China denies role in hack of Japanese defense contractor

20.09.2011
A Chinese government official today denied any involvement in the attack that compromised scores of servers belonging to Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Japan's largest defense contractor.

According to press reports, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei dismissed suggestions that the attacks against Mitsubishi originated in China.

"The Chinese government has consistently opposed hacking attack activities. Relevant laws strictly prohibit this," Hong told reporters for , the , and other outlets, during a regular press briefing Tuesday.

"Criticism that China initiated a cyberattack is not only groundless, it goes against development of international cooperation on cybersecurity," Hong said.

Hong's comments are nearly identical to those trotted out by the Chinese government whenever security experts speculate that attacks originate from the country.

The evidence of links to Chinese hackers are admittedly tenuous, relying on past accusations by others -- going back to the Aurora attacks that targeted Google and dozens of other Western corporations in late 2009 and early 2010 -- a proven history of hacking activity, and claims that Chinese-language scripts have been found in some of the malware that infected Mitsubishi's servers and PCs.