Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin Photo: mfa.gov.cn

China's Foreign Ministry on Wednesday said that the US is the world's largest hacking empire and cybercriminal, while urging the US side to expeditiously respond to attacks targeting China rather than spreading false information. 

Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin made the remarks when commenting on some Western media reports that US officials had found a China-based hacker group using the Microsoft cloud computing loopholes to attack the unclassified email accounts while the US side alerted Microsoft. 

Wang said that the US National Security Agency (NSA) or the US Cyber Commend - the world's biggest hacking organization - has previously disseminated such false and fake information, while the US chose the National Security Council to disclose relevant information this time. 

No matter what US agencies are out disclosing such information, it can't change the fact that the US is the world's largest hacking empire and the cybercriminal, Wang said.

Microsoft said in a blog post on Tuesday that the company has mitigated an attack by a China-based threat actor Microsoft tracks as Storm-0558 which targeted customer emails. Storm-0558 primarily targets government agencies in Western Europe and focuses on espionage, data theft and credential access.

Adam Hodge, a spokesman for the White House's National Security Council, said no classified networks had been affected, the New York Times reported, adding that an assessment of how much information was taken is continuing.

Hodge said that the vulnerability that the hackers exploited appeared to be in Microsoft's cloud security and was first detected by the US government, which immediately notified the company, according to the New York Times report. 

Wang noted that the cybersecurity agencies of China and other countries have successively issued reports exposing the cyberattacks on China by the US government over a long period of time, but the US side has not responded so far. Wang said that the US should expeditiously give an account of the cyberattacks in question, instead of spreading false information to divert attention.

In September 2022, China released investigation reports to disclose details of cyber attacks on a Chinese university launched by the NSA, as 41 types of cyber weapons were used by the NSA-affiliated Tailored Access Operations Office in the cyber attacks against China's Northwestern Polytechnical University in 2022, according to the Xinhua News Agency. 


Global Times