China said Thursday that the Five Eyes alliance is the world's biggest intelligence group and the US National Security Agency (NSA) is the world's largest hacking organization.
The National Security Agency (NSA)'s Utah Data Center located in Bluffdale, just over 20 miles from Salt Lake City is seen at night on November 7, 2019. (File photo: AFP)
Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Mao Ning made the remarks at a routine press briefing in Beijing in response to international media reports that a Chinese hacking group carrired out attacks on critical infrastructure in the US.
"Such a report is extremely unprofessional with a patchwork of pieces and a seriously missing chain of evidence," Mao said. "We have also noticed that the NSA and other US government agencies as well as relevant agencies in the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and other countries have also released similar reports."
Such articles were "obviously a collective disinformation campaign by the US to mobilize the Five Eyes alliance for geopolitical purposes," she said.
Five Eyes is an intelligence alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US.
"As we all know, the Five Eyes alliance is the world's largest intelligence group and the NSA is the world's largest hacker organization," the ministry spokesperson said. "The fact that they teamed up to publish a disinformation report is ironic in itself.
"The involvement of certain company suggested that this is not the first time, nor will it be the last, that the US has branched out beyond government agencies into new channels for spreading disinformation."
A relevant Chinese agency released a report in last September detailing NSA cyberattacks on China's Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi'an, Mao said.
"The US should immediately give an account of its cyberattacks, instead of spreading disinformation to divert its attention," she said, "but no amount of manipulation can change the fact that the US is the empire of hacking."
