China Denies It Hijacked Internet Traffic !!!

November 18, 2010 by Nataly in Technology

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According to a report to the US Congress, China hijacked 15% of the world’s internet traffic, including confidential emails from Nasa, the U.S. Senate, military and the office of the Secretary of Defense.

China Telecom rerouted traffic from government, military and other web sites through servers in China for about 18 minutes on April 8, 2010, U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission said in the report published on Wednesday.

Computer security researchers can’t say whether the act was intentional, but such hijacking of the traffic could enable the surveillance of specific users or sites, or perhaps it could have been used to conceal one targeted cyberattack.

According to the report, the incident affected U.S. government and military networks, including those belonging to the Navy, Army, Air Force and Marine Corps, the Department of Commerce, the Secretary of Defense, the U.S. Senate and NASA. Web sites, including those belonging to Dell, Microsoft and Yahoo, were also affected.

Vice-chairman of the commission, Carolyn Bartholomew said Chinese efforts to penetrate US networks are becoming more sophisticated, adding: “The massive scale and the extensive intelligence and reconnaissance components of recent high profile, China-based computer exploitations suggest that there continues to be some level of state support for these activities.”

China denied US allegations that earlier this year it hijacked global traffic, including emails from US military web sites.