❓WHAT HAPPENED: China accused the U.S. of conducting cyberattacks on its National Time Service Center.
👤WHO WAS INVOLVED: China’s Ministry of State Security and the U.S. National Security Agency.
📍WHEN & WHERE: Accusations reported on October 20, 2025, regarding incidents between 2023 and 2024, in China.
💬KEY QUOTE: “This type of cyberattack is considered a classic form of state-level cyber aggression, internationally referred to as an advanced persistent threat” – Li Jianhua, director at Shanghai Jiao Tong University
🎯IMPACT: U.S.-China tensions are increasong amid ongoing trade disputes and cybersecurity and espionage concerns.
China has accused the United States National Security Agency (NSA) of conducting cyberattacks on its National Time Service Centre (NTSC), a facility critical to the country’s communications, financial systems, and defense infrastructure. According to the Chinese Ministry of State Security, the NSA used 42 types of what it called “special cyberattack weapons” to infiltrate NTSC’s internal networks between 2023 and 2024. These allegations, released in a public statement, have not been backed by verifiable evidence, and the U.S. government has not issued a response.
The NTSC provides high-precision time synchronization for vital systems, including satellite navigation, power grids, and communication networks. On China’s state broadcaster CCTV, NTSC senior official Wei Dong warned that such attacks could disrupt key national timing systems, potentially compromising operations in power substations and satellite-based services. Li Jianhua, a director at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, described the incident saying, “This type of cyberattack is considered a classic form of state-level cyber aggression, internationally referred to as an advanced persistent threat,” underlining the serious risks to national infrastructure.
The timing of these accusations coincided with a large-scale outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud computing division of Amazon. The outage, which began on October 20, affected services in AWS’s US-EAST-1 region, disrupting operations for major platforms including Snapchat, Fortnite, Signal, Robinhood, and Venmo. AWS confirmed the disruption was due to increased error rates and latencies and reported that the issue was fully resolved later in the day.
While China’s claims have drawn international attention, the U.S. has also repeatedly blamed Chinese state-backed actors for cyber operations targeting American infrastructure. In December 2024, the U.S. Treasury Department confirmed that hackers linked to China exploited a vulnerability through a third-party security vendor, gaining access to unclassified Treasury workstations. In May 2024, U.S. authorities reported an increase in cyber intrusions targeting water facilities, attributing some of these attacks to Chinese-linked groups. In July 2025, Microsoft revealed that Chinese hackers exploited a zero-day vulnerability to breach multiple organizations, including the National Nuclear Security Administration.
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