CNN: U.S. UNDER CYBERATTACK!

 Washington and Beijing are both calling for an end to global cyber-attacks and espionage. The two capitals have accused each other of being the principle source of cyber threats, claiming that each has suffered more than the other. 

 The world’s two leading economies continue to lob competing accusations of the supposedly deadly threats posed to each other’s security through cyber-attacks launched against vital web hubs. 

 Both the US and China also believe that cyber espionage has become an integral part the other’s everyday foreign policy, and praised at a governmental level. 

 The blame game in the escalating the cyber-security conflict has been ongoing for months, but the latest US statement condemning Chinese hackers in the strongest terms provoked a comparable backlash. 

 According to a February report, an elite military group of Chinese hackers – the People's Liberation Army Unit 61398 – has been engaged in ferocious cyber-espionage against the US. In the last seven years, it has allegedly hacked 141 companies across 20 major industries, including those vital to national security. 

 China has denied any involvement in the attacks, and accused the US of perpetuating cyber-warfare. Wang Hongguang, deputy commander of the PLA's Nanjing Military District, called the US “a thief calling others a thief ,” Reuters reported. Beijing claimed that the Chinese military’s two major websites, one of them belonging to country’s Defense Ministry, were subjected to an average of 140,000 hacking attacks a month in 2012. 

 In 2012, a total of 10.5 million server-controlling infected computers with American IP addresses were tracked, China’s top cyber-security agency reported last month. The agency said US hacking made up 74 per cent of all such attacks on China.