China calls U.S. hacking accusations ‘irresponsible and unscientific’

 BEIJING June 5 2015 (Agency) : China dismissed American computer hacking allegations on Friday as “irresponsible and unscientific” after Washington accused Beijing of stealing personnel data on millions of federal employees.On Thursday, U.S. officials said hackers working for the Chinese state had breached the computer system of the Office of Personnel Management in December, potentially compromising the data of about 4 million current and former federal employees.Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said Beijing wanted to cooperate with other nations to build a peaceful and secure cyberspace.“We wish the United States would not be full of suspicions, catching wind and shadows, but rather have a larger measure of trust and cooperation,” he told a regular news briefing,Beijing routinely rejects any allegation of official involvement in cyber attacks on foreign targets, and routinely notes that China is itself the target of hacking attacks.“We know that cyber hacking attacks are anonymous and transnational, and it is hard to track the source,” Hong said. “It’s irresponsible and



unscientific to make groundless accusations without deep investigation and research.”The hack was the largest breach of federal employee data in recent years, and the second major intrusion of the same agency blamed on China in less than a year.China’s military is believed to have made cyber warfare capabilities a priority more than a decade ago. In May 2014, the U.S. Justice Department indicted five Chinese People’s Liberation Army officers for hacking into U.S. companies’ computers to steal trade secrets, and the issue has become a major irritant in the two nations’ relationship.In a commentary, the state news agency Xinhua said the latest allegations were still “waiting to be supported by proof,” and were just another case of “Washington’s habitual slander against Beijing on cyber security.”Revelations by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden had shown the U.S. government has “long been engaged in large-scale, organized cyber theft, wiretapping and supervision of political figures, enterprises and individuals of other countries, including China,” the essay continued.