China points cyber finger at US

While we might often hear stories of how the US is being targeted by Chinese hackers, the communist country has now pointed its finger at the US, suggesting most of the attacks against its nation come from the Western one. According to China's defence ministry, last year nearly 150,000 attacks hit its military websites last year, over 60 per cent of which came from the US.

It was only a couple of weeks ago that a Chinese military group known as Unit 61398 was said to be responsible for much of the anti-American hacking attempts over the past couple of years and that it had achieved some measure of autonomy from the Chinese ruling party. However it seems that the digital mud slinging occurs on both sides of the fence and the world, as the US is also said to be prolific in its hacking attacks.

“According to the IP addresses, the websites were, in 2012, hacked on average from overseas 144,000 times a month, of which attacks from the US accounted for 62.9%,” said a Chinese ministry spokesperson (via the Guardian). These stats were announced as part of a news conference which foreign journalists were not allowed to attend – though it was later reported on by Chinese media.

KitGuru Says: It's long been suspected that the US and China were at each other's online throats with a covert “cyber war” ongoing across the online world we all inhabit. Whether it will ever come to anything more than this digital probing remains to be seen.

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