China says it has foiled a series U.S. cyberattacks on its critical infrastructure — Ministry of State Security says it has 'irrefutable evidence' NSA tried to cause 'international time chaos'

China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) has taken to social media to boast about foiling a series of cyberattacks it says were directed by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) (machine translation). Moreover, the MSS claims to have “irrefutable evidence” to back up its allegations.

According to the MSS WeChat post, the target of the NSA’s sustained series of attacks, dating back to 2022, was China’s National Time Service Center (NTSC).

A casual observer might wonder why a U.S. agency would be interested in causing “international time chaos” by hacking a center that is responsible for the safe and stable operation of Beijing time. But there are many important communications, infrastructure services, and others that rely on high-precision timing services.

The WeChat post from the MSS claims a diverse set of industries, including national communications, finance, electric power, transportation, surveying and mapping, national defense, and other industries, could be thrown into chaos due to NTSC disruption. Not only that, but it goes on to assert that actual harm and losses could occur due to malfunctions like transportation paralysis, aerospace launch failures, and others, caused by computer hacking.

42 cyber weapons

The central allegation made by China’s MSS was that the NSA used 42 different cyber weapons between 2022 and 2024 in order to disrupt the NTSC.

Specific tactics of the U.S. hackers supposedly included:

• Using SMS vulnerabilities to hack and control many of the ‘foreign’ smartphones used by NTSC staffers
• Using stolen logins to infiltrate the NTSC computer systems
• Deploying a new cyber warfare platform on the NTSC computers
• Using “42 special cyberattack weapons”
• Attacking NTSC network capabilities
• Attempting to disrupt China’s high-precision time systems

U.S. ally “springboards”

Elsewhere in the lengthy MSS post, we see it alleged that the U.S. craftily launched most of its attacks “from late night to early morning Beijing time.” The NSA would also use VPNs and countries like “the Philippines, Japan, and Taiwan,” as well as places in Europe, as attack “springboards,” the post claims.

To conclude, the MSS laments China’s reputation for being a cyber-threat, while “the United States has pushed cyber hegemony and repeatedly trampled on international cyberspace rules.” However, the “ironclad facts” that “prove that the United States is the real ‘Matrix’ and the biggest source of chaos in cyberspace” were not shared. The two are no strangers to reports of cyber warfare. Earlier this year, Chinese hackers allegedly infiltrated the US Treasury Secretary's PC.

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