Chinese hacking in Belgian media (updated)

Translated article from the Belgian newspaper: "Gazet van Antwerpen - Kraakt China belangrijke Belgische computers?"

The Committee I (Security4all: This is a oversight committee on the Belgian Intelligence services) must inquire how Belgium is protecting itself against Chinese attack on our critical infrastructure after a request from Senator Hugo Vandenberghe.

Belgian National Security has received information about attempts of electronic attacks against emailaddresses of the Federal Government. The Netherlands have also observed similar attacks by the Chinese, according to the Dutch National Security Agency (AIVD), in their most recent year rapport.

Minister of Justice Jo Vandeurzen was questioned about this by the Senate last Wednesday. "China is really interested in Belgium because the NATO and the European Union are located here but also because Belgium has a lot of ties with Africa. It isn't proven that China is behind these attacks on Belgium, but the context seems to point in that direction."

For the electronic attacks, the hackers used manipulated emails in which the malicious software was incorporated. It is difficult to check or it is unknown that the attackers reached their goal. National Security is investigating this together with the ICT departments of the federal government, according to Vandeurzen.

The department of parliament responsible for infrastructure; earlier came to the conclusion that about 20 computers in Belgium get hacked per day and that Belgian websites are the third worst secured in the world.

Interesting. With all the reports in France, Germany and the UK about these attacks, I always wondered what was happening over here. It couldn't be that Belgium was overlooked because like the article said, a lot of the European Union and NATO is located in Brussels.

At least, the article made the difference between attacks from China and attacks by China. Regardless of who is really behind the attacks, this is a real threat both for governments and private companies.

I'm just a bit worried about the "it is difficult to check or it is unknown if they were successful"-part. Maybe it's time for that global Belgian CERT???

My biggest question is, why did it surface only now in the press???

Updated: added the link to the 2007 AIVD year rapport. Some point are the real threats to the national (IT) infrastructure, compromises originating from China and intelligence gathering from the Russian federation for economical and technical-scientific information. The report is in Dutch.

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