Chinese police add three alleged NSA agents to a wanted list over ‘advanced’ attacks.
Police in the northeastern Chinese city of Harbin have accused the National Security Agency (NSA) of the United States of launching “advanced” cyberattacks during the Asian Winter Games in February, targeting essential industries.
They added three alleged NSA agents to a wanted list while also accusing the University of California and the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University of being involved in the attacks after carrying out investigations, according to a report by state news agency Xinhua on Tuesday.
It did not specify how the two US universities were involved.
However, the report contained considerable details on the cyberattacks and the suspected individuals.
It comes as the world’s two largest economies delve deeper into a trade war that has already spurred travel warnings for Chinese tourists going to the US and halted imports of US films into China.
The US NSA launched cyberattacks “against important industries such as energy, transportation, water conservancy, communications, and national defence research institutions in Heilongjiang province”, the report said, citing the Harbin city public security bureau.
The US Embassy in China did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.
The attacks had “the intention of sabotaging China’s critical information infrastructure, causing social disorder, and stealing important confidential information”, it added.
Xinhua said the NSA operations took place during the Winter Games and were “suspected of activating specific pre-installed backdoors” in Microsoft Windows operating systems on specific devices in Heilongjiang.
Three named individuals “repeatedly carried out cyber attacks on China’s critical information infrastructure and participated in cyber attacks on Huawei and other enterprises”, it added.
The US routinely accuses Chinese state-backed hackers of launching attacks against its critical infrastructure and government bodies.
Last month, Washington announced indictments against many alleged Chinese hackers who targeted the US Defense Intelligence Agency, the US Department of Commerce, as well as the foreign ministries of Taiwan, South Korea, India, and Indonesia.
Beijing denies any involvement in overseas cyber-espionage.
After years of being accused by Western governments of cyberattacks and industrial espionage, several Chinese organisations and government organs have accused the US and its allies of similar behaviour in the past two years.
In December, China said it found and dealt with two US cyberattacks on Chinese tech firms to “steal trade secrets” since May 2023, but did not name the agency involved.