Hackers from China are reportedly targeting Internet-based e-mail, data storage and other services offered abroad by firms including Microsoft to snoop on the US.
According to the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, the Chinese government pays for an extensive cyber surveillance campaign and networks of US government and private organisations have been targeted.
The commission said in a report to US Congress that developments in cloud computing in China may present cybersecurity risks for US users and providers of cloud computing services.
"The relationship between China’s Ministry of State Security and the Chongqing Special Cloud Computing Zone represents a potential espionage threat to foreign companies that might use cloud computing services provided from the zone or base operations there," the commission added.
"In addition, the plan to link 21Vianet’s data centres in China and Microsoft’s data centres in other countries suggests the Chinese government one day may be able to access data centres outside China through Chinese data centres."
The commission has pointed cloud computing as a potential espionage threat for the first time, Bloomberg reported.
US-China Economic and Security Review Commission chairman William Reinsch said the agency is focused on making sure that Defence Department or State Department data, or other government information, is secure.
"To the extent those entities use the cloud as well, we think that they need to get a better grip on who’s actually providing their services and where their data is going," Reinsch said.
