A top Chinese official claims to have ‘mountains of data' showing evidence of hacking originating from the US.
Huang Chengqing, director of the National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team/Coordination Center of China (CNCERT), made the comments ahead of President Barack Obama's meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in California on Thursday.
The two leaders are set to discuss cyber espionage and Obama will tell Xi he believes Beijing needs to be held accountable for any hacking that originates from Chinese soil.
However, Huang said that cyber espionage goes both ways between China and the US, although he avoided directly accusing the US government of computer hacking.
"We have mountains of data, if we wanted to accuse the US, but it's not helpful in solving the problem," Huang told a government-run Chinese newspaper.
"They advocated cases that they never let us know about," he continued, before calling for more co-operation.
"Some cases can be addressed if they had talked to us, why not let us know? It is not a constructive train of thought to solve problems."
Last week, it was revealed that Chinese hackers had gained access to secret US government files about advanced weapons systems.
Huang didn't deny the cyber attack had occurred, but suggested that if the American government wanted to keep the information secure, it shouldn't have been connected to the internet in the first place.
"Even following the general principle of secret-keeping, it should not have been linked to the internet," Huang said.
Speaking in a recent interview, News International CISO Amar Singh told Computing that every nation in the world is engaging in cyber attacks of some sort.
