Beijing | China on Monday called Trump’s accusations that the giant computer attack targeting the United States could be of Chinese origin, even though his administration blames Russia, as a “farce”.
The US president on Saturday minimized the hacking to which the federal state is the object, sneered at the accusations against Moscow and estimated in a tweet that “it could be China”.
In response, the spokesperson for Chinese diplomacy, Wang Wenbin, did not formally deny the thesis of Beijing’s involvement but qualified the American accusations as “not serious and contradictory”.
“The American accusations against China have always been farce and political ulterior motives,” he told reporters.
“When it comes to cybersecurity, the behavior of the United States is not good and if there is one country in the wrong position to criticize others, it is the United States,” he said.
The estimated extent of the cyberattack continues to expand as more victims are discovered, including beyond the United States.
The attack began in March, with hackers taking advantage of an update to a company-made monitoring software, SolarWinds, used by tens of thousands of businesses and governments around the world.
It continued for months before being discovered by the computer security group FireEye, itself the victim of cyber attacks last week.
Donald Trump’s Foreign Minister, Mike Pompeo, formalized the suspicions of experts pointing the finger at Moscow, before being contradicted by the president.
Russia has denied being involved in the affair.
According to information known at this point, the hackers managed to penetrate internal emails from the US Treasury and Department of Commerce.
The Energy Ministry confirmed Friday to have been affected, while ensuring that the malware had spared its most sensitive missions, including the branch responsible for the security of the nuclear arsenal.