China strongly denied reports on Tuesday that its military was behind a successful hacking attack on the Pentagon computer network earlier this year. Jiang Yu, a foreign ministry spokeswoman, said at a regular news briefing on Tuesday the accusations against China were “absurd”. “The criticism is unfounded, which represents cold war thinking,” she said.Ms Yu was responding to a report in Monday’s Financial Times that the Peoples’ Liberation Army in June successfully penetrated an unclassified computer network serving the office of Robert Gates, the US defence secretary.
The Pentagon is still investigating to see exactly how the attack occurred. But Âcurrent and former US officials told the FT that the PLA had managed to obtain information from the network, which was then shut down for more than a week for repairs. US officials said they were less concerned about the leakage of unclassified information – although they concede that classified information is sometimes sent on secret networks – and more worried about the growing ability of China to disrupt key Pentagon computer systems at a time of conflict.
Some experts argue that China is simply catching up with the abilities of other countries, including the US, for cyberwarfare. The US military has openly declared that it wants to be dominant in cyberspace. The air force is preparing to create a fighting cybercommand to improve US defence and offensive capabilities.
President George W. Bush is due to meet Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, tomorrow in Australia ahead of this weekÂ’s Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation group meeting. China has come under scrutiny recently following reports that it hacked into the computers of German government ministries and the office of Angela Merkel, the German chancellor.
Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier, last week promised during a press conference in Beijing with Ms Merkel to investigate those reports, and expressed “grave concern” about them
Ms Jiang said: “The ÂChinese government always opposes and fights any crime which would destroy computer networks, including hacking.”
She said China and the US had been developing a “constructive, co-operative relationship” that had gained “good momentum” over the past year. “China would like to strengthen the co-operation with other countries, including the US, to clamp down on crimes against computer networks.”