China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) accused the United States of orchestrating a series of long-term cyberattacks against its National Time Service Center, saying that damage to related facilities could have had significant effects on the nation’s financial systems, network communications, and defense infrastructure.
The allegations, announced Sunday on the ministry’s official WeChat account, mark an escalation of the two countries’ ongoing cyber and geopolitical rivalry.
According to allegations from the MSS, the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) conducted “long-term, highly covert” cyber operations that compromised staff mobile devices, stole sensitive data, and attempted to infiltrate the time center’s internal networks. The center, an institute under the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Xi’an, Shaanxi province, maintains and broadcasts China’s standard time, and provides critical timing services to sectors ranging from telecommunications to space navigation.
China’s claims
Chinese authorities claim the cyber intrusions date back to early 2022, when the NSA allegedly exploited a vulnerability in the messaging service of an unnamed foreign mobile phone brand to monitor staff activity. By 2023, the U.S. agency had escalated its efforts, the ministry alleged, deploying a new cyberwarfare platform equipped with “42 specialized weapons” to attack the center’s multiple internal systems and infiltrate its high-precision timing network.
In its post on the Chinese social media platform WeChat, the MSS also warned that disruptions to China’s national timing infrastructure could have catastrophic effects ranging from blackouts and telecommunications outages to destabilized financial markets.
“The U.S. is accusing others of what it does itself, repeatedly hyping up claims about Chinese cyber threats,” the post stated.
The MSS claimed to have evidence but did not provide it in the post.
U.S. response to accusations
The U.S. so far has been indirect in its response to the accusations, with the U.S. embassy in Beijing instead reiterating that China remains “the most active and persistent cyber threat” to U.S. government and private-sector networks. The U.S. has alleged that cyber actors from China have infiltrated major U.S. and global telecommunication providers’ networks in the past for the purpose of conducting cyber espionage activities.
Tech tensions
The exchange emphasizes an intensifying digital war between the world’s two largest economies, each accusing the other of state-sponsored hacking and espionage.
On December 30, 2024, the U.S. Treasury Department disclosed that a China state-sponsored actor had breached a remote-management software vendor (BeyondTrust) used by the department and gained access to some unclassified workstations and documents.
In January 2025, the U.S. sanctioned Chinese firm Integrity Technology Group, alleged to be behind a hacking campaign (Flax Typhoon) that compromised hundreds of thousands of devices worldwide.
These latest allegations occur amid heightened tensions around trade, including China’s new restrictions on rare earth exports and Washington’s warnings of additional tariffs on Chinese goods.
With cyber operations increasingly interwoven with economic and strategic competition, the fallout from such accusations could impact the trust between Washington and Beijing at an uncertain time in global relations.
In other cyber news, Prosper Marketplace confirmed a cybersecurity breach that exposed personal data from more than 17 million users.
