The Dark Visitor

Very interesting testimony before the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission on PRC cyber space capabilities. The commission broke the talks down into three major sections, with some congressional persepective and admin thrown in for good measure. The primary topics were space capabilities, cyber capabilities and proliferation. Only panel three spoke on cyber issues but a typo in the contents section says panel two also spoke on it. Panel two actually talked about space capabilities.

The three people called to testify before the panel were Colonel McAlum, Mr. Thomas and Dr. Mulvenon. All three gave very good presentations. If you don’t want to search through the whole document, the cyber section begins on page 45.

I would also point out on this slide that it’s really important to get the lexicon right. In the open source media and other forums, you hear the term “cyber attack” used rather liberally, and you won’t hear anyone in the Department of Defense use that term in the context of cyber reconnaissance or network intrusions. What we are seeing today are network intrusions.

Really glad to finally hear someone clarify the difference between cyber attack and intrusion. Words really do make a difference.

The rest of the report on PRC cyber space capabilities found here….