Is the NSA hacking China?

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has released information that shows that China is not the only one hacking. The former Booz Allen Hamilton employee and contractor to the US National Security Agency (NSA) told Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post newspaper that NSA has been hacking Hong Kong and mainland China as well.

Since 2009, there have been several hundred attacks. The newspaper estimates that there have been as many as 61,000 hacker attacks carried out worldwide. According to Snowden, the NSA mainly hacks large network nodes to access the communication of several thousand computers at a time, rather than attacking each one individually. The whistleblower has stated that the NSA have focused mainly on universities, government officials, companies and students.

General Keith B. Alexander, the head of the NSA, defended the NSA's data collection practices; the newspaper quoted him as saying that "dozens" of terrorism threats had been halted by the agency’s evaluation of telephone logs. Senator Dianne Feinstein noted that the data is destroyed after five years and is only examined if a connection with Al Qaeda or Iran is suspected. Apparently, no phone call can be examined without a warrant.

The two countries entered into a public ping pong of accusations, with the US Secretary of Defense and the US Secretary of State exerting public pressure on the Chinese government to admit to and stop the attacks, and the Chinese government defending itself against the accusations, pointing out that it had also been the victim of hacker attacks – probably originating in the US.