China denies hijacking internet traffic

China has been accused of hijacking a massive amount of net traffic during April 2009.

It has denied the allegations that traffic was redirected to Chinese servers for 18 minutes, as was presented in a report to the US Congress. An official statement by China Telecom stated the denial of any hijack of internet traffic, however the Chinese government have so far declined to comment.

The report, which was prepared by the US-China Economic and Security review commission, said that traffic destined for websites of the US senate had been among traffic rerouted for 18 minutes to Chinese servers.

Chinese ISP, IDC China Telecommunication, had started the rerouting which was subsequently picked up by China Telecom, a government owned ISP. The report state that there is no evidence to suggest whether or not the rerouting was intentional but researchers of computer security have said that severe malicious activities could be enabled by this activity.

The threat of cyber attacks has been at the top of global agendas in recent months and US Defence Secretary
Robert Gates has urged US military and civilian agents to join together to fight the threat of cyber attacks.

The news has also spread to the UK where MPs are becoming increasingly worried about a potential threat.