Cyberattacks Prominent in Obama Call With New Chinese President
Cyberthreats featured prominently in President Obama’s congratulatory call to the new Chinese president, Xi Jinping, on Thursday.
The president used the occasion to discuss the loss of United States intellectual property from cyberattacks. The mere mention of cyberthreats is a step forward for an administration that has been reluctant to confront Beijing on Chinese military attacks even as billions of dollars’ worth of trade secrets have been stolen.
But a spate of recent headlines about Chinese cyberattacks on The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and others have thrust the issue on the diplomatic stage. A report by Mandiant, a computer security firm, tying hundreds of attacks back to one Chinese military unit, made the issue even harder to ignore.
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