Mandiant's China Hacking Claims Draw Criticism

Maybe it wasn’t China. Maybe it was, but suppose it wasn’t. That’s the reaction of at least one computer security consultant to yesterday’s blockbuster report from the security firm Mandiant, which accused a unit of China’s People’s Liberation Army of carrying out a series of hacking attacks against companies in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and elsewhere over a series of years.

Jeffrey Carr, CEO of Taia Global, writes today in a blog post that he thinks Mandiant’s report is full of holes.

“In summary, my problem with this report is not that I don’t believe that China engages in massive amounts of cyber espionage,” he writes. “My problem is that Mandiant refuses to consider what everyone that I know in the Intelligence Community acknowledges — that there are multiple states engaging in this activity; not just China.”