China’s Ministry of State Security has accused the United States’ National Security Agency (NSA) of launching long-term cyberattacks against the country’s National Time Service Centre (NTSC) — an institution responsible for managing and monitoring the nation’s official time systems.
According to the ministry, the attacks began in March 2022 and intensified between August 2023 and June 2024.
The NSA allegedly used advanced cyberespionage tools and 42 sophisticated digital weapons designed to infiltrate NTSC’s internal operations.
Reports indicate that the attacks were carried out using virtual servers with digital footprints pointing to locations in the United States, Europe, and Asia, in an attempt to disguise their true origin.
The NTSC, located in Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, provides precise time synchronization to key national sectors such as telecommunications, finance, electricity, transportation, and defense. Even a slight error in its time signals could have widespread consequences across China’s infrastructure.
Wei Dong, an engineer at the NTSC, explained:
“If the timing shifts by even one millisecond, it could cause massive disruptions in the power grid, leading to nationwide blackouts.”
He further added that even minor deviations measured in nanoseconds could misalign BeiDou, China’s satellite navigation system, by up to 30 centimeters.
Chinese cybersecurity experts have described the alleged U.S. operations as a form of high-level technological provocation, calling them a direct threat to China’s digital sovereignty.
Beijing stated that it possesses concrete evidence linking the NSA to the attacks and has since strengthened its cybersecurity defenses. The U.S. Embassy in Beijing has not yet issued a response to these allegations.
