China accuses U.S. of prolonged cyberattack on Xi'an time center

China's Ministry of State Security on Sunday accused the United States of conducting prolonged cyberattacks against the country's National Time Service Center in Xian, saying the breaches could have disrupted communications networks, financial systems, the power grid and the international standard time. In a statement posted on its official WeChat account, the ministry said it had "irrefutable evidence of U.S. government cyber attacks" and that the operation was carried out by the U.S. National Security Agency over an extended period.

The ministry said its investigation traced stolen data and credentials to 2022 and that attackers used them to spy on staff mobile devices and internal networks. It said the NSA exploited a vulnerability in the messaging service of a foreign smartphone brand to access employees' devices in 2022. The statement added that stolen login credentials were repeatedly used beginning in April 2023 to access computers at the center and that there were attempts to attack the center's internal networks and its high-precision ground-based timing system in 2023 and 2024.

The National Time Service Center, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, generates,...