BBC News reports: “China’s growing capabilities in cyber-warfare and intelligence gathering have been described as a ‘formidable concern’ to the United States.

James Clapper, the US Director of National Intelligence, made the comments in testimony to the US Senate.

From Canada and Britain, France and South Korea, there have been growing reports of online attacks on computer networks around the world.

The finger of suspicion is often pointed at China.

In evidence to the US Senate’s Armed Services Committee, Mr. Clapper said last year saw a ‘dramatic increase’ in malicious cyber-activity targeting US computers and networks.

He did not mention who might be behind the surge in attempts to steal information from government ministries, major companies and others.

But he added that China had made ‘a substantial investment’ in cyber-warfare and intelligence gathering, saying it had a ‘very large organization devoted to it and they’re pretty aggressive’.

‘This is just another way in which they glean information about us and collect on us for technology purposes, so it’s a very formidable concern,’ he said…” (The rapidly growing cyber-attack threats are more serious than the world’s citizenship realizes. This problem along with solar storms predicted by NASA for December 21^st, 2012 or the carrying out, by enemy nations using the electromagnetic pulse explosion over a nation could by either one of the three destroy the electrical system from coast to coast in any nation under attack and bringing total darkness any paralysis to a nation for weeks or even months – II Timothy 3:1; Luke 21:25: “And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity…” See also the next two reports.)

Asia Times Online reports: “Military history is full of breakthroughs in technology that render existing forces obsolete and turn the global balance of power. While the overwhelming dominance of the United States armed forces in this day and age makes it difficult to imagine how anything could possibly alter the dynamic of military power, even the American military has areas of overdependence that could be exploited.

The discovery of the computer worm ‘Stuxnet’ last July gave the international community a glimpse of what the future of warfare might look like. While the ‘Stuxnet’ attack on Iranian uranium-enrichment facilities may have been the most audacious attempt to undermine a state asset, the use computer worms to disrupt the enemy has been in development and practice for decades in other countries, including North Korea.

Given its singular focus on security, North Korea has always been interested in engaging in asymmetrical warfare to balance the odds against the US defense umbrella around South Korea. Acts of sabotage and terrorism were preferred methods during the 1980s, while bargaining with nuclear weapons and missiles has been Pyongyang’s chief strategy since the 1990s. Now, the North seems invested in further utilizing cyber-warfare in an attempt to breach the increasingly expanding discrepancies in economic and defensive capabilities along the demilitarized zone that separates it from South Korea.

South Korea’s minister of Public Administration and Security, Maeng Hyeonggyu, announced on March 9 that a widespread denial-of-service attack has been made on South Korean banking and government institution websites. Although the attack was mostly contained by state-sponsored anti-virus programs, computer malware experts expressed concern over its sheer magnitude…”

BBC News reports: “The US military lacks the people and resources to defend the country adequately from concerted cyber-attacks, the head of the Pentagon’s cyber command has warned.

‘We are very thin, and a crisis would quickly stress our cyber forces,’ Gen Keith Alexander told Congress.

The US says government systems are attacked millions of times a day.

Disputes over budgets are holding up a new cyber protection system ordered by the Department of Homeland Security.

However, some argue the threat of cyber warfare is greatly exaggerated.

Gen Alexander, head of the US Defence Department’s Cyber Command, told a Congressional Committee that he would mark as a ‘C’ the military’s ability to protect Pentagon networks, although he acknowledged improvements in recent years.

‘We are finding that we do not have the capacity to do everything we need to accomplish. To put it bluntly, we are very thin, and a crisis would quickly stress our cyber forces,’ he said.

‘We cannot afford to allow cyberspace to be a sanctuary where real and potential adversaries can marshal forces and capabilities to use against us and our allies. This is not a hypothetical danger.’

US officials say cyber criminals, terrorists and other nations are getting better at penetrating state and private networks, whether to spy, to steal data or damage critical infrastructure…” (While cyber-warfare may be greatly exaggerated, the Electromagnetic Pulse and solar storms are not – Matthew 24:2; Revelation 7:14.)