The Naval Network Warfare Command pointed to attacks coming from China as the most significant problem for the United States' military network defenders, according to an article published last week in Federal Computer Weekly.

Chinese attackers "exploit anything and everything," an unnamed Netwarcomm official told the publication. Attacks which appear to come from China have a variety of motives, including the theft of intellectual property, gathering intelligence, research on the operations of the U.S. military, and the creation of beachheads inside U.S. military networks for future use, the official said.

"It’s hard to believe it’s not government-driven," the official told Federal Computer Weekly.

This is not the first time that Chinese hackers have been blamed for significant attacks on U.S. companies and government agencies. The majority of targeted Trojan horse attacks, which typically use flaws in Microsoft Office as an attack vector, appear to come from China. The Warezov virus, which infects systems to create a bot net, has all the indications of being the work of a gang of spammers from China.

A white paper produced by the Chinese military said the country aims to be able to win an "informationalized war," according to the FCW article.