China hijacks 15 pc of world Internet traffic

Washington, Nov 17: Nearly 15 percent of the world's Internet traffic, including data from the US Department of Defense, the office of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and other government and commercial websites, was briefly redirected through networks in China in April, 2010.

According to a US-China Economic and Security Review Commission report obtained by Fox News, the redirection could have enabled malicious activities and potentially caused an unintended diversion of data from many US government, military and commercial websites.

The 316-page report to Congress will be released in Washington on Wednesday, Nov 17.

The report states that 'China Telecom' had hijacked massive volumes of Internet traffic during the 18-minute incident on April 18, 2010.

"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 highlights 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