A looming danger to the world.

The American computer security company Mandiant has tracked a group of hackers called the " Comment Crew " or the " Shanghai Group " to a nondescript building on the outskirts of Shanghai in China. In this 12- storey office tower in a rundown neighborhood off Datong Road, surrounded by restaurants, massage parlors and a wine importer, is the headquarters of Unit 61389 of the People's Liberation Army which is China's growing army of cyber warriors. New York Times, 19 February. One hacker is called " Ugly Gorilla " and another is called " DOTA " who used the same IP address which was linked back to Unit 61389. This is the unit which was responsible for the attack on the New York Times after it revealed that Prime Minister Wen Jia Bao's family had accumulated $2.7 billion during his term in office. Recently Facebook reported that it was a victim of an attack by the same group but that no data had been compromised. This group was responsible for attacking at least 100 clients of Mandiant and stole technology blueprints, manufacturing processes, clinical trial results, pricing documents, negotiation strategies and other proprietary information. On average the group stayed in a company network for 1 year stealing data and passwords. In one case it stayed for 4 years and 10 months. What most alarmed the Americans was its attack on Talvent which is the Canadian arm of Schneider Electric. Talvent stores detailed blueprints of more than half of all oil and gas pipelines in North and South America. The potential for a devastating attack on US infrastructure has made  President Obama set up a cyber protection unit which will seek to protect vital installations. The US should know. In 2010 the US partnered Israel in infecting computers in Iran with the Stuxnet virus which caused uranium centrifuges to spin out of control. This was a highly specialized malware designed to target only Siemens supervisory control and data acquisition systems which the Iranians had acquired surreptitiously in spite of sanctions. Kaspersky Lab said that such a sophisticated malware could only have been designed " with nation-state support ". Stuxnet was followed by Flame and Duqu which were found to have the same sort of source code linked to Israel. As wages have gone up and the Renminbi has become stronger against the dollar China is finding it tough to continue with its explosive growth based on cheap exports. It wants to climb up the value chain not by research and hard work but by stealing commercial secrets which will allow its businesses to vault into high value production. Just as it is attacking western countries China is hostile against India over Arunachal Pradesh, against Japan over the Senkaku Islands, claims the entire South China Sea as its own and is eradicating Tibetan culture. It is the greatest danger to the world. Cockroach eaters.