Foreign ministry rejects accusation govt hacked Apple iCloud  

中方回应黑客攻击苹果公司云存储

The Chinese government has denied accusations from Web monitoring site greatfire.org, which claimed that Chinese authorities have hacked into Apple's iCloud system and stolen the private information of Chinese users.

Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for China's foreign ministry, said Tuesday she has no information of the report and that "wild guesses and malicious blemishes" will not help solve cyber issues.

"China is resolutely opposed to hacker attacks in all forms and China itself is a major victim of cyber attacks," Hua said.

Greatfire published a blog post on Monday, saying that the Chinese authorities have been using a method called a "man-in-the-middle" attack, which means hackers interposed their own applications between users and Apple's iCloud servers in order to intercept users' data.

Greatfire suggested that the iCloud hack is "the Chinese authorities' latest cyber attack following previous attacks on Google, Yahoo and Microsoft."

"This is clearly a malicious attack on Apple in an effort to gain access to usernames and passwords and consequently all data stored on iCloud such as iMessages, photos, contacts, etc," it noted.

Qin An, a cyber security expert at the China Institute for Innovation and Development Strategy, told the Global Times that the accusation was "nonsense."

"These kinds of accusations have appeared too much. I do not think this is possible. The accusation is just like the story of the boy who cried wolf, " he said.

He explained that the accusation was deliberately used to defame China.

The news came a few weeks after Apple decided to begin storing iCloud data for Chinese users on China Telecom servers.

Greatfire also pointed the finger at China's Internet providers, including China Telecom, for knowing about the attack.

A China Telecom spokesman, however, said the accusation was untrue and unfounded, Reuters reported.