The municipal authority of Wuhan, Hubei province, reported a hacker attack on the local seismic monitoring center. Investigators claim that a Trojan Horse virus was used to steal information from data collection stations of the seismic recording system.

The hackers had ties to another country’s government, the USA namely, many governmental officials say. Thus, China Central Television cited the Wuhan Municipal Emergency Management Bureau and reported that the attack was carried out from territory of the US.

Following this, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China called this incident a serious threat to that country’s national security. The Chinese blogosphere is already actively discussing the issue, and it is a unanimous opinion that the Americans are the key originators.

All the required measures to bring all those responsible to justice will be taken, official Beijing said. Time will tell whether it is implemented in practice. However, most likely, it will not go beyond some verbal exchanges.

At another point, a number of experts agree that the attack could have been aimed at collecting information about China’s defense activities. It has been clarified that general data on intensity of seismic activity is not classified, but accurate information on the shape of seismic waves that are more detailed and specific to each station may be valuable from a military point of view. Information about nearby and shallow earthquakes in a particular area may reveal the presence of large underground cavities so it can be used to determine the location of bunkers or civil defense bomb shelters.

Notably, the US Geological Survey operates the world’s largest and most advanced seismic monitoring network and it also has a few stations in China. Although the USGS shares some data with Beijing as part of international cooperation projects, access to its entire database is limited. China should rather try to gain larger access to the database and at the same time check how potent the People’s Republic of China is in such situations.

It should be noted that mutual China-US accusations in intelligence activities are taking place regularly and are not something totally new. Beijing reported the incident after Washington together with several other countries had accused China of conducting digital intrusion campaigns around the world which includes hacking email boxes of American officials. The important thing is that these two countries are actively working against each other and such incidents get leaked to the media increasingly.

According to The New York Times, Joe Biden’s administration believes that China introduced spyware into key electricity and telecommunications networks of the USA. It is claimed with the reference to America’s military and intelligence agencies that the affected systems are potentially capable of giving the People’s Liberation Army of China the opportunity to disrupt the US military operations, for example, in the event of a conflict in the Taiwan Strait. The malware allegedly allows Beijing to cut off water supply, electricity and intercommunications not only at military objects but also in privately-owned housing and production facilities of potential enemy.

In general, the China’s statements about identified attacks on its infrastructure are not surprising for many experts. It is well known that Washington is taking active steps to curb the threat from China in the zone of its traditional interests and is taking all possible steps to somehow push Beijing as far as possible from its domain. The Chinese authorities, as a rule, only express dissatisfaction with such actions and prefer not to take more decisive actions.