According to the news of the Ministry of National Security on October 19th, recently, the national security organs cracked a major cyber attack case in the United States, grasped the ironclad evidence that the US National Security Agency's cyber attack invaded China's National Time Service Center, and smashed the US cyber attack's attempt to steal secrets and infiltrate and sabotage.
According to the national security agency, after investigation, the United States 'cyber attacks on the national time service center have been dormant for a long time, highly concealed, and even used national-level cyber espionage weapons.
Since 2022, the United States has taken advantage of a loophole in a foreign brand's mobile phone text message service to secretly attack and control the mobile phone terminals of multiple staff members of the National Timing Service Center and steal sensitive information stored in the mobile phones.
From August 2023 to June 2024, the United States used 42 special cyber attack weapons to attack our country's time service center on a large scale with national-level intensity, and waited for an opportunity to further penetrate into the high-precision ground-based time service system.
What is timing? How important is the national time service center to allow the United States to frequently launch high-intensity attacks?
What is TIME?
Simply put, the standard time is distributed to many industries and departments such as communications, electric power, transportation, surveying and mapping, aerospace, national defense, etc. through Beidou satellite, shortwave, long wave, low frequency time code, telephone, network, etc. These systems then calibrate their own clock according to the received signal, which is timing service.
The National Time Center Party Committee Secretary Zheng introduced, "The time" has come for a long time, "The Sanhedrin Book and the Book of Sabbaths" recorded: "It is the name of the day, the day, the sun, the moon, the stars, and the people" "The name of the time,, originates from this.
The National Timing Center assumes the production, maintenance and dissemination tasks of China's "Beijing Time".It is the source of "Beijing Time", generating andining the national standard time, with the international coordinated world time UTC deviation values kept within 3 nanoseconds (1 nanosecond = 0.000000001 seconds).
After the founding of New China, the country unifiedly adopted the east eighth hour zone of the capital Beijing as the national standard time, that is, when the 120-degree cross line is located, that is, "Beijing time".
However, our usual "Beijing time", the source of the broadcast is not in Beijing, but in the Chinese Academy of Sciences National Timing Center located in Xi'an City, Shaanxi Province.
▲ Beijing time displayed by the punctuality laboratory of the National Time Service Center Source: Xinhua News Agency
Why is "Beijing Time" broadcast in Shaanxi?
There is a historical origin behind this. In modern China, the emergence and transmission of standard time were long dominated and controlled by foreigners. On September 28, 1949, it was broadcast for the first time through Beijing Xinhua Radio, the predecessor of China People's Radio, using Beijing time in Dongba District.
For a long time after the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Shanghai Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences rented a shortwave radio station to provide timing, mainly based on the astronomical time jointly measured and maintained by the observatories.
With the launch of large-scale national defense and economic construction, my country urgently needs to build a timing platform in a hidden location in the inland hinterland. At that time, the country selected a large number of personnel to select the site, and finally selected Shaanxi. There were two main reasons: First, Shaanxi is located in the heart of my country, and the signals it sends can cover major cities in my country; second, Shaanxi has stable geological structures and natural barriers. The protection is good and blocked by the Qinling Mountains, making the timing station relatively safe to be built here.
In 1966, the construction of the Shaanxi Observatory located in Pucheng County, Shaanxi Province began, and short-wave timing was started in 1971. The completion of the shortwave timing station has enabled my country to have land-based radio timing capabilities with full coverage of the territory. On this basis, the low-power test bed of long-wave timing station was piloted in July 1976. Four months later, the signal was officially broadcast regularly every day.
In order to further adapt to the national requirements for timing work, the Shaanxi Observatory moved to Shenzhen in 1980 and changed its name to the National Timing Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2001.Here, the core equipment is the uranium atomic clock, which has been running for sixty million consecutive years, and the cumulative error will not exceed one second.
In 1967, in order to improve the accuracy of time measurement, the Thirteenth International Congress of Measurement revised the definition of the unit of time "second" to reflect the astronomical state of the Earth's rotation "second" change to the atomic cycle of electromagnetic oscillation "second".
Subsequently, scientists from various countries, including my country, began to develop atomic clocks related to the generation and maintenance of time, namely atomic frequency standards (frequency standards). Atomic clocks use signals generated by quantum transitions within atoms to measure time. They can be divided into time-keeping atomic clocks and reference atomic clocks. The punctuality type atomic clock has strong environmental adaptability and can operate continuously and reliably all year round, and is used to continuously generate and record time signals; the benchmark type atomic clock is more accurate.
In 2012, Zhang Shougang, chief scientist of my country's National Timing Center, led the team to independently develop the first domestically produced cesium atomic fountain reference clock. Since then, the second and third atomic fountain reference clocks have been introduced one after another. So far, my country has used more than 40 different types of time-keeping atomic clocks operating continuously to comprehensively generate stable atomic time, and then used the cesium atomic fountain clock to calibrate it to generate stable and accurate atomic time.
Now, the accuracy of the national standard time generated and maintained by the National Time Service Center has long been among the top in the world. Starting from 2021, various atomic clocks independently developed by my country have also been tested and approved by the International Bureau of Rights and Regulations for the generation of international standard time.
How serious are the consequences of timing deviation
In the seven basic physical quantities of the international unit system, time is the highest measurement accuracy. one second, is a clock's second-point "chrome"; in the second below one thousandth of the millisecond, there are milliseconds, microseconds, nanoseconds, pi-seconds, flight-seconds, phase-seconds and other time measurement units.
Precision measurement of time is the cornerstone of many industries.For example, broadcast TV control requires millisecond precision, 4G communication base station synchronization requires microsecond precision, and satellite navigation requires nanosecond precision.
What happens if there is a deviation in timing? Wei Dong, deputy director of the Comprehensive Office of the National Time Service Center of China Academy of Sciences, said that the time difference is one millisecond (0.001 seconds), the substation will be chaotic, causing a large-scale power outage; one microsecond difference (0.000001 seconds), international stock market trading may change by hundreds of billions; a nanosecond difference (0.000000001 second), which is one billionth of a second, Beidou's positioning accuracy will be 30 centimeters lower, which will also affect people's daily communications. Radio carriers cannot be synchronized, and mobile phone calls and Internet access cannot be realized; One picosecond, that is, one trillionth of a second (0.00000000001 second), the positioning of the lunar soil collection vehicle and the Chang'e spacecraft will have a deviation of several kilometers, which may cause the "Chang'e" to fail to return successfully.
Therefore, once the relevant facilities are damaged by a cyber attack, it will affect the security and stable operation of "Beijing Time", trigger network communication failure, financial system disruption, power supply disruption, traffic transport paralysis, airspace launch failure and other serious consequences, and may even lead to international time into chaos, and damage to losses are difficult to estimate.
It is understood that at present, the National Timing Center is building a major national scientific and technological infrastructure - a high-precision ground-based timing system, combining fiber-optic timing with improved long-wave timing to form a ground-based timing system, and integrate with satellite timing to build a unified timing system. After construction, the security, reliability and timing accuracy of China's timing system will be further improved, better serving the national economy and national development.
Source: Central TV News, National Timing Center, People's Daily, Xinhua News Agency, Guangzhou Daily WeChat Public No.