China slams US cyber attack report

China yesterday reacted angrily to an independent report by US corporation Northrop Grumman, accusing China of amassing cyber warfare capabilities against the US as "fabrications" and out of ''a Cold War mindset."

"This so-called commission has all along exaggerated the China threat," China's foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said in a statement, which was posted on his ministry's website yesterday.

This is not the first time that China has reacted in such a fashion on reports from the Western media and foreign governments accusing it for conducting cyber warfare.

In the past, Canada, Germany, the UK, the US, France, Spain, the diasporas from Tibet and even its close commercial ally, Australia, have accused China of conducting cyber attacks and hacking, which China has time and again denied despite massive evidence from all these countries of these attacks originating from mainland China.

The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission had contracted US defence aerospace contractor Northrop Grumman Corporation to produce a report on China's cyber warfare capabilities.

In its report, which took two years to prepare, Capability of the People's Republic of China to Conduct Cyber Warfare and Computer Network Exploitation, Notrthrop said that a major element of China's modernisation effort, known as informationisation, is guided by the doctrine of fighting ''Local war under informationised conditions (LWUIC).''