The hackers claimed late Friday that they have obtained and released personal information relating to 35,000 Israeli government officials, including politicians, military leaders, and police officers, according to a Twitter feed associated with the hackers.

A comprehensive spreadsheet purporting to include the information of all 35,000 Israeli officials was published by the website Cryptome, though it did not independently verify the information.

The coalition of hackers appears to have ties to the Iranian government, Pakistan, Syria, Egypt, and the terror group Hezbollah, according to a report published by Cryptome.

The hackers have united under the banner of online movement called “OpIsrael.”

Their stated goal is to “remove the Israel from WWW (World Wide Web),” according to The Hackers Post, which has been following the group’s activities targeting Israel.

“It looks like hacker target [sic] different Israeli servers and hacked the websites,” Hackers Post reported.

The anti-Israel hackers say they perpetrated their attacks to protest treatment of the Palestinians.

“The reason for hacking Israeli websites was to raise voice of Palestine’s [sic] who are under hell created by Israel and left a deface page [on the hacked websites] displaying images of Palestinians affected by Israeli shelling,” the Hackers Post wrote.

Hackers left vitriolic and offensive messages on the websites they accessed, according to the Hackers Post.

“We Not Forgive [sic] What You Have Done To Our Family !!! Long Live Palestine!!” stated one hacker’s message.

A Turkish group may be responsible for publicly releasing the data associated with thousands of Israeli officials, according to the Kremlin-funded Russian propaganda outlet RT.

“The data was released by a hacker team going by the name of ‘The Red Hack,’ a Turkish group, while the direct denial-of-service attack targeted at Mossad was attributed to another group operating under the moniker ‘Sektor 404,’ RT reported.

It is believed that the loosely tied together hackers are gearing up to launch a major cyber strike against Israel on April 7.

Internet users that claim to be affiliated with Anonymous have carried out attacks against Israel in the past. A similar hack occurred in November of last year.

“The hacking teams have decided to unite against Israel as one entity and that Israel should be getting prepared to be ‘erased’ from the Internet,” an Anonymous member told the Hackers Post earlier this month.

Cryptome’s analysis of the hacking collective found that they have loosely united based on their distaste for Israel.

“Our analysis to the moment shows not much of coordination [sic] between these groups contrary to the popular belief and the sum of human resources all together to the best of our current analysis is not more than 50 individuals,” Crytome’s report stated.

“The collectives with Arab leanings are not much advanced,” the report said. “The teams with Pakistani, Syrians and Lebanese members are more advanced and reported to have ties with governments. Iranian teams are just using the situation to harm Israel and U.S interests and reported to be directly funded by IRGC and MOIS, the Iranian Intelligence.”

Energy Department officials, along with FBI agents, are investigating the attack on servers at the Washington headquarters. They believe the sophisticated penetration attack was not limited to stealing personal information. There are indications the attackers had other motives, possibly including plans to gain future access to classified and other sensitive information.

No classified information was compromised in the cyber attack, said officials who provided details of the attack to the Washington Free Beacon on condition of anonymity.

Energy Department and FBI spokesmen declined to comment.

The source or identity of the cyber attacker is not known, according to U.S. officials and outside security analysts. However, Chinese hackers are likely suspects because the department is known to be a major target of China for both secrets and technology. Also, the relative sophistication of the cyber attack is an indication of nation-state involvement.

The department’s National Nuclear Security Administration is in charge of developing and maintaining U.S. nuclear weapons and related infrastructure.

Spies successfully targeted those systems for decades. The U.S. government revealed in the 1990s that espionage by China resulted in the compromise of secrets related to all deployed nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal in crimes that remain unsolved.

The cyber attack was confirmed Friday by DOE security officials and is still under investigation. Officials are working to determine the exact nature of the attack and the extent of potential damage.

The personal data compromised involves information related to several hundred people, the officials said.

A total of 14 computer servers and 20 workstations at the headquarters were penetrated during the attack.

The department is currently in the process of notifying the employees and contractors whose information was stolen.

The department is planning steps to plug security holes in its network that were revealed by the attack, the officials said.

Efforts also are underway to prevent future attacks through increased monitoring of networks and the use of specialized cyber defense tools, they said.

The compromised data is “personally identifiable information” that can be used by criminals or foreign intelligence services for illicit purposes, in information security terms.

The U.S. government defines this type of information as: full name; national identification number, such as a Social Security number; Internet Protocol addresses; vehicle and driver’s license numbers; face, fingerprint or handwriting samples; credit card numbers; digital identity; date of birth; birthplace; and genetic information.

Hackers are known to steal and use such information for what is called “doxing”—from documents or “.docx”—in furtherance of targeting people for exposure or additional theft operations.

Foreign intelligence agencies would use such information to obtain further details of targets for agent recruitment or additional cyber espionage.

Ed McCallum, who spent 10 years as the Department of Energy’s Office of Safeguards and Security, said the latest security breach highlights decades of poor security at the department.

“It’s a continuing story of negligence,” McCallum, now a security consultant, told the Free Beacon.

The department “is on the cutting edge of some of the most sophisticated military and intelligence technology the country owns and it is being treated frivolously by the Department of Energy and its political masters,” McCallum said.

McCallum said the Chinese have been targeting DoE for a long time and now the Iranians are beginning to try and steal DoE secrets.

“A lot of countries are interested in our secrets and unless security is improved, this is going to happen again,” he said.

An Energy official said all headquarters employees were notified in an email on Friday of what the notice said was “a recent cyber incident.”

The security breach “resulted in the unauthorized disclosure of employee and contractor Personally Identifiable Information (PII)” of several hundred people, the email stated.

“The Department is strongly committed to protecting the integrity of each employee’s PII and takes any cyber incident very seriously,” the email said. “The Department’s Cybersecurity Team, the Office of Health, Safety and Security and the Inspector General’s office are working with federal law enforcement to promptly gather detailed information on the nature and scope of the incident and assess the potential impacts to DOE staff and contractors.”

The email added that “based on the findings of this investigation, no classified data was compromised.”

Employees were urged to use encryption for all files and emails containing sensitive information, including data stored on hard drives and shared on networks. Also, storing or emailing non-government personal information from Energy network computers was discouraged.

Disclosure of the Energy Department computer hack comes as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post reported this week they were victims of Chinese cyber attacks.

The Times stated in a report that its computer networks were compromised around the time the newspaper exposed extensive corruption last fall by then-Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.

Twitter, the online social media outlet, also reported on Friday that data related to 250,000 of its 250 million users had been compromised. That breach was detected as it occurred, according to computer security specialists familiar with details of the attack.

A report by the U.S. China Economic and Security Review Commission made public in November stated that “U.S. industry and a range of government and military targets face repeated exploitation attempts by Chinese hackers, as do international organizations and nongovernmental groups including Chinese dissident groups, activists, religious organizations, rights groups, and media institutions.”

“In 2012, Chinese state-sponsored actors continued to exploit U.S. government, military, industrial, and nongovernmental computer systems,” the report said.

Attributing individual cyber attacks is difficult “but security researchers are increasingly able to group exploitations into ‘campaigns’ based on common features and gain better insight into those responsible,” the report said.

The report said Chinese cyber exploitation capabilities last year were “improving significantly.”

“Irrespective of sophistication, the volume of exploitation attempts yielded enough successful breaches to make China the most threatening actor in cyberspace,” the congressional commission report said.

China is also modernizing its nuclear arsenal and thus could be seeking weapons and related information from Department of Energy networks.

“Chinese actors are the world’s most active and persistent perpetrators of economic espionage,” according to a 2011 report by the U.S. government’s Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive. The report said U.S. intelligence agencies expect China to remain one of the most “aggressive and capable collectors of sensitive US economic information and technologies, particularly in cyberspace.”

The Chinese, as well as the Russians, “will almost certainly continue to deploy significant resources and a wide array of tactics to acquire this information from US sources, motivated by the desire to achieve economic, strategic, and military parity with the United States,” the report said.

China is seeking to continue its policy of “catching up fast and surpassing” Western powers, including a secret program called Project 863 that “provides funding and guidance for efforts to clandestinely acquire US technology and sensitive economic information.”

Specifically, the Chinese are “more aggressively” targeting U.S. “clean” energy-generating technologies, the report said.

The Energy Department is known to be developing such technologies.

China’s military has been targeting U.S. government computer networks for at least a decade, including both military and civilian government systems.

A 2011 Pentagon report on China’s military stated that cyberwarfare capabilities support military operations in three areas.

“First and foremost, they allow data collection through exfiltration,” the report said. “Second, they can be employed to constrain an adversary’s actions or slow response time by targeting network-based logistics, communications, and commercial activities. Third, they can serve as a force multiplier when coupled with kinetic attacks during times of crisis or conflict.”

A computer forensic expert who specializes in investigating hacking attacks said an anti-nuclear weapons and anti-Israel group linked to Anonymous that calls itself by the Twitter hashtag #Parastoo may be linked to the attack. Parastoo was suspected of an earlier hacker attack on networks of the International Atomic Energy Agency in November.

A Jan. 21 notice by the group posted on a hacker web site stated “PARASTOO IS SPEAKING.” It called for “serious investigations” of Israeli nuclear facilities.

“To show you *a glance* of how serious and active #Parastoo is, we hearby publish part of information about of the USA Department of Energy critical services we have access to,” the posting stated, adding that it may publish more of the pilfered data in the future.

“We also have access to your ‘access,’” it stated in explaining some of the stolen computer code posted on Pastebin.

The computer forensic specialist said the data disclosed by the group reveals “they were firmly into the network they compromised.”

The posting was signed using the Anonymous manifesto, which begins “We are Anonymous.”

However, a U.S. source said the Jan. 21 posting contained information that was dated and thus investigators believe Anonymous is less likely behind the attack.

This is the second time in two weeks that the IAEA’s internal computer systems have been hacked by a group calling itself Parastoo, which is the Iranian word for a swallow (bird).

Parastoo stole the personal information of nearly 200 IAEA scientists and officials last week, including one employee in the United States Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Science. DOE is responsible for overseeing America’s nuclear arsenal.

Parastoo now claims to have pilfered reams of documents and personnel information from the nuclear watchdog’s internal “nuclear data section,” according to a statement by the group.

It also has obtained “highly sensitive information, Including Confidential ‘SafeGuard’ Documents, Satellite Images, Official letters, [and] Presentations,” according to the statement.

The hacker group has threatened to release this sensitive information unless the IAEA launches a formal investigation into Israel’s nuclear site, which some believe houses nuclear arms.

“We are demanding IAEA to start an INVESTIGATION into activities at Israel’s secret nuclear facilities,” the group wrote in its second public statement. “There are many PARASTOOs in the world, seeking for an investigation into Israel’s Human-Life threatening nuclear activities.”

The IAEA did not respond to a Free Beacon request for comment about the second infiltration of its servers.

Yukiya Amano, the United Nations’ nuclear head, said last week that he did not believe sensitive nuclear safeguards have been comprised as a result of Parastoo’s initial attack, according to Reuters.

Parastoo responded to this charge by launching a second attack last week aimed at penetrating further into the IAEA’s systems, this time its “nuclear data section.”

“We’re now publishing additional information to prove our ability to gain access to highly sensitive information,” Parastoo wrote in its statement.

“IAEA cannot just keep us away by turning off their Servers (either old or new ones!),” the group wrote. “There are plenty more of where this information came from but we guarantee that these information will stay in a very safe place with us.”

Parastoo has said that it will safeguard this information as long as the IAEA agrees to investigate Israel’s Negev Nuclear Research Center located near the southern city of Dimona. Israel has not publicly acknowledged having nuclear arms.

Parastoo’s demand appears to be in response to the IAEA’s aggressive investigation into Iran’s clandestine nuclear enrichment program, which is believed to be aimed at building nuclear weapons.

“This information only released to open eyes of IAEA and independent media to real threat of world peace, Israel,” the group states. “Our intentions are not to sabotage or misuse such data for any purposes what so ever.”

Included in the group’s statement is a link to the IAEA’s internal “nuclear data section.” The information, which includes critical technical information needed to acquire access to the system, is meant to prove that Parastoo’s claims are legitimate.

Additionally, Parastoo claims to have at least 15 portions of the IAEA’s system under its control and it lists this information for the public to view.

The group also provides a sample of several documents and satellite images it has seized from the IAEA and lists the email addresses of additional employees.

Parastoo is highly critical of Israel, accusing it of espionage and terrorism in past statements.

Both the language and political positions adopted by Parastoo are similar to dispatches from Anonymous, an anarchic collective of “hacktivists” who engage in cyber-attacks against targets it finds objectionable.

Anonymous recently threatened to launch a “cyber war” against Israel in response to its most recent incursion into the Gaza Strip. It then leaked the personal information of nearly 5,000 Israeli officials.

Details regarding Parastoo’s specific location remain vague.

The group was not publicly known before its first attack and claims to have “many” members likely scattered in various locations.

Hackers claim to have seized the information of nearly 200 scientists and officials affiliated with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the world’s chief nuclear watchdog, according to a message posted Sunday on the website Cryptome.

A new hacker group calling itself Parastoo posted numerous email addresses purportedly found within the IAEA’s internal computer systems.

Parastoo is threatening to post personal information associated with these scientists and other personnel unless immediate action is taken by the IAEA to investigate Israel’s nuclear power plant, which some believe houses nuclear arms.

The effort appears to be in response to the IAEA’s aggressive investigation into Iran’s nuclear enrichment activity, which critics claim Iran is undertaking in pursuit of a nuclear weapon.

“We are reassuring IAEA that their critical information is safe with us as we are brothers, however, we can not guarantee the same if a Western-favored element entertains another sip of motorbike & magnetbomb [sic] cocktail,” the hacker group said in a statement, referring to assassination operations believed to be carried out by Israel against Iranian nuclear scientists.

An IAEA spokesperson said that the organization is “not giving any on-record comment on this right now.”

The leaked email addresses are associated with various academics and government officials across the globe, including one employee in the United States Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

Neither a DOE spokesperson nor the U.S. Mission to the IAEA responded to a Free Beacon request for comment about the incident.

Parastoo, which claims to be posting its “first public message,” is demanding that the IAEA investigate Israel’s Negev Nuclear Research Center located near the southern city of Dimona.

Dubbing the site “beyond-harmful,” Parastoo instructs that the individuals listed “sign a petition demanding an open IAEA investigation into activities at Dimona,” according to the message.

“The above list who technically help IAEA could be considered a partner in crime should an accident happen there,” the message continues. “In such case, many people would like to at least ask some questions, and Parastoo will publish whereabouts of every single one of these individuals alongside with bits of helpful personal and professional details.”

The group is highly critical of Israel, accusing the Jewish state of terrorism and espionage.

“Israel owns a practical nuclear arsenal, tied to a growing military body and it is not a member of international respected nuclear, biochemical and chemical agreements,” the group states.

The group alleges that Israel has “a history of attacking U.S. properties, Arab countries and assassination episodes of all stripes,” according to the message.

Parastoo then delivers a warning: “You are not anonymous. Expect us.”

The language used by Parastoo is similar to dispatches from Anonymous, an anarchic collective of “hacktivists” who engage in cyber-attacks against targets it finds objectionable.

Anonymous has also come out against Israel, criticizing its treatment of the Palestinians.

The hacker group threatened to launch a “cyber war” against Israel earlier this month in response to its most recent incursion into the Gaza Strip.

“Israeli Gov, this is your cyberwar [sic],” Anonymous said in a message posted on an Internet message board. “November 2012 will be a month to remember for the Israeli defense forces and Internet security forces.”

It also leaked the personal information of 5,000 Israeli officials.

Israel’s nuclear program is highly secretive, and the country has not officially acknowledged having nuclear arms. It also has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), an international agreement aimed at stopping the spread of nuclear weapons.

It remains unclear exactly from where Parastoo’s attack originates, but Iran itself has been known to launch cyber attacks.

“The Iranian regime is set up to maximize plausible deniability,” said Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon adviser on Iran and Iraq who has written about Iranian-backed vigilante groups. “That’s what makes Iranian cells abroad so dangerous: They can think for themselves and act on their own, all in pursuit with the regime’s goals.”

“If anyone points the finger at Iran, the mullahs will shrug their shoulders, say ‘it wasn’t us’ and the CIA will testify there’s no smoking gun because they don’t have proof of direct orders,” Rubin said.

The hacker group Parastoo additionally promised in its dispatch to become a permanent presence in the hacker community.

“You will be hearing game changing news from us frequently from now on,” the group states.

One official said the cyber breach was one of Beijing’s most brazen cyber attacks against the United States and highlights a failure of the Obama administration to press China on its persistent cyber attacks.

Disclosure of the cyber attack also comes amid heightened tensions in Asia, as the Pentagon moved two U.S. aircraft carrier strike groups and Marine amphibious units near waters by Japan’s Senkaku islands.

China and Japan—the United States’ closest ally in Asia and a defense treaty partner—are locked in a heated maritime dispute over the Senkakus, which China claims as its territory.

U.S. officials familiar with reports of the White House hacking incident said it took place earlier this month and involved unidentified hackers, believed to have used computer servers in China, who accessed the computer network used by the White House Military Office (WHMO), the president’s military office in charge of some of the government’s most sensitive communications, including strategic nuclear commands. The office also arranges presidential communications and travel, and inter-government teleconferences involving senior policy and intelligence officials.

An Obama administration national security official said: “This was a spear phishing attack against an unclassified network.”

Spear phishing is a cyber attack that uses disguised emails that seek to convince recipients of a specific organization to provide  confidential information. Spear phishing in the past has been linked to China and other states with sophisticated cyber warfare capabilities.

The official described the type of attack as “not infrequent” and said there were unspecified “mitigation measures in place.”

“In this instance the attack was identified, the system was isolated, and there is no indication whatsoever that any exfiltration of data took place,” the official said.

The official said there was no impact or attempted breach of a classified system within the office.

“This is the most sensitive office in the U.S. government,” said a former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the work of the office. “A compromise there would cause grave strategic damage to the United States.”

Security officials are investigating the breach and have not yet determined the damage that may have been caused by the hacking incident, the officials said.

Despite the administration national security official’s assertion, one defense official said there is fairly solid intelligence linking the penetration of the WHMO network to China, and there are concerns that the attackers were able to breach the classified network.

Details of the cyber attack and the potential damage it may have caused remain closely held within the U.S. government.

However, because the military office handles strategic nuclear and presidential communications, officials said the attack was likely the work of Chinese military cyber warfare specialists under the direction of a unit called the 4th Department of General Staff of the People’s Liberation Army, or 4PLA.

It is not clear how such a high-security network could be penetrated. Such classified computer systems are protected by multiple levels of security and are among the most “hardened” systems against digital attack.

However, classified computer systems were compromised in the past using several methods. They include the insertion of malicious code through a contaminated compact flash drive; a breach by a trusted insider, as in the case of the thousands of classified documents leaked to the anti-secrecy web site Wikileaks; and through compromised security encryption used for remote access to secured networks, as occurred with the recent compromise involving the security firm RSA and several major defense contractors.

According to the former official, the secrets held within the WHMO include data on the so-called “nuclear football,” the nuclear command and control suitcase used by the president to be in constant communication with strategic nuclear forces commanders for launching nuclear missiles or bombers.

The office also is in charge of sensitive continuity-of-government operations in wartime or crises.

The former official said if China were to obtain details of this sensitive information, it could use it during a future conflict to intercept presidential communications, locate the president for targeting purposes, or disrupt strategic command and control by the president to U.S. forces in both the United States and abroad.

White House spokesmen had no immediate comment on the cyber attack, or on whether President Obama was notified of the incident.

Former McAffee cyber threat researcher Dmitri Alperovitch said he was unaware of the incident, but noted: “I can tell you that the Chinese have an aggressive goal to infiltrate all levels of U.S. government and private sector networks.”

“The White House network would be the crown jewel of that campaign so it is hardly surprising that they would try their hardest to compromise it,” said Alperovictch, now with the firm Crowdstrike.

Last week the senior intelligence officer for the U.S. Cyber Command said Chinese cyber attacks and cyber-espionage against Pentagon computers are a constant security problem.

“Their level of effort against the Department of Defense is constant” and efforts to steal economic secrets are increasing, Rear Adm. Samuel Cox, Cyber Command director of intelligence, told Reuters after a security conference.

“It’s continuing apace,” Cox said of Chinese cyber-espionage. “In fact, I’d say it’s still accelerating.”

Asked if classified networks were penetrated by the Chinese cyber warriors, Cox told the news agency: “I can’t really get into that.”

The WHMO arranges the president’s travel and also provides medical support and emergency medical services, according to the White House’s website.

“The office oversees policy related to WHMO functions and Department of Defense assets and ensures that White House requirements are met with the highest standards of quality,” the website states. “The WHMO director oversees all military operations aboard Air Force One on presidential missions worldwide. The deputy director of the White House Military Office focuses primarily on the day-to-day support of the WHMO.”

The office is also in charge of the White House Communications Agency, which handles all presidential telephone, radio, and digital communications, as well as airlift operations through both fixed-wing and helicopter aircraft.

It also operates the presidential retreat at Camp David and the White House Transportation Agency.

“To assure proper coordination and integration, the WHMO also includes support elements such as operations; policy, plans, and requirements; administration, information resource management; financial management and comptroller; WHMO counsel; and security,” the website states.

“Together, WHMO entities provide essential service to the president and help maintain the continuity of the presidency.”

Asked for comment on the White House military office cyber attack, a Cyber Command spokesman referred questions to the White House.

Regarding U.S. naval deployments near China, the carrier strike groups led by the USS George Washington and the USS Stennis, along with a Marine Corps air-ground task force, are now operating in the western Pacific near the Senkakus, according to Navy officials.

China recently moved maritime patrol boats into waters near the Senkakus, prompting calls by Japanese coast guard ships for the vessels to leave.

Chinese officials have issued threatening pronouncements to Japan that Tokyo must back down from the recent government purchase of three of the islands from private Japanese owners.

Tokyo officials have said Japan is adamant the islands are Japanese territory.

Officials said the Washington is deployed in the East China Sea and the Stennis is in the South China Sea.

About 2,200 Marines are deployed in the Philippine Sea on the USS Bonhomme Richard and two escorts.

The U.S. Pacific Command said the deployments are for training missions and carriers are not necessarily related to the Senkaku tensions.

“These operations are not tied to any specific event,” said Capt. Darryn James, a spokesman for the U.S. Pacific Command in Honolulu, according to Time magazine.  “As part of the U.S. commitment to regional security, two of the Navy’s 11 global force carrier strike groups are operating in the Western Pacific to help safeguard stability and peace.”

As a measure of the tensions, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told Chinese military leaders during his recent visit to China that the U.S. military will abide by its defense commitments to Japan despite remaining publicly neutral in the maritime dispute.

“It’s well known that the United States and Japan have a mutual defense treaty,” a defense official said of Panetta’s exchange in Beijing. “Panetta noted the treaty but strongly emphasized that the United States takes no position on this territorial dispute and encouraged the parties to resolve the dispute peacefully. This shouldn’t have to get to the point where people start invoking treaties.”

A report by the defense contractor Northrop Grumman made public by the congressional U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission in March stated that China’s military has made targeting of U.S. command and control networks in cyber warfare a priority.

“Chinese capabilities in computer network operations have advanced sufficiently to pose genuine risk to U.S. military operations in the event of a conflict,” the report said.

“PLA analysts consistently identify logistics and C4ISR infrastructure as U.S. strategic centers of gravity suggesting that PLA commanders will almost certainly attempt to target these system with both electronic countermeasures weapons and network attack and exploitation tools, likely in advance of actual combat to delay U.S. entry or degrade capabilities in a conflict,” the report said.

C4ISR is military jargon for command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance.

Little is known within the U.S. intelligence community about Chinese strategic cyber warfare programs.

However, recent military writings have disclosed some aspects of the program, which is believed to be one of Beijing’s most closely guarded military secrets, along with satellite weapons, laser arms, and other high-technology military capabilities, such as the DF-21 ballistic missile modified to attack aircraft carriers at sea.

A Chinese military paper from March stated that China is seeking “cyber dominance” as part of its efforts to build up revolutionary military capabilities.

“In peacetime, the cyber combat elements may remain in a ‘dormant’ state; in wartime, they may be activated to harass and attack the network command, management, communications, and intelligence systems of the other countries’ armed forces,” wrote Liu Wangxin in the official newspaper of the Chinese military on March 6.

“While great importance is attached continuously to wartime actions, it is also necessary to pay special attention to non-wartime actions,” he said. “For example, demonstrate the presence of the cyber military power through cyber reconnaissance, cyber deployment, and cyber protection activities.”

The cyber attacks would begin weeks before actual hostilities, as cyber warriors associated with two units of the People’s Liberation Army secretly penetrate networks and plant sleeper software that can destroy both hardware and software needed for moving and commanding troops and forces across the Pacific, according to a new report by the congressional U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

“Chinese capabilities in computer network operations have advanced sufficiently to pose genuine risk to U.S. military operations in the event of a conflict,” the report states.

The 136-page report, “Occupying the Information High Ground,” was produced by Northrop Grumman for the commission. It will be released Thursday and is based on Chinese military writings, Chinese government statements, and public analysis of recent Chinese intrusions into public and private computer systems.

China Commission Chairman Dennis Shea said in releasing the report that the United States has been a victim of continuous cyber operations “sanctioned or tolerated by the Chinese government.”

“Our nation’s national and economic security are threatened, and as the Chinese government funds research to improve its advanced cyber capabilities these threats will continue to grow,” Shea said.

Said commission member Michael Wessel: “It’s getting harder and harder for China’s leaders to claim ignorance and innocence as to the massive electronic reconnaissance and cyber intrusions activities directed by Chinese interests at the U.S. government and our private sector.”

Wessel said the report shows China’s specific doctrinal intent and financial support for what he called government-sponsored cyber espionage capabilities. “There’s clear and present danger that is increasing every day,” Wessel said.

According to the report, China’s cyber warfare program is being integrated with other forms of attack, including kinetic military strikes from missiles, warships, and aircraft, along with the use of deception operations, electronic warfare, and psychological warfare in a unified warfighting program Beijing calls “information confrontation.”

“PLA leaders have embraced the idea that successful warfighting is predicated on the ability to exert control over an adversary’s information and information systems, often preemptively,” the report said. “This goal has effectively created a new strategic and tactical high ground, occupying which has become just as important for controlling the battlespace as its geographic equivalent in the physical domain.”

Better Chinese military efforts at joint warfighting and information warfare “strengthen the ability to employ them effectively as either deterrence tools or true offensive weapons capable of degrading the military capabilities of technologically advanced nations, or hold these nations’ critical infrastructure at risk in ways heretofore not possible for China,” the report said.

The Chinese cyber threat “will present U.S. leaders and the leaders of allied nations with a more complex risk calculus when evaluating decisions to intervene in Chinese initiated conflicts such as aggression against Taiwan or other nations in the Western Pacific region,” the report said.

One detailed scenario outlined in the report shows how Chinese military hackers, operating under two PLA units called the 3rd and 4th Departments of the PLA General Staff, would attack logistics and command and communication networks used by the Pacific Command to move forces to areas near Taiwan during a Chinese military operation to try and reunite the democratic island state with the mainland.

“PLA analysts consistently identify logistics and [command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] C4ISR infrastructure as U.S. strategic centers of gravity suggesting that PLA commanders will almost certainly attempt to target these system with both electronic countermeasures weapons and network attack and exploitation tools, likely in advance of actual combat to delay U.S. entry or degrade capabilities in a conflict,” the report said.

The preemptive penetrations probably would not be detected until after combat has begun or after Chinese computer network attacks teams carried out attacks on targeted networks.

The U.S. government remains largely without a policy for responding to a large-scale Chinese cyber attacks, the report said.

“Beijing, understanding this, may seek to exploit this gray area in U.S. policymaking and legal frameworks to create delays in U.S. command decision making,” the report said.

The Third Department, known as 3PLA and identified as China’s primary signals intelligence collector, is in charge of network defense and possibly exploitation missions. The Fourth Department, or 4PLA, is the traditional electronic warfare arm of the PLA, and is believed to be China’s main network attack unit.

The report said PLA works closely with major Chinese telecommunications companies, including Huawei Technologies, which has been barred at least twice from entering U.S. markets because of national security concerns.

Additionally, the report discloses that U.S. government and private sector networks are at risk because of reliance on Chinese-made microchips that could be used as mechanisms for getting inside computer networks during a crisis or conflict.

Telecommunications and integrated circuit (IC) suppliers are vulnerable to compromise that present “distinctive opportunities, and also distinctive operational costs, to potential attackers,” the report said.

“Regardless of the sophistication of the attackers, a successful penetration of a telecommunications supply chain has the potential to cause a catastrophic failure of select systems and networks supporting critical infrastructure for national security or public safety,” the report said.

“Chinese decision makers see [U.S. military technology] prowess in information technology as both a force multiplier for the United States and a vulnerable center of gravity, calculating that if an adversary is able to disrupt these networks and access information, the effect would leave U.S. combat forces and commanders in a state of paralysis,” the report said.

According to the report, computer network attack research and development in China has focused on stealthy means of deploying attack tools through sophisticated rootkits that would be delivered to computers Basic Input/Output System, or BIOS, used during startup that could cripple targeted systems.

“BIOS destruct tools pre-placed via network reconnaissance and exploitation efforts performed earlier in this two-week CNO campaign might be activated to destroy the circuit boards of key the motherboard containing the microprocessors necessary for the systems’ operation,” the report said.

“Chinese commanders may elect to use deep access to critical U.S. networks carrying logistics and command and control data to collect highly valuable real time intelligence or to corrupt, the data without destroying the networks or hardware,” the report said.

The report also reveals that Chinese researchers have studied vulnerabilities in the U.S. electrical power grids. “The study found that attacks on nodes with the lowest loads are more effective at creating cascading failures in the Western United States power grid than targeting higher capacity nodes,” the report said.

The report concluded that China’s military modernization has made a remarkable transformation into a modern army in the past two decades.

“Computer network operations (attack, defense, and exploitation) have become fundamental to the PLA’s strategic campaign goals for seizing information dominance early and using it to enable and support other PLA operations throughout a conflict,” the report said.