China blamed for hack on EU diplomatic communications

China denies being behind cyber espionage which saw messages intercepted for three years

Private communications between EU diplomats have been monitored by hackers for the past three years, according to security vendor Area 21 which passed more than 1,000 messages to the New York Times.

The messages were classified as "low level": more important communications are transmitted using a separate system.

Area 1 pointed the finger of blame at China, saying the methods used to copy the messages bore the hallmark of elite intelligence service of the Chinese People's Liberation Army. Meanwhile, the NYT reports a former senior intelligence official as saying that the EU had been repeatedly warned that its ageing communications system was highly vulnerable to hacking.

"After burrowing into the European network, called COREU (or Courtesy), the hackers had the run of communications linking the European Union's 28 countries, on topics ranging from trade and tariffs to terrorism to summaries of summit meetings, from the vital to the insignificant," the NYT article says.

The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs dismissed the allegations, describing the report as "suspicious, groundless" and "extremely irresponsible", according to CNN.

"China is itself a victim of cyberspying and cyber attacks, and China is a defender of cybersecurity," the statement added. "China stands firmly against criminal hacking activities, and will pursue criminals it according to laws. If there is any evidence, relative departments will investigate."

Among the 1,100 released messages are exchanges between Chinese premier Xi Jinping and European officials in which he compared the Trump administration's approach to trade as a "no-rules freestyle boxing match" and warned that his country "would not submit to bullying" from the US, "even if a trade war hurt everybody".

In another message, EU officials described Trump's meeting with the Russian president in Helsinki as "successful (at least for Putin)".

The EU says it is investigating the issue. The channel for top-secret messages is in the process of being upgraded, but there is no word about the system that was hacked.

Commenting on the story Zeki Turedi, technology strategist at security firm CrowdStrike, described nation-state hackers and cyber espionage as a "pressing issue" with China particular active in this area.

"Beyond this most recent incident, China is actively engaging in targeted and persistent intrusion attempts against multiple sectors of the economy, including biotech, defence, mining, pharmaceutical, professional services, transportation, and more, as made evident by this news," he said.

"Currently, the Ministry of State Security (MSS) is the primary government agency engaged in the majority of cyber-attacks within Chinese-government nexus, and CrowdStrike has observed multiple intrusions demonstrating sophisticated tradecraft."

Last week China was accused of being behind the massive Marriott International data breach.