China on Tuesday rejected "insinuations" of involvement by its government in cyberattacks after North American researchers exposed a China-based cyber-espionage ring that targeted computers in the Indian military and elsewhere.

"We often hear news in this area, or insinuations and criticisms against the Chinese government. I do now know what evidence these people have or what their motives are," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said at a regular news briefing.

"We resolutely oppose all forms of cybercrime including hacking," she said.

Two groups, the Information Warfare Monitor and the Shadowserver Foundation, released a report late Monday describing a network of computers infected with malware and controlled by servers in China: http://shadows-in-the-cloud.net/
The network, dubbed Shadow, included systems in the Indian government and military, as well as institutions like the United Nations and the Office of the Dalai Lama: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9174859/Researchers_track_cyber_espionage_ring_to_China
Some of the documents stolen through the network were "extremely sensitive from a national security perspective," the report says.

One of the researchers said in a blog post that the network had been reported to China's National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team (CNCERT) and that he looked forward to working with them to shut it down.

But CNCERT said in an e-mailed statement that it had not received any reports of security incidents from the University of Toronto, where the researchers that discovered the malware network are based. It was unclear what caused the discrepancy, but the statement also said CNCERT receives many reports each day.

When asked if China would investigate the claims made by the researchers, Jiang said that the country fights cybercrime in accordance with its laws.

(PCW)