China has for the first time publicly accused three hackers of working for the National Security Agency and offered a reward for information leading to their arrest, echoing tactics the U.S. routinely uses against alleged Chinese cyberspies.
The accusations are an escalation in the ongoing cyber conflict between the two countries, one long feared by U.S. intelligence officers. It comes as President Donald Trump wages a trade war with China, and in the wake of the U.S. accusing China of two of the largest hacking campaigns against American infrastructure in history.
While there is little doubt that the NSA conducts cyber espionage against Chinese targets, China provided little evidence for its claims.
In an emailed statement, White House National Security Council spokesperson Kylie Newbold said: “The Chinese Communist Party needs to stop with these fabrications. If they want to engage in useful conversations they can pick up the phone and call. Instead of engaging productively, China continues unfair trade practices and retaliation to hurt the United States and our workers. The CCP also continues to claim false equivalence to excuse its own bad acts in cyberspace.”
The NSA did not respond to requests for comment, and NBC News was unable to immediately determine if the NSA currently employs people with the names China made public.
The claims were published Tuesday in a report by China’s National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center (CVERC), a Chinese organization that tracks cyber threats to the country; echoed by the country’s primary law enforcement agency, the Ministry of Public Security; and amplified by state media organizations.
The CVERC report largely focuses on claims that the NSA hacked digital infrastructure to spy on the Asian Winter Games, held in February in the Chinese city of Harbin, but include few technical details.
Lin Jian, a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said in a news conference Tuesday: “The nature of these actions is extremely malicious, and China condemns the U.S. government’s malicious cyber activities.”
“We urge the U.S. to adopt a responsible attitude on cybersecurity issues, stop cyberattacks on China, and cease unwarranted smears and attacks against China,” he said.
For more than a decade, the U.S. has indicted accused hackers working for intelligence services in China, as well as in Russia, Iran and North Korea. While it’s extremely unlikely those countries would ever turn over their own officers to the United States, the “name and shame” tactic has served as a means of intimidation to those accused hackers, hoping to disrupt their operations and prevent them from traveling to countries abroad that cooperate with U.S. law enforcement.
Chinese law enforcement also offered an unspecified financial reward for information leading to the arrest of the alleged NSA hackers. The U.S. routinely offers substantial bounties on accused foreign hackers through its Rewards for Justice program.
Tuesday is China’s National Security Education Day, a holiday established in 2015 by China’s leader, Xi Jinping. Dakota Cary, a China analyst at the cybersecurity company SentinelOne, told NBC News that the timing of the accusations indicates they’re less oriented toward curbing U.S. hackers’ behavior — the stated reason for the U.S. employing such tactics — and more toward scoring a propaganda victory.
“They’re celebrating a holiday by putting out this piece. For me this says a lot about what the purpose of the claims are,” Cary said.
