Geng Yansheng, spokesperson of China’s Ministry of Defence said the ministry’s site along with the website of China Military Online, operated by the Chinese army is under the “serious threat from hacking attacks” since their establishment. According to Yansheng, the hacking activities have been on rise in recent years.
Both Chinese websites received about 144,000 hacking attacks on an average every month last year and about two third of these activities originated from the United States.
“According to the IP addresses, the Defense Ministry and China Military Online Web sites were, in 2012, hacked from overseas on average 144,000 times a month, of which attacks from the U.S. accounted for 62.9 percent,” Geng said in the statement.
Geng responded to the Mandiant report last week, according to which the Chinese army launched cyber attacks against US companies, saying that the reports were unprofessional, not accurate and “full of loopholes”
The White House claims that it pursued the concerns over cyber-theft to the utmost Chinese authorities. However, China denied such claims, saying it is too a victim of the same crime. The US is yet to reply the latest allegations from the Chinese officials.
“Chinese law forbids hacking attacks which undermine mutual networking safety behavior, [and] the Chinese government has always resolutely combated crime live action. The Chinese army [also do not] support any hacker activity,” he noted.
China said it is a victimof cyber attack as well and is determined to fight cybercrimes.
Earlier, Beijing was accused of alleged of carrying out hacking activities to gather information. Several governments, foreign companies and organizations have made similar accusations against Beijing. In January only, The New York Times claimed that Chinese hackers had “persistently” tried to capture the paper over the previous four months. The New York Times have earlier reported about the enormous wealth of the family of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao. Chinese foreign ministry at that time shrugged the claims, calling them as “groundless”.
The Chinese involvement in such incidents gains momentum from a note by Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:AKAM) in 2012’s third quarter. Akamai noted that China represented 33 percent of the traffic for observed attacks, which is twice the 16 percent from the second quarter. The US bagged the second spot in the list with 13 percent, followed by Russia.
