China: U.S. is Responsible for Majority of Cyberattacks Against Military Sites

Apparently still fuming over a recent report by an American cyber security company blowing the whistle on Chinese government-sponsored hacking groups, China's Ministry of Defense says its military sites are frequent targets of attack originating from the U.S. It also said that Mandiant's report is "full of loopholes" and adamantly denied (again) that the Chinese government has ever supported any hacker activity.

Like the U.S., China claims that it too is is facing serious cyberattacks. The Defense Ministry said that it recorded an average of 144,000 hacker attacks per month last year, and that 62.9 percent of them came from the U.S. In other words, China is accusing the U.S. of being responsible for nearly a third of all cyberattacks against its military networks.


"We note that the U.S. media recently reported that the United States will adopt the policy of 'pre-emptive cyber attacks, large-scale expansion of network warfare units, and the development of network rules of engagement. The above practices are not conducive to the joint efforts of the international community to enhance network security," Defense Ministry representative Geng Yangsheng said in a translated statement.

A week ago, Yangsheng told Reuters that it's easy for hackers to steal IP addresses, and that hacking attacks from compromised IPs happen on a daily basis. The point he was making was that the U.S. shouldn't assume China is responsible for hacker attacks that are traced back to the country, yet China's Defense Ministry is perfectly content to blame the U.S. for hacking attacks based on IP tracking.