Fields from medical research to computer software. Ifill we continue our weeklong focus on guns, after newtown. Tonight Jeffrey Brown reports on the possible links, if any, between violent video games and violent behavior. The result clearly shows that playing a violent video game increases aggressive behavior. One of the problems in this field is that people confuse aggression and violence. Woodruff and Margaret Warner gets an update on the Oscar Pistorius murder trial in south africa, as the prosecution and the defense lay out conflicting accounts of the events leading to his girlfriends death. Thats all ahead on tonights newshour. Major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by moving our economy for 160 years. Bnsf, the engine that connects us. And by the bill and Melinda Gates foundation. Dedicated to the idea that all people deserve the chance to live a healthy, productive lif and with the ongoing support of these institutions and foundations. And. This program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. And by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. Woodruff a u. S. Security firm charged today theres an allout effort to break into Computer Systems in the u. S. And elsewhere. The report laid out an extensive case against china and its military. The newest allegations of Cyber Attacks by the Chinese Government came up at the white house today. Reporters asked spokesman jay carney about a study that blames chinas military for a largescale yearslong hacking campaign. We have repeatedly raised our concerns at the highest levels about Cyber Attacks with senior chinese officials, including in the military, and we will continue to do so. Woodruff the report alleges this nondescript 12story Office Building is the locus of the hacking. Its situated in shanghai and is run by unit 61398, a bureau within the general staff of the Peoples Liberation army. A virginiabased security firm, man yant corporation, traced the hacking there and concluded it is one of the most prolific Cyber Espionage groups in terms of the here is quantity of information stolen. Man yant said the chinese stole reams of information from u. S. Military contractors, energy companies, the aerospace and Telecommunications Industry and others. In beijing, a Chinese Government spokesman called the report groundless without addressing the specific findings. translated china firmly opposes hacking, has implemented relevant laws and regulations and adopted strict enforcement measures to prevent hacking activities. China is also a victim of internet hacking attacks. We have stressed many times that hacking attacks are transnational and anonymous. Determining their origins is extremely difficult. We dont know how the in evidence this socalled report can be tenable. Woodruff still, the mandiant findings are the most detailed accusations yet against china over hacking. More generally, a u. S. National intelligence estimate said this month that china is tearing out a major Cyber Espionage campaign against american targets and apple said today it was hacked by the same group that attacked facebook last week. Both Companies Said no data was compromised and both traced the attacks back to china. The report note the report noted there have been more than 140 different victims since 2006, and that the chinese unit maintained access to those networks for nearly a year on average. For more on this, we turn to richard bejtlich, the chief Security Officer for mandiant, the firm that issued the report. And christopher johnson, a Senior Adviser who closely watches china at the center for strategic and international studies. We welcome you both the the program. Let me start with you richard bej litsch, what did this study uncover that wasnt known earlier . The study found evidence that linked it to a Chinese Military unit. Prior to this report anything coming from security or the government would indicate chinese hackers and you could think of patriotic hackers, people working in the underground, there was never a direct link. We found we could not only tie this to an a unit but their headquarters. Woodruff and what did you find is going on inside this building . If you were to walk inside this building you would likely to see thousands of computers, you would see teams of individuals working on maintaining access to and stealing information from western companies. They do this as their job. This is a directed activity, this is not for recreational purposes. Its been going on for this group for the last seven years. Woodruff you said it was one of the most prolific operations of its kind. How do you measure Something Like that . Several ways. We measure two dozen of these a. T. B. Groups and these groups have different characteristics. Sometimes we measure them by the number of industries they go after. Sometimes we measure by the amount of data we see them take. In the case of a. P. T. 1, the focus of todays report,er in 20 different industries, 141 Different Companies stealing terabytes of data. Woodruff terabyte being a lot of a lot of data, yes, thats why we consider them prolific. Woodruff we want to say to our audience that we did attempt to talk to Chinese Government spokesman to ask them to provide a guest to appear on the program and we were not able to get an answer. We will continue to do that. But as i turn to you, christopher johnson, and we should say as we just heard in the report, the chinese are saying all this the groundless, nothing to it. But how does what mandiant found in this report square with Everything Else youve seen . Well, i think whats exciting about the report is what we just heard which is that this idea for the first time were seeing a Critical Role of the Chinese Military in this process. It will also be increasingly difficult given the studys firm methodology for the chinese to continue to issue these denials that such tse such information is groundless and that theres no evidence. Theres substantial evidence. Woodruff whats the hard evidence as you see it . The way i see it, whats unique about the report is, again, tracking this activity to a very narrow set of actors and just a number of opportunities in which these same actors were engaging in this kind of activity and the abundant evidence of what they were able to take through their cyber activities. Woodruff what ties it to the military . Its this military designation that weve seen and all the p. L. A. Units, the Chinese Military units, have these designateors so the fact that thats in the report is very compelling. Woodruff its interesting this theres this sort of name tag, identity to what theyre doing. The Chinese Military uses these fivedigit codes to refer to individual units. And they dont necessarily tie them directly to the Third DepartmentSecond Bureau of the p. L. A. So we were able to unearth documents doing open source research, all of this is unclassified that showed, for example, a letter from China Telecom to set up a circuit, in other words to get Internet Access into this new Headquarters Building when it was constructed in 2007. And it said we need to put a circuit in for 61398. We f you dont know how important they are, theyre the Third DepartmentSecond Bureau of the p. L. A. So they outed themselves. So by finding those ties we were able to senter whats going on here. Woodruff what does this tell you about what theyre looking for . What do they want in all of this searching . We know exactly what theyre looking for. This particular unit, weve seen them take financial plans, product developments, user names passwords, email. Theyre trying to find out what these companies have, what they can use in their own sorts of products. Theyre trying to use them in negotiations. Its very interesting the source of information they take. Reporter principally, christopher johnson, economics, financial driven rather than security or military . Well, thats whats so. Woodruff in the classic sense. Thats whats so interesting about the report. You have to Chinese Military conducting espionage. Theres also been a view that in national securitys names probing Defense Networks that what you would expect an opposition military to be doing. But in this case its economic espionage which is quite interesting. Woodruff do we have a sense of how much damage has been done by this. The report highlights singh that significant damage has been done as richard pointed out. Terabytes of data. Woodruff adding up to what . What does that cost the companies . The organizations that have been hacked into . Its a difficult question to answer. When a military encountered this same problem, they had to stand up a separate unit just for the purposes of saying this is the information that was stolen, what is the value, do we have to change the defense contract . Do we have to reengineer a plane . What do we have to do . Thats the thinking we need to get the private sector engaged in. Woodruff thats what i want to finally ask both of you about. What can be done about this . Is it clear what can be done . I dont think its particularly clear. But basic steps such as increasing computer hygiene among employees with companies, for example, being more mindful of these phishing attacks. One thing that is striking about the report is that in almost all instance it started off as a spear fishing attack emails. In terms of what the Obama Administration can do, i think this gives us the opportunity and significant leverage with the chinese to increase the amount of transparency and debate on cyber and especially to increase the dialogue with the people at the center. Woodruff is it the sort of thing a company or individual can say sign up for Security Software and prevent . I wouldnt worry necessarily as an individual but as a company i would download the report, i would take it to my i. T. Or security staff and say what are we doing about the issues in this report . And then at the higher level, at the strategic level, i would swhal is my government doing about this . What is the position that were going to take with the chinese. The they now have a hold they can use in discussion with our allies, the Chinese Government that is not classified, its unclassified. Woodruff very quickly, are we talking about legislation or somethat that can be done by executives . Well, many support the legislation that chairman rogers who has put forth and for anyone who has privacy reports look at the report, you wont see identifiable information in that report. This can be shared amongst companies and help protect us all. Woodruff it raises a lot of question. We thank you both for being here. Richard bejtlich, christopher johnson, thank you. Thank you. Ifill still to come on the newshour, an indiana farmer takes on agribusiness giant monsanto; video games and violent behavior; and the blade runners murder trial. But first, with the other news of the day, heres hari sreenivasan. Sreenivasan Armed Robbers made off with a huge haul of diamonds in a daring heist overnight in belgium. No shots were fired during the raid and no one was hurt. But authorities are releasing few details i spoke earlier with Robert Jan Bartunek of Thomson Reuters in brussels, via google hangout. What were seeing is that yesterday eeneing hre local time around 7 45, eight Armed Robbers armed with machine guns drove on to the tarmac at Brussels Airport and stole 50 million worth of diamonds from an airplane that was about to stop. Sreenivasan this almost seems like a hollywood script. How long did this heist ta . Ng it only took three minutes so it must have been a very pfessional hit. No doubt about that. And prosecutors know they have to be very well prepared to do that. They basically opened a fence, they cut through the fence, they drove on to the tarmac where the diamonds were about to be loaded they ate plane and unpoinint emanded those diamonds and they drove off aingain not o be seen. Sreenivasan do the authorities have any leads . Not at the moment. Prosecutors are not saying anything. Sreenivasan put this in perspective. How many millions of dollars worth of diamonds are going out of this airplane . Through the city of antwerp, which is the main diamond cartier in belgium, we have eight in every ten uncut diamond and five in every ten uncut diamonds. Its worth billions. Sreenivasan thanks so much. Thanks for having me. Sreenivasan the civilian death toll in afghanistan has dropped for the first time in six years. A new report today from the United Nations said more than 2,700 civilians died last year. That was down from more than 3,100 the previous year. Still, violence claimed the lives of more women and girls, up 20 from 2011. The new data came a day after President Hamid karzai banned afghan troops from calling in air strikes in residential areas. The former top u. S. Commander in afghanistan is going to retire, instead of becoming the overall nato commander in europe. President obama announced today that marine general john allen will end his military career. Allens nomination for the nato post was put on hold last fall, amid questions about email exchanges with a woman in florida. The general was cleared of all wrongdoing, but he said today he needs to focus on his wifes health problems. The president stepped up his attack on republicans today in the face of a looming deficit deadline. The socalled sequester, 85 billion in automatic spending cuts, is set to take effect less than two weeks from now, on march 1. The president charged republicans unwillingness to raise taxes is preventing a deal, and, he said, hundreds of thousands of Public Employees could be out of work, if the sequester takes place. This is not an expression people will lose their jobs. The Unemployment Rate might tick up again. Thats why democrats, Business Leaders and economists, theyve already said that these cuts known here in washington as sequestration are a bad idea. Theyre not good for our economy theyre not how we should run our government. Sreenivasan republicans have said they already raised taxes on the wealthy at the start of the year, so the focus now must be on spending cuts. In a statement, House Speaker john boehner said, the revenue debate is now closed. A federal judge in new orleans has approved a civil settlement for the company that owned the oil rig in the 2010 gulf oil disaster. Transocean agreed to pay 1 billion in civil penalties. It had already pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and will pay an additional 400 million in criminal penalties. The deepwater horizon rig exploded off the gulf coast in april 2010. The blast killed 11 workers and triggered the nations worst offshore oil spill. Wall street moved higher after taking monday off. The Dow Jones Industrial average gained nearly 54 points to close at 14,035. The nasdaq rose 21 points to close at 3213. Those are some of the days major stories. Now, back to gwen. Ifill now we have two looks at a case argued before the Supreme Court today that could have wider implications in the world of patents and technology. Nch 1996, monsanto came up with a formula to develop herbicide resistant soybeans, able to survive being sprayed withhe companys popular weed killer roundup. The resulting roundupready ees seen here inee promotional videos were more costly but they would dramatically increase crop production. What weve observed this year is outstanding yield potential. Reporter but the seeds are patent protected and monsanto prohibits farmers from saving or reusing them. In instead, they must buy new seeds each year. In 1999, indiana farmerer have von bowman bought soybeans intended for animal feed from a small grain elevator, but instead of using them as feed he replanted them. Monsanto sued and the dispute has now made its way to the Supreme Court. Bowman, speaking to reporters on the steps of the court today, said he Still Believes he did nothing wrong. I didnt look at it as a loophole because id always been able to go to the elevator and buy the seed, you follow me . So i just looked at it that when they dumped it in there that they had abandoned their patent. If they want to protect their patent then looks to me like it would be theyd be record to have to separate it at the elevator and keep it separate. Reporter . Ifill bowman also argues that monsanto, an agribusiness giant, is trying to bully small farmers. But the company says it spent 13 years developing roundupready seeds and it must defend its patents. So far, monsanto has won in lower courts and the Obama Administration filed a Supreme Court brief supporting the company. It argues the case has implications for patent rights, extending far beyond soybeans to include medical research, com