China Telecom denies 'hijacking' of 15 percent of world Internet traffic

Beijing, Nov 19(ANI): China Telecom, a major wireless service provider in China, has denied allegations that its servers had "hijacked" nearly 15 percent of the world's Internet traffic, including data from the US Department of Defense and other government and commercial websites, in April.

"China Telecom has never done such an act. These reports by foreign media are completely groundless," Xinhua new agency quoted Wang Yongzhen, a senior official with the company, as saying.

He added that his company has always abided by and strictly followed relevant international regulations and standards for Internet operations.

Earlier, a US-China Economic and Security Review Commission report had said that China Telecom had hijacked massive volumes of Internet traffic during the 18-minute incident on April 18.

The report had said that the redirection could have enabled malicious activities and potentially caused an unintended diversion of data from many US government, military and commercial websites.

"Although the Commission has no way to determine what, if anything, Chinese telecommunications firms did to the hijacked data, incidents of this nature could have a number of serious implications," the report said.

"This level of access could enable surveillance of specific users or sites," it added.

Citing a separate cyber-attack against Google's operations in China earlier this year, the report also highlighted China's history of "malicious computer activities".

"Any attempt to do this would likely be counter to the interests of the United States and other countries," the report said.

"At the very least, these incidents demonstrate the inherent vulnerabilities in the Internet's architecture that can affect all Internet users and beneficiaries at home and abroad," it added. (ANI)