China has refuted allegations made the by US that
members of its military hacked into a Pentagon computer
network.
In June,
a hacker infiltrated one of the Pentagon's e-mail servers,
which caused security staff to take up to 1,500 accounts offline to
deal with the problem.
At the time, a spokesman for the Pentagon said the attack could
have originated from a variety of sources including casual hackers,
cyber vigilantes and ideological groups or possibly nation
states.
But the Financial Times quoted US officials close to the matter
as saying the Chinese army made the attack, which crashed part of a
system for the defence secretary's office.
A member of China's foreign ministry, Jiang Yu, said Beijing
"opposed and vigorously attacked" all attacks on the internet
including hacking.
"Some people are making wild accusations against China ... These
are totally groundless and also reflect a Cold War mentality," she
said.
Earlier this year
Gary McKinnon was found guilty of causing £475,000 worth of damage
to computers by hacking into computer systems belonging to the
Pentagon, Nasa and the US military from his home in North
London.