A US congressional advisory panel has claimed that the Chinese government is escalating its cyberspying operations against the US, the WSJ reports.
The panel cites an orchestrated campaign against one US company, the identity of which was not revealed, that it says appears to have been sponsored by Beijing.
The unnamed company was just one of several successfully penetrated by a campaign of cyber-espionage, according to the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission report, which is due to be released today.
“Chinese espionage operations are straining the US capacity to respond,” the WSJ quotes the report as stating. Defense giant Northrop Gruman was commissioned to write the report. China is among around 100 countries that have the capability to conduct sophisticated cyberspying operations.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington dismissed the report as unfounded and “a product of Cold War mentality.”
The report highlights several departments of China's People's Liberation Army as responsible for components of cyberspying.
Meanwhile, a classified UK government travel briefing obtained by Wikileaks, said Chinese intelligence activity had become “widespread” with a “voracious appetite for all kinds of information; political, military, commercial, scientific and technical.”
It claims that the spying is conducted at all levels and via bugged hotel rooms and a “mass of ordinary students, businessmen and locally employed staff who are working on the orders of various parts of the State intelligence gathering apparatus.”