Surveillance Empire: Cyber threat to the world. Graphic:GT

The Ministry of State Security (MSS) released a bilingual report on Tuesday urging the US to stop slandering and cyberattacking China.

Recently, the US government conspired with the UK to slander China by saying that they are facing cyberattacks from groups of cyberintruders "affiliated to the Chinese government" and put in place unilateral and unreasonable sanctions against China.

According to US media outlets, US and British officials on March 26 filed charges, imposed sanctions, and accused China of a sweeping cyberespionage campaign that allegedly "hit millions of people including lawmakers, academics and journalists, and companies including defense contractors." Authorities on both sides nicknamed the hacking group Advanced Persistent Threat 31 or "APT31," calling it an arm of China's Ministry of State Security.

In response, the MSS released a report in both Chinese and English on Tuesday, saying that it is the West who has acted dishonestly, driven by a guilty conscience, poses as a judge to distort facts and urging relevant parties to stop immediately or face measures designed to defend China's legitimate rights and interests.

The US is the main power behind the Five Eyes Alliance, the biggest intelligence organization in the world, which is well known for making up and spreading disinformation from "Chinese cyberintruders," the ministry issued a statement on Tuesday. "What they are attempting at is the politicization of cybersecurity and infringement of the legal rights of China. We hereby express our strong protest and firm opposition. We further urge relevant parties to stop immediately and will take necessary measures to defend our legitimate rights and interests."

Experts believe that the West's such accusations reflect the formation of a societal consensus, led by Anglo-Saxon groups, of being anti-China and unfriendly toward China. These accusations are also seen as an inappropriate act of using their media resources in an extremely aggressive manner to spread negative information internationally, tarnishing and defaming China's image. This is a significant component of their information warfare, cognitive warfare, and political warfare against China, Li Haidong, a professor at the China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

The US has been the biggest source of cyberattacks and biggest threat to the security of global cyberspace over recent history, the MSS revealed. Countless cases of cyberattacks and espionage activities exposed by the global media in recent years have shown that those attacks, mainly conducted by the US and the UK, are characterized by a clear division of labor, advanced technology and rigorous organization.

For example, PRISM and the Upstream Project were designed for collection of network data; Skynet and Shotgiant, for wiretapping; Operation Olympic Games, for the infiltration of infrastructure; Auroragold and CamberDada, for continued access to targets.

The US has been behind attack systems such as Turbulence, attack platforms such as FoxAcid, Hive and Bvp47, and attack weapons such as Validator and United Rake, among other Trojan viruses and backdoor malware.

At the same time, the US and the UK are accelerating their militarization of networks by engaging in frequent cyber military operations and further substantiating their "preemptive" and "cyber deterrence" strategy, posing a severe threat to the global cybersecurity, the ministry said.

American and British governments are carrying out cyberattacks almost as a matter of common practice, and on the other hand, they are playing deaf and dumb to the condemnation of the global community. On occasions, driven by geopolitical considerations, they even pretend to be a neutral arbiter on these issues, while also spreading disinformation regarding the "threat of cyberintruders from China," who, in fact, is the biggest victim of the global cyberattacks.

According to recent reports from the National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team/Coordination Center of China, among all the attacks China has received from overseas, those originating from the US top the list.

In April, 2022, Northwestern Polytechnical University suffered a cyberattack from overseas. The NAS Office of Tailored Access Operation (TAO) had deployed over 40 cyber arsenals, carried out over 10, 000 extended and persistent malicious attacks against targets in Chinese territory and stole massive amounts of high value data.

According to the data of the ministry, in the first quarter of 2024, more than 2,000 cyberattacks were launched from the continental US and its military bases overseas against many countries, targeting China, focusing on a large number of Communist Party of China and government organs, critical information infrastructures, as well as important institutions of artificial intelligence, chip R&D, clean energy, advanced manufacturing and software development.

As part of their attempts to bolster their national strategy of development, consolidate their hegemony in cyberspace, and contain China's development, the US and British governments have been blatantly engaged in malicious cyberattacks on China which includes stealing data. These actions gravely jeopardize China's sovereignty, security and development interests.

China is committed to the constructive cooperation with the international community in its efforts to protect the peace in cyberspace on the basis of equality, mutual respect and mutual benefit, to its respect for sovereignty and fight against hegemony in cyberspace, and to the construction of a shared future of peace, security, cooperation and order in cyberspace, the ministry said.

The bilingual response from the MSS this time is not only to let the Chinese public understand the truth that the US and UK have fabricated lies, but more importantly, to make the international community, including the people within the US and UK, realize the dark psychology and despicable behavior of the US and UK in doing so, experts pointed out. "This allows people from various countries to better understand the radical, distorted, and slanderous nature of the US and UK's policy toward China regardless of the bottom line," Li said.