[August 05, 2011] People's Daily rips cyberattack charges Tweet (UPI International Top News Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) China's official newspaper, the People's Daily, denounced reports that China was behind cyberattacks of government and corporate systems. Computer system security giant McAfee said it discovered a years-long campaign of cyberattacks on the networks of governments, organizations and businesses, mainly in the United States. It said a "state actor" was behind the attacks but did not name China explicitly. Several security experts, however, said China was behind the breaches. The People's Daily took exception, The Daily Telegraph reported Friday. "Linking China to Internet hacking attacks is irresponsible," the People's Daily said. "The McAfee report claims that a 'state actor' engaged in hacking for a large-scale Internet espionage operation but its analysis clearly does not stand up to scrutiny." Dmitri Alperovitch, a cybersecurity expert and vice president of threat research for software firm McAfee, told China's state-run news agency Xinhua he and his team "don't have direct evidence that conclusively points to a particular nation state" behind the scheme. The attacks were discovered in March when McAfee researchers found logs of the attacks on a server under review as part of another investigation. The earliest intrusions found date back to mid-2006. Copyright 2011 United Press International, Inc. (UPI). Any reproduction, republication, redistribution and/or modification of any UPI content is expressly prohibited without UPI's prior written consent. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]