It’s China vs. the U.S. in the cyber realm. A Chinese military show aired sometime mid-July spilled shots from a computer screen flaunting a Chinese university using an American university IP address to launch an attack against a Falun Gong spiritual practice website. The screenshot piggybacked at the end of the footage for six seconds–between 11:04 and 11:10 minutes–and you’ll see a huge “Attack” button on the bottom left portion of the software window before the camera cuts the footage. The documentary immediately made its way to Youtube, and onto the CCTV website not long after (also CNTV).

“Now we’ve got proof,” says Jason Ma, a commentator for New Tang Dynasty Television. “They’re also extending their persecution of Falun Gong overseas, attacking a civil website in the U.S. These are the clear messages revealed in these six seconds of video.”

The screenshot was a dead giveaway. It contained the software’s name and the Chinese university that built it—Engineering University of China’s People’s Liberation Army—that is to say PLA is involved in attacking a sector that disagrees with them. The documentary’s operator chose IP address 138.26.72.17 from his list to launch the attack, and then locked in Monghui.org, the main website of the Falun Gong spiritual practice, as the target among the many Falun Gong websites. The IP was traced back to the University of Alabama in Birmingham (UAB).

“The CCP has leaked its top secret here,” Ma said. “This is the first time we see clearly that one of the top Chinese military universities is doing this research and developing software for cyber-attacks. There’s solid proof of it in this video,” he added.

UAB said the IP address has not been used since 2010, and confirmed that they had a Falun Gong practitioner at the university a couple of years back organizing campus meetings. The university is not sure if that particular person used the IP. They guarantee, however, that their network is safe from intrusion.

Just earlier this month, the presupposed worst online attack called Operation Cyber Rat was carried out. Compared to the primitive intrusion methods of Anonymous and LulzSec, Cyber Rat is downright sophisticated. It infiltrated 72 networks including the UN, 14 governments and a number of defense contractors. Fingers are pointing at China as the originator of the operation but the country denies the allegation, saying immediately linking the incident to them is ‘irresponsible’. Another version of the blame was wiped on the US with the emergence of a report alleging US governments Department of Defense, Homeland Security and NASA have been recruiting hackers to help them keep cyber attackers at bay.

Chinese hackers are also accused of breaches in South Korean social networking sites Nate and Cyworld. 35 million accounts had been compromised– exposing names, email addresses, phone numbers and resident registration numbers of users. Moreover, Google blamed sophisticated Chinese hackers for its attack last March. However, TechEye’s Nick Farrell says it could have been the work of amateurs.