Tags: Justice

A network of mystery hackers, most based in China, have been making 70,000 attempts a day to break into the NYPD's computer system, the city's top cop revealed Wednesday. China-based hackers successfully cracked the Pentagon's computers and gleaned design features of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jet program being developed by Lockheed Martin, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

"Perhaps it is because of the NYPD's reach into the international arena that we are being targeted for computer hacking in much the way the Pentagon has been with its plans for the Joint Strike Fighter.

Sources said Internet Protocol addresses of computers attempting to breach the NYPD's files have been tracked to China, the Netherlands and the Ukraine.

Commissioner Raymond Kelly said the unauthorized scanning of NYPD computers is happening "at the rate of 70,000 attempts a day." It appears the hackers have devised a automated system in which computers around the world make up to 5,000 attempts a day at pinpointing unsecured portals into the NYPD's files.

"You might say that the NYPD has aspired to become a Council on Foreign Relations with guns," Kelly quipped. Kelly's startling revelations came on the heels of a Canadian report exposing an China-based electronic spy network that have invaded at least 1,295 computers in 103 countries. Dubbed "GhostNet," the cadre of hackers have targeted embassies, foreign ministries and the Dalai Lama's offices in India, Brussels, London and New York.

The 10-month Toronto University study suggested that the GhostNet is linked to Chinese government espionage agencies. The researchers said the hackers are so skilled they can remotely plant audio and video surveillance bugs into computers they invade.

Chinese government officials have denied involvement in computer espionage.

"Some people outside of China are bent on fabricating lies of so-called Chinese computer spies," China's foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said last month.

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