U.S. officials have pointed their waggling fingers at China recently over increased amounts of "cyber-espionage," but on Thursday China waved a finger right back.
Contrary to what Congress reported last November, it's actually China that's been under cyber attack from the U.S., not the other way around.
China's Ministry of National Defense said in a statement that 63 percent of the 144,000 cyber-attacks per month that it recorded last year came from U.S. IP addresses.
Who's attacking whom?
Congress's U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission found in November that China's intelligence agencies and hackers were the greatest threats to the U.S.'s cyber security.
They're not just targeting the President's Facebook page, either - U.S. officials added that China's persistent and ever-more-advanced attacks on the U.S. are a growing risk to the military as well.
That includes U.S. satellites, weapons targeting systems, and navigation computers, an unnamed U.S. official told Bloomberg at the time.
That situation hasn't changed - if anything, it's gotten worse, according to a report from earlier this month.
China's "massive, sustained cyber-espionage campaign" against the U.S. includes everything from Chinese moles working at U.S. corporations to attacks against The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, according to the report.
Reuters even implicated China in the recent attacks on Mac computers that affected Apple itself.
Can't we all just get along?
Naturally, China has continually denied involvement in any of these instances of cyber-attacks.
CNET reported Thursday that China's main defense has been that IP addresses can be hijacked and aren't proof of anything - while at the same time citing IP addresses as the main evidence that the U.S. is attacking China's cyberspace.
No doubt U.S. officials have something to say about China's accusations, though officials didn't immediately respond to TechRadar's request for comment.
In the meantime, it's probably wise to remember that there are at least two sides to every story.
Via CNET
