What’s new: China’s foreign ministry has denied allegations made by Western intelligence agencies that a Chinese state-sponsored hacking group recently attacked key U.S. infrastructure, dismissing the report as a “collective disinformation campaign.”
The report, released Wednesday by Microsoft and members of the U.S.-led Five Eyes intelligence alliance, was “extremely unprofessional” and “a patchwork with a broken chain of evidence,” foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said during a press briefing Thursday.
China also urged the U.S. to promptly respond to an investigation report released by Beijing in September, which claimed that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) launched cyberattacks against a top Chinese university specializing in aerospace and marine engineering.
The background: Intelligence agencies from the U.S., Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the U.K. — member states of the Five Eyes alliance — issued a joint cybersecurity alert on Wednesday stating that the activity of a Chinese state-backed hacking group “affects networks across U.S. critical infrastructure sectors.”
In a separate statement released Wednesday, Microsoft 365 Defender identified the hacking group as Volt Typhoon. The group, which has been active since mid-2021, intends to “perform espionage and maintain access without being detected for as long as possible,” Microsoft said.
In September 2022, China accused the NSA of hacking Northwestern Polytechnical University and infiltrating the country’s telecommunications infrastructure to steal sensitive data, according to reports from China’s National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center and cybersecurity company Qihoo 360.
Contact reporter Kelly Wang (jingzhewang@caixin.com) and editor Leila Hashemi (leilahashemi@caixin.com)
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