14 DAY TRIAL // Chinese hackers have hit many targets (civilian as well as governmental) before, in countries like Canada, UK, US and Australia, but only recently has there been news of attacks against Germany. When I first read about this on SecurityFocus I thought that they've really accomplished something big, since Germany has one of the toughest cyber-security systems. But the thing is these attacks were not such a great achievement, they didn't take down any servers and they didn't do much damage; there were just a few trojan infestations. As you may know, the Trojan is one of the most common viruses on the Web.
Trojan infestations lead to data theft, and that's what happened in this case. There has been no news about what information leaked, but it's bound to be something important, since it was stolen from government ministries.
Of course, Chinese officials deny the fact that they have anything to do with the attacks. So this makes me think of the possibilities: either the hackers just did it to show how good they are (which wouldn't be a first), either there is some government that hired them and of course there is a chance that this information will be used to conduct another attack. In any case, there are limitless possibilities with this one, I just stated the most probable, in my opinion - I mean, why would anyone want to attack a government's ministries, for other reasons than those?
And this is just the beginning if you ask me, soon it will all be just like in the movies - cyber-attacks will be huge national issues and it is very probable that this will be a new form of warfare. Just think about Estonia's case. I don't think it was the only one, and this is a severe threat - imagine you are living your life and you're happy, and one day cyber-warriors attack your country's servers and all the economy goes "kaput". Isn't that a bit nasty? You may have nothing to do with the Web and still be affected by cyber-attacks.