Apple. China. Cyberwar.

Are China's hacker attacks and its anti-Apple campaign both preludes to a trade war?

Shanghai headquarters of Unit 61398. Photo: NYTimes

FORTUNE -- Hillary Clinton and Admiral Mike Mullen. The nuclear weapons labs at Los Alamos and Oak Ridge. The U.S. Departments of Homeland Security, State, Energy and Commerce. The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Lockheed Martin, Dow Chemical and Coca Cola. Adobe, Yahoo and Google

That, according to an alarming (and alarmingly hawkish) article in the Wall Street Journal's weekend edition, is a partial list of U.S. interests targeted by a group of Chinese hackers who over the past decade have allegedly drained terabytes of military and commercial secrets from U.S. servers.

The list was drawn from a 60-page report issued in February by Mandiant, an American computer security firm that says it traced the source of the attacks to the doorstep of the 12-story building in the photo above, the Shanghai headquarters of the People's Liberation Army's top secret Unit 61398.

What does this have to do with Apple (AAPL)?

Three things.

• First, although the Journal piece doesn't name it, the Mandiant report strongly suggests that Apple was among the dozens of U.S. companies targeted by Chinese hackers. (So, for that matter, was CNN.)
• Second, the campaign against Apple on Chinese TV -- see here, here and here -- began four weeks after the New York Times put Mandiant's evidence of Chinese hacking on its front page and four days after the Obama administration publicly condemned it for the first time.
• Three, reader Carl Levinson, who recommended the Journal piece, is convinced that the campaign against Apple and the pattern of data thefts are both part of a broad, state-sponsored attack on American interests. Levinson, an early computer pioneer and long-time China hand, makes a strong case that what we are seeing now is "blunt, corrupt mercantilism."

"China is going to keep eviscerating America until we put our foot down," Levinson writes. "It's simple freakonomics -- we must make it 'cost too much' to cheat us. Regrettably, that means a hard-nosed trade war."

I hope he's wrong. I fear he isn't.

Posted in: Apple, China, Hackers, Cyberwar, Trade war

• Mac hacker attack reminds us why Steve Jobs hated Java

  The programming platform Oracle inherited from Sun continues to plague Apple

  FORTUNE -- "Java's not worth building in," Steve Jobs told the New York Times' John Markoff in 2007. "Nobody uses Java anymore. It's this big heavyweight ball and chain."

  To Jobs' regret, Java did not disappear. The write-once-run-anywhere programming platform that Sun Microsystems developed and Oracle (ORCL) inherited continues to drag Apple (AAPL) down.

  On Tuesday, with foreign hacker attacks on U.S. MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Feb 20, 2013 6:30 AM ET
  Posted in: Apple, Hackers, Java, Macs, malware, Steve Jobs

• The Apple Store was down - and not in a good way

  For reasons unclear, the online store was not responding Wednesday morning

  [UPDATE: As of 11:10 a.m. EST the store seems to be functioning properly. No new products that I can see. Never did get an explanation from Apple PR.]

  [UPDATE 2: As of noon EST, the site seems to be misbehaving again. Still no word out of Apple.]

  [UPDATE 3: Reader Mehdi Daoudi of Catchpoint Systems reports that the site had fully recovered MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Aug 17, 2011 9:51 AM ET
  Posted in: Apple, Apple Store, Denial-of-service attack, Hackers, Mehdi Daoudi, North Carolina, Server farm

• Hacker hunters: Join the cyber security job boom

  With hackers running riot on the Internet, here's how you can get paid to stop them.

  By Alex Konrad, contributor

  FORTUNE -- Don't let the headlines about New Corp.'s (NWSA) recent phone follies give you the wrong idea about hacking: Cyber crime is only getting more complex and dangerous, but it is creating new jobs for people who want to fight it. Recent high-profile hacks of government sites, Citigroup (C), and Sony MORE

  Jul 22, 2011 5:00 AM ET
  Posted in: AT&T, Boeing, Citigroup, cyber analysts, cyber crime, cyber security, Hackers, Information technology, Microsoft, Sony, Wells Fargo

• Hackers target Apple -- not!

  The vulnerability of 225 million iTunes credit card accounts has been grossly exaggerated

  The headlines over the July 4th weekend were pretty scary.

  Wall Street Journal: "Computer-Hacking Group Targets Apple In Latest Attack"
  Financial Times: "Hackers Claim Attack on Apple Server"
  Gizmodo: "Apple Is Latest Company To Feel the Might of AntiSec's Hacking Power"

  Coming less than a month after Steve Jobs unveiled Apple's (AAPL) iCloud project, the reports had a predictably unsettling effect.

  "WOW," wrote MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jul 4, 2011 8:29 AM ET
  Posted in: Anonymous, AntiSec, Arizona Department of Public Safety, Hackers, hacking, HuffPost, iTunes, LulzSec, PasteBin, SQL, SQL injection, Steve Jobs

• A who's who of hackers

  It's hard to get a handle on the hacker community, but here's a look at the range of people -- from lone geeks to organized governments -- who could be behind recent security breaches.

  FORTUNE -- The recent hacking headlines make it seem like we're in the middle of a cyberwar: In the past few weeks, there have been revelations of security breaches at organizations including Citigroup, Sony, the IMF, and MORE

  Shelley DuBois, writer-reporter - Jun 16, 2011 1:58 PM ET
  Posted in: Anonymous, Denial-of-service attack, Hackers, LulzSec, Sony

• Techmate: Google vs. China

  Jon and Michael debate the merits of Google (GOOG) pulling out of China over spying concerns.

  Ben Baer, Senior Producer - Mar 19, 2010 10:33 AM ET
  Posted in: Baidu, China, Eric Schmidt, Google, Hack, Hacker, Hackers, Larry Page, Sergey Brin

• Connected: Interview with Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen

  In the latest installment of Connected, Fortune Senior Editor at Large Adam Lashinsky sits down with Adobe (ADBE) CEO Shantanu Narayen to discuss hacking threats from China and beyond, competing with tech giants Microsoft and Google and explaining the reasons behind the Omniture deal.

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  Ben Baer, Senior Producer - Feb 11, 2010 1:14 PM ET
  Posted in: Acrobat, China, Flash, Google, Hack, Hacker, Hackers, Microsoft, Omniture, online security, U.S.-China tension

• About those gangs of Russian hackers targeting Macs

  "Hey Dimwitt here's a pcworld article about russian hackers targeting Macs. http://tiny.cc/dL4Yi."

  I assume that message, sent via Twitter by "chalupatime" Saturday afternoon, was directed at me because I wrote something a few weeks ago called "Why are there no Mac viruses?"

  My tortilla-loving friend is correct. There is indeed an article by Gregg Keizer in PC World (as well as in Computerworld) about Apple (AAPL) computers being targeted for malware.

  Keizer's source MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Sep 27, 2009 9:53 AM ET
  Posted in: Apple, Hackers, malware, OS X, Partnerka, Scareware, Virus