‘Unacceptable’ accusations

China says it is not to blame for a hacking attack on the email accounts this year of U.S. and other government officials, journalists, military personal and activists.

In a regular news briefing on Thursday, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry said Google’s link to hackers in China didn’t prove anything. Throughout numerous instances of massive phishing and hacking attacks traced back to China, this country has denied involvement.

“To put all of the blame on China is unacceptable,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei.

Google said Wednesday that it had discovered a string of Gmail-based attacks going back to February, in which accounts belonging to users with potentially sensitive information were compromised. The news was no surprise to foreign journalists working in China, many of whom have had their Gmail and other webmail account hacked in the past two years. The Internet company said accounts were compromised in phishing schemes, and the Google system was not accessed.