China on Tuesday rejected a report that hackers controlled by its military had successfully entered a Pentagon network, calling the claim a product of "Cold War" thinking.
The Financial Times, citing former and serving US officials, said Chinese People's Liberation Army hackers broke into a US Defence Department network in June, taking data and prompting the shutdown of a system serving department secretary Robert Gates.
The report came a week after German Chancellor Angela Merkel raised similar claims that Chinese hackers had infected German government ministries with spying programmes. China deflected the German reports, and now it has flatly rejected the US claims, as well as denying reports that Chinese-made weapons have been used by Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.
"The Chinese government has consistently opposed and vigorously attacked according to the law all Internet-wrecking crimes, including hacking," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said. "Some people are making wild accusations against China ... They are totally groundless and also reflect a Cold War mentality." Beijing has devoted a large part of its rising defence budget to developing more advanced technology, including computer capabilities. But Jiang said her government was also the victim of computer attacks.
The Financial Times cited one source familiar with the event as saying there was a "very high level of confidence ... trending towards total certainty" that the army was behind it.
It said hackers from various locations in China had spent several months trying to tap into the system before breaching its cyber defences, forcing the Pentagon to shut down its network for more than a week. The FT quoted a former US official as saying the PLA was now able to disrupt and even disable the Pentagon's computer system.
"The PLA has demonstrated the ability to conduct attacks that disable our system ... and the ability in a conflict situation to re-enter and disrupt on a very large scale," the former official told the newspaper.
The Financial Times reported that the Pentagon was investigating what data had been taken, and a source told the paper that most of it was probably unclassified. Spokeswoman Jiang also rejected a BBC report that Chinese-made weapons have been used by Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. London has complained to Beijing that the weapons were used in Taliban attacks on British and US troops, the BBC reported, citing British officials.