China has accused the United States of stealing secrets and cyberattacking the country's National Time Service Center. Serious breaches could have damaged communication networks, financial systems, power supplies, and international standard time, UNN reports, citing Reuters.
Details
The U.S. National Security Agency has long been conducting a cyberattack operation against the National Time Service Center, China's Ministry of State Security said in a WeChat statement on Sunday.
The ministry said it found evidence tracing stolen data and credentials back to 2022, which were used to spy on mobile devices and network systems of personnel at the center.
The U.S. intelligence agency "exploited a vulnerability" in a foreign brand's smartphone messaging service to access employees' devices in 2022, the ministry said, without naming the brand.
The National Time Center is a research institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences that generates, maintains, and broadcasts China's standard time.
The ministry's investigation also found that the United States carried out attacks on the center's internal network systems and attempted to attack a high-precision ground synchronization system in 2023 and 2024.
China and the U.S. have increasingly exchanged accusations of cyberattacks over the past few years, portraying each other as their primary cyber threat.
The latest accusations come amid renewed trade tensions over China's expanded export controls on rare earth elements and U.S. threats to further raise tariffs on Chinese goods.
Addition
Google cybersecurity experts have uncovered a large-scale cyberattack campaign carried out by the Russian hacking group Clop, which resulted in the theft of data from dozens of international organizations.
The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is investigating a large-scale cyberattack on American law firms, which is suspected to have been organized by Chinese hackers.