NewStoPage

China has rejected US allegations that it hijacked 15 per cent of the world's internet traffic for 18 minutes in April 2009.

This included traffic to and from the websites of the US Army, Navy and Marine Corps, the office of the US defence secretary, the US Senate and Nasa, as well as more general internet traffic.

The diversion was supposedly triggered when China Telecom, a state-owned business, issued a notification from its servers to internet traffic on the web that told the traffic that the quickest way to reach its destination was to re-route through China Telecom’s servers.

The diversion, which affected predominantly US web traffic, remained in place for 18 minutes on 8 April of 2009.

The allegation surfaced in a report presented to the US Congress and was written by the US-China Economic and Security review commission. It stated that the re-routing of data was caused when China Telecom sent incorrect routing information but it also stated it is not yet clear whether the re-routing was intentional or not.

In an official statement China Telecom "denied any hijack of internet traffic" and so far the Chinese government has declined to comment on the allegations.

source: currrent, sify