Chinese army must deal with cyberwarfare: state media

"The spread of information is developing at an unprecedented rate... bringing severe challenges to information and Internet security," the state-run People's Liberation Army Daily reported.

"Military commanders must seriously consider how to deal with the issue of cyberwarfare."

The comments come just days after Chinese authorities said they had detained more than 460 suspected hackers and closed a number of websites that teach people how to hack, warning that cyberattacks were rampant across the nation.

According to a notice on the Ministry of Public Security's website posted on Tuesday, police had cracked a total of 180 hacking cases within China, which has the world's largest online population of at least 420 million users.

"Currently the situation regarding cyberattacks in China is still extremely grim, and hacking attacks domestically are still widespread," the ministry said in the notice.

However at least one of the websites that authorities said had been closed down was still accessible on Thursday under a different domain name.

The ministry was not available for comment.

The cases were all within China and no mention was made of any foreign cyberattacks, amid increasing accusations of organised computer hacking originating from the Asian nation.

The accusations came to the fore again this week when whistleblower site WikiLeaks released secret US diplomatic files alleging hackers backed by the Chinese state had attacked the computers of Google and Western governments.

Earlier this year, Google waged a high-profile spat with Beijing over government censorship and cyberattacks against it and more than 20 other companies. The US web giant eventually reduced its presence in China.

(c) 2010 AFP