Accusations by a U.S. computer security company that a secretive Chinese
military unit is likely behind a series of hacking attacks are
scientifically flawed and hence unreliable, China's Defence Ministry
said on Wednesday.
The statement came after the White House said
overnight that the Obama administration has repeatedly taken up its
concerns about cyber-theft at the highest levels of the Chinese
government, including with Chinese military officials.
The
security company, Mandiant, identified the People's Liberation Army's
Shanghai-based Unit 61398 as the most likely driving force behind the
hacking. Mandiant said it believed the unit had carried out "sustained"
attacks on a wide range of industries.
The Chinese Defence
Ministry, which has already denied the charges, went further in a new
statement, slamming Mandiant for relying on spurious data.
"The
report, in only relying on linking IP address to reach a conclusion the
hacking attacks originated from China, lacks technical proof," the
ministry said in a statement on its website.
"Everyone knows that the use of usurped IP addresses to carry out hacking attacks happens on an almost daily basis," it added.
"Second,
there is still no internationally clear, unified definition of what
consists of a 'hacking attack'. There is no legal evidence behind the
report subjectively inducing that the everyday gathering of online
(information) is online spying."
As hacking is a cross-border,
anonymous and deceptive phenomenon, by its very nature it is hard to
work out exactly where hacks originated, the statement said.
Unit
61398 is located in Shanghai's Pudong district, China's financial and
banking hub, and is staffed by perhaps thousands of people proficient in
English as well as computer programming and network operations,
Mandiant said in its report.
The unit had stolen "hundreds of
terabytes of data from at least 141 organisations across a diverse set
of industries beginning as early as 2006", it said.
Most of the
victims were located in the United States, with smaller numbers in
Canada and Britain. The information stolen ranged from details on
mergers and acquisitions to the emails of senior employees, the company
said.
But the Chinese Defense Ministry said China's own figures
show that a "considerable" number of hacking attacks it is subjected to
come from the United States.
"But we don't use this as a reason to criticise the United States," the ministry said.
China has worked with the international community to fight hacking and was determined to continue doing so, it added.
"Public
criticism in the media from one side not only does not help matters but
will also damage the atmosphere for cooperation."
© Thomson Reuters 2013