China denies Microsoft hacking allegations

The Chinese government is calling allegations it was behind a hack of Microsoft’s Outlook email service “groundless slander,” according to a report from the official Xinhua news agency.

The official denial comes as new reports surface about enhanced censorship in the East Asian power. 

{mosads}GreatFire, a nonprofit that monitors censorship in China, on Monday accused Beijing of likely backing a cyberattack on Outlook.com. Reportedly, the site was subjected to a “man-in-the-middle” attack, in which hackers infiltrate a system and collect data while still relaying messages between users in order to remain undetected.

The monitoring firm said the incident closely resembled a previous hack on Apple’s cloud storage system. It was widely thought Chinese authorities were behind that attack as well.

Jiang Jun, a spokesman for the Cyberspace Administration of China, denied the accusations.

GreatFire’s assertions are meant to “incite dissatisfaction and smear China’s cyberspace management system,” he said.

The company is biased, Jiang added. Its claims are “unsupported speculation, a pure slanderous act by overseas anti-China forces.”

GreatFire has also been documenting China’s rising Internet censorship more broadly. The government recently blocked Gmail completely and cut off the country’s access to the online banking portal of HSBC, the world’s second-largest bank.

It was also reported Thursday that China was moving to block the common software, known as VPN, that allows people to access services like Twitter and Facebook, which are banned in the country.

According to People’s Daily, a state-owned Chinese newspaper, the interruption occurred because China upgraded its “Great Firewall” — the country’s system of Internet restrictions — in an effort to bolster “cyberspace sovereignty.”

At least three popular VPN services have been affected.

“We are currently working diligently to find a resolution with certain servers not working in China,” said StrongVPN on its blog.