via: thedaytheytriedtokillme:

• The FBI report estimates that since 2003, the Chinese Army has specifically developed a network of over 30,000 Chinese military cyberspies, plus more than 150,000 private-sector computer experts, whose mission is to steal American military and technological secrets and cause mischief in government and financial services. China’s goal, says the FBI report, is to have the world’s premier “informationized armed forces” by 2020. According to the bureau’s classified information, the Chinese hackers are adept at implanting malicious computer code, and in 2009 companies in diverse industries such as oil and gas, banking, aerospace, and telecommunications encountered costly and at times debilitating problems with Chinese-implanted “malware.” The FBI analyst would not name the affected companies.
• One of China’s most effective weapons, according to the FBI report, is a continuation of what Pentagon security investigators originally dubbed Titan Rain; it is a Chinese scanner program that probes national defense and high-tech industrial computer networks thousands of times a minute looking for vulnerabilities. The Chinese military hackers, the FBI analyst told me, enter without any keystroke errors, leave no digital fingerprints, and create a clean backdoor exit in under 20 minutes, feats considered capable only for a military or civilian spy agency of only a few governments.
• These attacks are proliferating. The FBI report lays out the identifiable attacks originating from China just on the Defense Department computers; they increased from 44,000 in 2007 to 55,000 in 2008, and topped 90,000 last year. “They probe, they test our responses, as quick as we make changes and fix vulnerabilities, they are moving a step ahead,” the analyst told me.
• The Chinese hackers aren’t after credit-card numbers or bank accounts or looking to steal private identities. Instead, they are hunting for information. Although the barrage of attacks may at times appear random, the FBI report concludes that it is part of a strategy to fully flush out U.S. military telecommunications and to better understand—and to attempt to intercept—intelligence being gathered by American spy agencies, particularly the National Security Agency.