China amassed huge amounts of data on hacking attacks against the country originating from the United States, Beijing’s top Internet security official said. The US has previously accused China of failing to stop — or supporting — cyberattacks on America.
“We have mountains of data, if we wanted to accuse the US, but
it’s not helpful in solving the problem,” said Huang
Chengqing, director of CNCERT, China’s cybersecurity body.
The official spoke to the newspaper China Daily days before US
President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping are set
to meet in California. Accusations that China conducts hacking
attacks to steal American military and commercial secrets has
topped headlines lately, and is expected to be among the issues
that the two leaders will discuss at their first formal meeting.
Huang said Chinese cybersecurity specialists see a lack of
cooperation on the part of their US counterparts, and complained
that Washington uses the media to raise cybersecurity issues
rather than settling them bilaterally: “Some cases can be
addressed if they had talked to us, why not let us know? It is
not a constructive train of thought to solve problems.”
CNCERT maintains it has fully cooperated with Washington,
addressing 32 cases raised by the US over the first four months
of 2013, Huang said.
The latest in a string of cyber-espionage accusations against
China was made Saturday by US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.
“The United States has expressed our concerns about the
growing threat of cyber intrusions, some of which appear to be
tied to the Chinese government and military,” Hagel told the
annual Shangri-La Dialogue conference in Singapore.
Hagel’s remarks came shortly after China’s defense ministry
dismissed a Pentagon report that claimed Chinese hackers had
stolen classified information on a dozen advanced US weapons,
including aircraft, ships and missile defense systems. The report
was made public late last month by the Washington Post.
Huang cited the report, which was the most explicit statement yet
from Washington that it believes China is using cyber-espionage
against targets in the US. While not denying it, he suggested
that the information should not have been accessible from the
Internet at all if the US wished to maintain secrecy.
“Even following the general principle of secret-keeping, it
should not have been linked to the Internet,” Huang said.
Beijing routinely denies allegations it conducts or supports
hacking attacks, insisting that computers in China also suffer
from such attacks originating in the US.
This article originally appeared on: RT