News of the hacking of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission surfaced earlier this month when an amateur "hacktivist" group purporting to operate in India published what it said was a memo from an Indian Military Intelligence unit to which extracts from commission emails were attached.
But U.S. officials who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity said the roundabout way the commission's emails were obtained strongly suggests the intrusion originated in China, possibly by amateurs, and not from India's spy service.
A large cache of raw email data from the security breach, reviewed by Reuters, indicates that the principal target of the intruders was not the commission, but instead a Washington-based non-governmental pro-trade group called the National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC).
The trade council is headed by William Reinsch, a former top U.S. Commerce Department official who until recently served as the U.S.-China Commission's chairman.
A large proportion of the raw email traffic downloaded by the hackers consists of messages to and from Reinsch at his NFTC email address. Many of the emails were spam, but some related to the work of the commission, which was set up by Congress to take a critical look at a wide range of U.S. dealings with China.
Reinsch told Reuters that the NFTC first became aware in November that large quantities of its message traffic had been hacked. He said that law enforcement authorities, including the FBI, had been quickly notified. The FBI has declined comment.
Reinsch said he could think of "no particular reason" why the Indian government or Indian hackers would be interested in him. By contrast, he and several other U.S. officials said that Chinese hackers, whether amateur or directly affiliated with Chinese government, would have great interest in the U.S.-China Commission's activities, both public and private.