Russia, China, and Cyber Espionage

In the wake of a series of hacks against government and private networks, it is clear that Russia and China are among the most active and proficient nations in regards to cyber operations. One needs to only review the most high-profile breaches to see that many of them are believed to be the work of one of these countries. China is thought to be behind the OPM hack and has been hacking a large number of American businesses to steal trade secrets and intellectual property. Russia almost certainly hacked the DNC and has breached networks at both the White House and the State Department. Clearly, both China and Russia are finding value in cyber operations as a means of achieving their foreign policy goals, and this is likely to create a more perilous cyber environment moving forward.

Simply put, cyber-operations provide too many advantages for either Russia or China to decrease their reliance upon them. As The Cipher Brief has previously reported, cyber-operations are very difficult to conclusively attribute to any given nation. Even in the cases of the OPM hack and the DNC hack, most experts will only say that the code was developed by Chinese or Russian speakers, and that the attacks were launched from within their territory. However, that is not enough in and of itself for formal charges of blame to be levied against either country.