In response to the claims made by the US security firm CrowdStrike, blaming unnamed Chinese officials linked to a group of hackers codenamed Deep Panda for the breach of documents of Iraq experts on US think-tanks, China has denied any links to such hacking groups.
China said that the country’s laws prohibit cyber crimes and the government has done all it could to ward off such activities.
On Monday this week, CrowdStrike wrote in a blog post that documents containing information about the foreign policy of US were hacked by a group of hackers using sophisticated techniques and linked the alleged group Deep Panda to unnamed Chinese officials. The security firm also claimed that China to be behind the hacking as it has significant oil interests in Iraq.
CrowdStrike revealed that Deep Panda has been targeting US security documents for almost three years from now, to which China has replied that CrowdStrike is using this opportunity to advertise itself.
CrowdStrike claimed that Deep Panda, which so far has been targeting documents containing Asian affairs, is now extracting documents concerned with the country’s policies towards Iraq after the militant Islamic insurgency resulted in an attack on an oil refinery in Iraq.
Dmitri Alperovitch, Co-founder of CrowdStrike said that Chinese officials have chosen to respond neutrally to the allegations. He added that it is no longer an act of war but an act of denial for China and that it becomes clear now as no sufficient proof to it exists.
Geng Shuang, press counsellor for China’s embassy in Washington said that CrowdStrike’s blog post accusing China seems like an ad for the security firm and that he surmises that it helped its business.