14 DAY TRIAL // In an interview he had with the South China Morning Post a couple of weeks ago, the famous whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the US National Security Agency (NSA) conducted over 61,000 hacking operations worldwide, many of which targeted Chinese organizations.
The South China Morning Post has now published additional information provided by Snowden in that interview.
According to Snowden, the United States has breached the systems of the Tsinghua University in Beijing, one of the country’s top education and research institutes. Reportedly, the university has been extensively targeted by the US this year.
The information provided by the whistleblower to the Post shows that 63 computers and servers belonging to the Tsinghua University were hacked by the NSA on one single day in January.
In addition to the Tsinghua University, the NSA is also said to have penetrated the systems of the Chinese University in Hong Kong, home of the Hong Kong Internet Exchange.
Snowden has argued that the information obtained by the US intelligence agency from the universities could only be obtained by someone with physical access to the computers, or by hacking into the organizations’ networks.
In addition to Chinese education institutions, US spies have allegedly also breached the systems of several Chinese mobile phone companies in an effort to steal text messages.
The evidence obtained by the former NSA contractor suggests that the spy agency has been hacking computers for at least four years.
The documents provided by Snowden to the South China Morning Post reveal that the US has also targeted the computers from the Hong Kong headquarters of Pacnet, the company that owns the most extensive fiber optic submarine cables in the region.
The attack on Pacnet – which owns over 46,000 kilometers of fiber optic submarine cables – allegedly took place back in 2009, but the NSA has since shut down the operation.