China Accuses US of Doing What it Does

China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) is claiming that the US is doing what it does on a regular basis.

NOTE: This information comes from the South China Morning Post (SCMP). While the newspaper is based in Hong Kong and owned by Chinese basillionaire Alibaba Group, it is still Chinese. The substance of the article has been republished by a number of US media outlets.

The MSS is often described as a cross between the US CIA and FBI so it definitely pushes whatever the Chinese government wants it to push.

They are claiming that the NSA is behind a number of cyberattacks against China’s National Time Center. That, just like the US’s Naval Observatory time service, provides precise timing to all sorts of industries including communications, finance, power and defense.

The MSS said the attacker (which they claim without evidence is the NSA) launched attacks which were long-term, highly covert and used state-level cyberespionage tools. That means any one of dozens of countries could have launched it.

The attacks started, they say in 2022 and continued in 2023 and 2024, apparently undetected. The SCMP says that most of the “US” attacks occurred later at night or early morning Beijing time. I guess that means that it must have been the NSA (not!).

The MSS said they finally detected the hacks after several years and were able, they said, to cut off the attacks.

They also said that “US intelligence agencies” were using a number of springboard servers in Europe, Asia, Africa and countries near China and exploited zero-days.

So far, I have heard nothing that even remotely ties this to the NSA. Doesn’t mean the NSA is not behind it and, to be honest, that is what spies do, so I would not be surprised.

The National Time Center in China said “even the tiniest error could cause a chain reaction of failures at power stations, leading to widespread blackouts.

It is true that atomic time is important for synchronizing things like power transmission, but in the United States power distribution has compensating controls to prevent these failures. Maybe not in China.

They also said, among other things, that if timing was off by even a nanosecond, it would throw off the Chinese satellite navigation system by 11.8 inches and disrupt mobile phone and Internet services.

They continue the hyperbole about how important they are and it is and, to a degree it is accurate.

But they provided zero evidence that the NSA is behind the attacks.

Still, if someone was able to attack either our time service or the Chinese time service, that would not be a good thing.

But it sounds like whoever launched this attack was aiming to be very covert, much like China has been when it has attacked US critical infrastructure.

I guess they don’t like it when the shoe is on the other foot and they are the attackee and not the attacker.

Still, based on what they have released, we have no idea who launched this attack.

But it does point out that everyone’s critical infrastructure is under attack and that should have us concerned.

Source: South China Morning Post

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