Detour: US Government Internet traffic redirected to China

Internet Traffic from U.S. Government Websites Was Redirected Via Chinese Networks
By Joshua Rhett Miller

Published November 16, 2010 | FoxNews.com

Nearly 15 percent of the world’s Internet traffic — including data from the Pentagon, the office of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and other U.S. government websites — was briefly redirected through computer networks in China last April, according to a congressional commission report obtained by FoxNews.com.

It was not immediately clear whether the incident was deliberate, but the April 18 redirection could have enabled malicious activities and potentially caused an unintended “diversion of data” from many U.S. government, military and commercial websites, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission states in a 316-page report to Congress.

A draft copy of the report was obtained on Tuesday by FoxNews.com. The final 2010 annual report to Congress will be released during a press conference in Washington on Wednesday.
According to the draft report, a state-owned Chinese telecommunications firm, China Telecom, “hijacked” massive volumes of Internet traffic during the 18-minute incident. It affected traffic to and from .gov and .mil websites in the United States, as well as websites for the Senate, all four military services, the office of the Secretary of Defense, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and “many others,” including websites for firms like Dell, Yahoo, IBM and Microsoft.

“Although the Commission has no way to determine what, if anything, Chinese telecommunications firms did to the hijacked data, incidents of this nature could have a number of serious implications,” the report reads. “This level of access could enable surveillance of specific users or sites.”

Citing a separate cyberattack against Google’s operations in China earlier this year, the report notes China’s history of “malicious computer activities” that “raise questions about whether China might seek intentionally to leverage these abilities to assert some level of control over the Internet, even for a brief period.” The report continues, “Any attempt to do this would likely be counter to the interests of the United States and other countries. At the very least, these incidents demonstrate the inherent vulnerabilities in the Internet’s architecture that can affect all Internet users and beneficiaries at home and abroad.”

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