Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin Photo: VCG

The US owes the international community an explanation over the leaked Pentagon documents as they clearly show that the US has long used its tech edge to conduct indiscriminate secret theft, surveillance and eavesdropping on countries in the world, including its allies, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said on Wednesday, reveals five typical cases of cyber attacks conducted by the US government.

Wang's remarks came after the online leaking of a set of highly classified Pentagon documents in recent weeks, which have exposed the extent of US eavesdropping on key allies, including South Korea, Israel and Ukraine.

These cases show once again that the US is the origin of cyber warfare, the biggest spreader of advanced cyber weapons and the biggest global cyber thief, said Wang after listing cases picked out of a report released by China Cybersecurity Industry Alliance on Tuesday.

The report uncovered cyber attacks, surveillance and secret thefts carried out by US intelligence agencies.  

According to Wang, In 2010, the US was found using the Stuxnet virus to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. This is the first case in history where a government launched cyber attacks against key infrastructure of other countries. In 2013, the media exposed that the US National Institute of Standards and Technology uses its cryptography standards to install backdoors, which expands the targets of supply chain attacks from IT products to IT standards.

Wang also mentioned the "PRISM incident" in 2013, which revealed how the US engaged in cyber espionage across the world, including against China, the US' "Project CAMBERDADA" in 2015  which is aimed to intrude, divide and suppress foreign cybersecurity vendors and force them to dance to the tune of the US, and  the ransomware WannaCry that affected most countries and caused the most severe losses across the world in 2017, which was the result of leaked cyber weapons from the US National Security Agency.

Despite this record of cyber attacks, Wang said the US has been citing digital security as an excuse to suppress Chinese companies without providing any evidence, and it even coerced its allies who were also victims of US espionage to join the gang.

The so-called Clean Network and what the US calls "technology that reflects democratic values and interests" are just a pretext for it to unscrupulously conduct cyber thefts and attacks and ensure its supremacy. The US has been holding other countries to high standards, but clearly these standards mean little to the US itself. This is textbook double standards, Wang noted.

Calling the leak of highly classified Pentagon documents "another PRISM incident," Chinese experts on Tuesday said it gives a rare chance to glimpse into how the US spies on its allies, which will exacerbate the lack of strategic mutual trust between them and deal a heavy blow to Washington's strategy of maintaining global hegemony.