China puts US on notice over CIA's 'trans-border covert operations'

By Riyaz ul Khaliq

ISTANBUL (AA) – China on Thursday sought answers from the US over its alleged use of “cyber weapons to carry out espionage” globally.

Beijing also accused the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of “directing color revolutions” by gathering intelligence from foreign governments.

Citing a report on the US intelligence agency, Mao Ning, spokeswoman for China’s Foreign Ministry, said: “Over the years, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has gathered intelligence information from foreign governments, enterprises, and citizens, organized, carried out, directed and supervised trans-boundary covert actions, and secretly conducted ‘Peaceful Evolution’ and ‘Color Revolution’ around the world.”

Mao was referring to the joint report released by China’s National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center and Chinese cybersecurity company Qihoo 360 Technology Co. Ltd.

The report alleges cyberattacks against other countries by the CIA and “the consequences it led.”

“The international community needs to stay on high alert against these moves,” she added.

“The large number of real cases in China and other countries disclosed by the report once again testifies to CIA’s cyber-attack activities around the world over the years,” said the spokeswoman, urging Washington to “take seriously and respond to the concerns from the international community.”

Washington must “stop using cyber weapons to carry out espionage and cyber-attacks around the world,” Mao added.

According to Chinese state broadcaster CGTN, the joint report “unveils that the CIA took advantage of a zero-day vulnerability, including a number of backdoors and vulnerabilities that haven't been disclosed to the public.”

“This was done to set up ‘zombie’ networks to initiate springboard attacks by stages, targeting web servers, terminals, routers, as well as industrial control devices. The zero-day vulnerability is software loopholes that are discovered by attackers before the vendor has become aware of them,” it added.

Back in 2020, Qihoo 360 discovered an unknown cyberattack organization “which carried out a slew of cyberattacks toward China and other countries by utilizing cyber tools related to CIA.”

“Such cyberattacks can be traced back to the year 2011, and continue to this day. The targets of such espionage actions expand to fields such as countries' key information infrastructure, the aerospace sector, scientific research institutes, petroleum industry, tech companies as well as government agencies,” said the report.