US made intensive hacking attacks on China: Edward Snowden

Edward Snowden, a former CIA contractor who leaked the controversial US spy programme, has made fresh claims about the country's hacking attacks against China, which today termed the US as the "biggest villain" in cyber espionage.

In his latest claims to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post, Snowden has said that the US government is hacking Chinese mobile phone companies to steal millions of text messages.

Snowden's claims came amid reports that he had left Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China, and was reportedly bound for Moscow and onwards to a third destination.

Text messaging is the most preferred communication tool in mainland China, used widely by ordinary people and government officials from formal work exchanges to small chats.

Government data show that the Chinese exchanged almost 900 billion text messages in 2012, up 2.1 per cent from the previous year.

Snowden also claimed to the paper that the Tsinghua University, widely regarded as China's top education and research institute, was the target of extensive hacking by the US spies this year.

It is not known how many times the Tsinghua University, which carries out a number of China's research programmes, has been attacked by the US National Security Agency (NSA) but details shown to the Post by Snowden revealed that one of the most recent breaches was as early as in January this year.

The information also showed that the attacks on Tsinghua University were intensive and concerted efforts.

In one single day of January, at least 63 computers and servers in Tsinghua University have been hacked by the NSA, the report said.

30-year-old Snowden, who was accused by some of the US officials as a possible Chinese spy, said the information he shared on the Tsinghua University attacks provided evidence of NSA hacking because the specific details of external and internal internet protocol addresses could only have been obtained by hacking or with physical access to the computers.

Reacting to the revelations made by Snowden, China today termed the US as the world's "biggest villain" for IT espionage.

"These, along with previous allegations, are clearly troubling signs. They demonstrate that the United States, which has long been trying to play innocent as a victim of cyber attacks, has turned out to be the biggest villain in our age," the state-run Xinhua news agency said in commentary.