BEIJING: China accused the United States and its allies of waging a disinformation campaign Thursday, after Washington, its Western partners and Microsoft said state-sponsored Chinese hackers had infiltrated critical US infrastructure networks, reports AFP.

This is an extremely unprofessional report with a missing chain of evidence, this is just scissors-and-paste work, foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said.

In a report Wednesday, Microsoft highlighted Guam, a US territory in the Pacific Ocean with a vital military outpost, as one of the targets of the allegedly Chinese state-backed hackers.

But, it said, malicious activity had also been detected elsewhere in the United States. The stealthy attack — carried out by a China-sponsored actor dubbed Volt Typhoon since mid-2021 — enabled long-term espionage and was likely aimed at hampering the United States in the event of a conflict, it said.

The claims were echoed by the United States and its allies in the Five Eyes security alliance — Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom — accusations Beijing denied on Thursday.

The United States, Mao said, was expanding new channels for disseminating disinformation.

But no change in tactics can alter the fact that the US is a hacker empire, she said.