China's military successfully hacked into the Pentagon's computer network, raising fears it could disrupt the US defence department's systems, the Financial Times reported Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The Chinese military's cyber attack was carried out in June following months of efforts, the London-based newspaper said, citing unnamed current and former US officials.<\/p>\n
While the Pentagon declined to say who was behind the hacking, which led to the shutdown of a computer system serving the office of Defence Secretary Robert Gates, officials told the paper it was China's People's Liberation Army.<\/p>\n
"The PLA has demonstrated the ability to conduct attacks that disable our system," the paper quoted a former US official as saying.<\/p>\n
One senior US official reportedly said the Pentagon had pinpointed the exact origin of the attack.<\/p>\n
The paper quoted another person familiar with the event as saying there was a "very high level of confidence… trending towards total certainty" that the PLA was responsible.<\/p>\n
The paper said both the US and Chinese militaries were widely assumed to conduct computer espionage on each other.<\/p>\n
"But US officials said the penetration in June raised concerns to a new level because of fears that China had shown it could disrupt systems at critical times," the Financial Times reported.<\/p>\n
A spokesman for the Chinese defence ministry declined to comment on the report when contacted by AFP on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
China's foreign ministry also declined to comment immediately, asking for questions to be faxed through.<\/p>\n
Reports of China hacking into German government systems were also raised last week between Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel.<\/p>\n
German weekly Der Spiegel reported that espionage programmes traced to the PLA had been detected in computer systems at Merkel's office, the foreign ministry and other government agencies in Berlin.<\/p>\n
"We in the government took (the reports) as a matter of grave concern," Wen said after meeting Merkel.<\/p>\n