14 DAY TRIAL // This is a pretty serious piece of accusation coming from Germany as Hans Elmar Remberg, vice president of the German Office for the Protection of the Constitution, said in a conference that the Chinese authorities tried to steal information using spyware programs installed on their computers. Besides the traditional spying methods, the Chinese government attacks Germany's computers every one or two days, the official sustained according to Reuters. There were numerous security attacks over the German computers in the recent period, the local government claiming the Chinese authorities are interested in obtaining details about their ministries.
"In our view, state Chinese interests stand behind these digital attacks. Supporting this view is the intensity, structure and scope of the attacks, and above all the targets, which include (German) authorities and companies. Some people call this the Chinese cyber war. Across the world the People's Republic of China is intensively gathering political, military, corporate-strategic and scientific information in order to bridge their technological gaps as quickly as possible," Hans Elmar Remberg said for Reuters.
According to the German official, the Chinese authorities use Trojan horses to invade their computers but they also rely on malicious websites which attempt to hack the ministries' systems.
However, it seems like the Chinese government is not the only one which tries to obtain secret information about Germany. Several other countries such as Russia, Iran and Pakistan use traditional and digital espionage to discover details about the German military system or economy.
"Russian intelligence agencies are making great efforts in Germany to get important information in the military fields, politics, economy and science, using both open and conspiratorial methods," Remberg said for the same source mentioned above. "The diplomatic representative offices and Chinese media agencies in Germany enable the hidden deployment of intelligence agents."