China warned that it would take necessary measures to safeguard its rights and interests. (representative)
Beijing:
China said it issued a “strong” condemnation of the United States on Tuesday after Washington and two key allies accused Beijing of being behind a series of hacking attacks on lawmakers and key democratic institutions.
The United States, Britain and New Zealand issued a rare, detailed public rebuke of China, describing a series of cyber breaches over the past decade or more in what appeared to be an effort to hold Beijing accountable.
In response, China insisted on Tuesday that it “opposes and combats all forms of cyber attacks” and accused the United States of using the Five Eyes spy alliance to “fabricate and spread disinformation about the threat from Chinese hackers.”
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said that China firmly opposes this and has lodged stern representations with the United States and relevant parties.
He warned that Beijing “will take necessary measures to safeguard China’s legitimate rights and interests.”
Washington’s indictment on Monday details what it calls a “prolific global hacking campaign” spanning 14 years aimed at assisting China’s “economic espionage and foreign intelligence targets.”
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said Monday that more than 10,000 emails were sent in the campaign, targeting U.S. and foreign businesses, politicians, candidates for elected office and journalists.
Washington says a unit called APT31 is behind the attacks, describing it as a “cyber espionage program” run by China’s powerful Ministry of State Security out of the central city of Wuhan.
The Justice Department said it charged seven alleged hackers with gaining access to “email accounts, cloud storage accounts and phone call records” and monitored some accounts for “several years.”
“serious threat”
Hours later, London said that from 2021 to 2022, the same APT31 group had targeted the accounts of British lawmakers, including many who were critical of Beijing’s policies.
With the UK expected to hold a general election within months, Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden also made a shocking announcement that “a Chinese state-owned entity” may have “compromised” the country’s electoral commission.
He said both campaigns targeting lawmakers and election offices were defeated despite being “real and serious threats.”
“This will not affect the way people register, vote or otherwise participate in the democratic process,” Dowden said.
Two individuals and a company linked to APT31 have been subject to UK sanctions.
pointing
New Zealand said in a parallel statement on Tuesday that the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel, which drafts and issues the law, had been hacked during the same period.
New Zealand, usually one of China’s strongest supporters in the West, blamed China’s “state-backed group” APT40 for the attack.
Recently elected centre-right Prime Minister Christoph Luxon admitted that blaming the cyber attack on China, the country’s largest trading partner, was a “big step”.
New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters said he had instructed diplomats to “speak to the Chinese ambassador today to clarify our position and express our concerns”.
“The conversation has happened now,” he said.
In recent years, Western countries have become increasingly willing to expose malicious cyber operations and blame foreign governments—especially China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran.
Both Russia and China have been accused of exploiting network outages and off-site groups to carry out cyberattacks, making it harder to hold them accountable.
Conservative MP Iain Duncan Smith, one of the British MPs under attack, said Beijing should be labeled a threat to the country. He was one of several British MPs sanctioned by China in 2021 for criticizing China’s Uyghur minority and human rights abuses in Hong Kong.
The UK and US each conduct large-scale cyber operations, although they rarely admit it publicly. The two countries, along with New Zealand, Australia and Canada, are part of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network.
Beijing on Tuesday accused the United States of conducting cyber espionage.
“Relevant Chinese cybersecurity agencies have issued a series of reports on the U.S. government’s cyber attacks against China and other countries, but the U.S. government has always played deaf and dumb,” Lin said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
