Chinese cybersecurity officials on Tuesday accused the United States of launching cyberattacks and issued arrest warrants against three US individuals working in the US National Security Agency (NSA)’s Office of Tailored Access Operations—an intelligence-gathering unit on cyber warfare. 
In a statement released on Chinese social media platform Weibo, the officials also offered a cash reward for people providing any information that could lead to the arrest of the three accused US nationals allegedly involved in a spate of cyberattacks.

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Opening a new front against Washington even as the tariff battle between China and the United States is still far from abating, Chinese security officials claimed that three NSA agents attacked the information infrastructure during the 9th Asian Winter Games held in the northeastern city of Harbin in February.

These hackers also “repeatedly carried out cyberattacks” on the Chinese telecommunication company Huawei and other businesses, Chinese state news agency Xinhua said.

The three NSA ‘agents’ have been added to a wanted list by police in the northeastern Chinese city of Harbin for allegedly taking part in cyberattacks during the Asian Winter Games held in the city in February.
Chinese cybersecurity experts accused the individuals of using artificial intelligence (AI) to launch the attacks.

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“The Harbin Municipal Public Security Bureau has issued [arrest] warrants for three suspects linked to the US National Security Agency: Katheryn A. Wilson, Robert J. Snelling, and Stephen W. Johnson,” the authorities said in a notice.

“Investigations revealed that these three agents repeatedly participated in cyberattacks on China’s critical information infrastructure and in hacking activities against enterprises such as Huawei,” the warrant stated. 

The police also accused the University of California and Virginia Tech of being involved in the cyberattacks, but did not share details of their involvement.

The NSA also launched cyberattacks on “key sectors such as energy, transport, water conservancy, communications and national defence research institutes” in Heilongjiang province, where Harbin is located, the
Xinhua report said.
The aim was to “damage critical information infrastructure, cause social disorder, and steal important confidential information”, it added.

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Xinhua also reported that the NSA had activated covert back-door programmes on some devices in Heilongjiang that were running the Windows operating system.

China’s National Computer Virus Emergency Response Centre (CVERC) and the National Engineering Laboratory for Computer Virus Prevention and Control Technology released a report on April 3 stating that the Asian Winter Games’ event information system “was hit by 270,167 cyberattacks from abroad” between January 26 and February 14.

Du Zhenhua, a CVERC engineer, told state broadcaster CCTV in an interview on April 3 that the attacks came mainly from the US, but also used IP addresses in the Netherlands as a “springboard” to launch the attacks.
Zhou Hongyi, founder of Chinese cybersecurity firm 360 Security Technology, which was involved in the investigation, told CCTV that the NSA’s attacks “used AI to plan attack scenarios, explore vulnerabilities and monitor traffic, and some attack codes were obviously written by AI”.
Zhou added that Chinese cybersecurity experts had spent nearly a decade building a “tactical knowledge base” of US cyberattack methods.

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Experts advised Chinese institutions and individuals with access to classified information to “avoid using non-domestic, especially American, information technology products”.
Meanwhile, in March, the US and UK had accused Beijing of a cyberespionage campaign targeting White House employees, US senators, British parliamentarians, academics, journalists, and government officials across the world who criticised Beijing.

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