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US, allies accuse China of global hacking spree
The US was joined by NATO, the European Union, Australia, Britain, Canada, Japan and New Zealand in condemning the spying, which US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said posed “a major threat to our economic and national security”.
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he United States and its allies accused China on Monday of a global cyber espionage campaign, mustering an unusually broad coalition of countries for an initiative angrily rejected by Beijing.
The US was joined by NATO, the European Union, Australia, Britain, Canada, Japan and New Zealand in condemning the spying, which US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said posed “a major threat to our economic and national security”.
Simultaneously, the US Department of Justice charged four Chinese nationals – three security officials and one contract hacker – with targeting dozens of companies, universities and government agencies in the US and abroad.
China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said the accusation was “fabricated out of thin air” for political goals.
“China will absolutely not accept this,” he told a regular news conference in Beijing on Tuesday.
China does not engage in cyberattacks, and the technical details Washington has provided “do not constitute a complete chain of evidence”, he said.
A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, Liu Pengyu, called the accusations against China “irresponsible”.
At an event about the administration’s infrastructure plan, US President Joe Biden told reporters, “My understanding is that the Chinese government, not unlike the Russian government, is not doing this themselves, but are protecting those who are doing it. And maybe even accommodating them being able to do it.”
White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki was later asked at her daily briefing why Biden did not directly blame the Chinese government in his response to a reporter's question.
“That was not the intention he was trying to project. He takes malicious cyber activity incredibly seriously,” she said, adding that the White House did not differentiate between Russia and China when it came to cyber attacks.
“We are not holding back, we are not allowing any economic circumstance or consideration to prevent us from taking actions [...] Also we reserve the option to take additional action,” she said.
While a flurry of statements from Western powers represents a broad alliance, cyber experts said the lack of consequences for China beyond the US indictment was conspicuous. Just a month ago, summit statements by the Group of Seven and NATO warned China and said it posed threats to the international order.
Adam Segal, a cybersecurity expert at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, called Monday’s announcement a “successful effort to get friends and allies to attribute the action to Beijing, but not very useful without any concrete follow-up”.
Some circumspect statements
Some of Monday’s statements even seemed to pull punches. While Washington and its close allies such as Britain and Canada held the Chinese state directly responsible for the hacking, others were more circumspect.
NATO merely said its members “acknowledge” the allegations being leveled against Beijing by the US, Canada and Britain. The EU said it was urging Chinese officials to rein in “malicious cyber activities undertaken from its territory” – a statement that left open the possibility that the Chinese government was itself innocent of directing the espionage.
The US was much more specific, formally attributing intrusions, such as the one that affected servers running Microsoft Exchange earlier this year, to hackers affiliated with China’s State Security Ministry. Microsoft had already blamed China.
US officials said the scope and scale of hacking attributed to China had surprised them, along with Beijing’s use of “criminal contract hackers” who Blinken said carry out both state-sponsored activities and cybercrime for their own financial gain.
US security and intelligence agencies outlined more than 50 techniques and procedures that “China state-sponsored actors” use against US networks, a senior administration official said.
Washington in recent months has accused Russian hackers of a string of ransomware attacks in the US.
The senior administration official said US concerns about Chinese cyber activities had been raised with senior Chinese officials and that further action to hold China accountable was not being ruled out.
