress.

The draft report, made available to Reuters on Wednesday, said Mandiant's revelations "merely led Unit 61398 to make changes to its cyber 'tools and infrastructure' (to make) future intrusions harder to detect and attribute."

The commission's report, to be released in final form later this month, quoted Mandiant experts as saying the Chinese military hackers decreased their activities for about a month following the February publication of that report.

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