Chinese Hackers Hit US Media, Essay Example

An article entitled “Chinese Hackers Hit U.S. Media” discusses how the Chinese media teams use hacking techniques to spy on the United States (Gorman, 2013). It appears that they do so in order to more greatly understand the public opinion that Americans hold towards the Chinese government. This has become problematic in terms of foreign relations between the two countries because the United States government believes that this is an issue of national security, and the government intends to take measures to prevent future attacks. Despite the uproar that this issue has caused, the Chinese media has used their hacking skills primarily to target media companies, such as The Wall Street Journal, and no sensitive government information has been released as a consequence.

According to Chinese Embassy spokesman Geng Shuang, media companies in China are not permitted to gain information by hacking and that it is impossible to blame the country for doing so without evidence. The article does not report specifically how The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times knew that they were being hacked by the Chinese. However, this article highlights one of the most important problems in the information technology field today. Since the knowledge of technology is growing and there are not regulations set in place to keep up with these advances, problems like hacking are becoming more and more frequent. It is one thing to claim that hacking is an illegal practice, but since it is difficult to detect and prove, hackers can continue stealing information without punishment.

It is interesting that although the United States government says this issue is important because of the people and businesses it can impact, representatives did not propose a plan to counter these threats. According to the investigative report, it appeared that the hacking was conducted by a single company. Furthermore, these attempts to gain access were “relatively unsophisticated but persistent”. It is therefore essential to educate the nation’s media companies as to how they can best avoid these attacks. Companies that contain potentially sensitive information should be able to at least prevent weak attacks.

The article reports that “The New York Times in an article Thursday detailed how Chinese hackers had infiltrated its systems over the past four months and gained access to passwords belonging to reporters and other employees”. This emphasizes the fact that employees should be required to utilize only strong passwords that are difficult to guess. Failure to do so allows access to sensitive information both locally and long distance. Therefore, they should begin to require passwords that are at least six characters long with a combination of uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. Furthermore, for the purpose of protection from individuals in other states and countries, it is ideal to ensure these passwords are unrelated to the business or job function of the person that sets it.

While the FBI has some experience in tracking hackers, a lot of these security measures have fallen to private companies. Therefore, it may be necessary to establish a more centralized effort in fighting off these attacks. Although this article demonstrates that hackers are an issue for the security of the country, they are also detrimental to the security of individuals. Thus, more security measures on a national level should be put in place to protect the privacy rights of both the nation and its citizens.

References

Gibson D. (2011). Managing Risk in Information Systems. Managing Risk in Information Systems.

Gorman S. (2013). Chinese Hackers Hit U.S. Media. The New York Times. Retrieved from  http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887323926104578276202952260718