China hackers attain sensitive US spy data

US officials have identified China as the source of major cyber attacks on Google and Microsoft with the aim of gaining access to Washington’s sensitive database, a report says.

Chinese hackers have managed to obtain years’ worth of information about US surveillance targets, the Washington Post quoted current and former US officials on Monday.

The hackers obtained the information after breaching Google’s servers several years ago, with the aim of finding the identity of Chinese operatives in the US, who were under surveillance by American law enforcement agencies.

“Knowing that you were subjects of an investigation allows them to take steps to destroy information, get people out of the country,” said an unidentified former US official, while referring to the implications of leaked data.

This came as Microsoft said last month that Chinese hackers had tried to compromise the company’s servers in an attempt to identify accounts under investigation by US national security agencies.

“You have two choices: If you want to find out if your agents, if you will, have been discovered, you can try to break into the FBI to find out that way. Presumably, that’s difficult. Or you can break into the people that the courts have served paper on and see if you can find it that way. That’s essentially what we think they were trolling for, at least in our case,” said David Aucsmith, the senior director of Microsoft’s Institute for Advanced Technology in Governments.

Washington and Beijing have been exchanging allegations of sponsoring major cyber attacks for the past few months, with each accusing the other of hacking into sensitive governmental and industrial websites.

The Chinese are witness to the “greatest transfer of wealth in history” regarding stolen data from companies in sectors including defense, technology, aerospace, and oil and gas, according to government, academic and industry analysts.

Meanwhile, the US has been involved in one of the most notorious cybercrimes regarding the Stuxnet – a computer worm that attacked an Iranian nuclear facility.