China accuses US of cyberattack on national time center

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: AP

Updated 4:08 AM EDT, October 19, 2025


BEIJING (AP) — China on Sunday accused the U.S. National Security Agency of carrying out cyberattacks on its national time center following an investigation, saying any damage to related facilities could have disrupted network communications, financial systems and power supply.

The Ministry of State Security alleged in a WeChat post that the U.S. agency had exploited vulnerabilities in the messaging services of a foreign mobile phone brand to steal sensitive information from devices of the National Time Service Center’s staff in 2022. It did not specify the brand.

The U.S. agency also used 42 types of “special cyberattack weapons” to target the center’s multiple internal network systems and attempted to infiltrate a key timing system between 2023 and 2024, it said.

It said it had evidence but did not provide it in the post.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/china-us-cyberattacks-allegations-time-b3408ed2352c113904350f80e505ab9f

[JoseBalow]

1. I've never heard of a "national time center"

Is that like an atomic clock, or something? Do we have anything like that?

[The Ministry of State Security] said the time center is responsible for generating and distributing China’s standard time, in addition to providing timing services to industries such as communications, finance, power, transport and defense. It had provided guidance to the center to eliminate the risks.

[BumRushDaShow]

2. "Do we have anything like that?"

NIST

TIME.GOV

New Atomic Fountain Clock Joins Elite Group That Keeps the World on Time (Apr. 28, 2025) (it is in Boulder, CO)

If you ever had one of those self-setting/self-syncing clocks, they used to tell you to point it towards CO to pick up the radio signal from there (I could never get it to work...lol).

[JoseBalow]

3. I never thought about NIST being involved with that

Thanks for the info!

[BumRushDaShow]

4. Oh yes!

They even have a telephone service where you can call and hear the exact time!

https://www.nist.gov/pml/time-and-frequency-division/what-time-it-faqs

Their main page on time/clocks - https://www.nist.gov/time-frequency

[JoseBalow]

5. I do remember that telephone service

"At the tone the time will be..."

[BumRushDaShow]

6. That's it!

(they do it on certain radio frequencies too)

[Igel]

9. tick ... tick ... tick ... BEEEEEEP ... tick ... tick ... tick ... (n/t)

Also was on shortwave.

"WWV" popped into my thoughts when I remembered that. Haven't had a shortwave radio for 40 years now.

Yup. By telephone and synchronous broadcast (the internet tells me) out of Ft. Collins, CO. Also had weather.

(Got the shortwave to practice listening to Russian, not so much of that to be heard.)

[JoseBalow]

10. BBC World Service

used to do that at the top of every hour right before broadcasting the news. I'm not sure if they still do. I used to listen to that every day when I lived overseas.

[reACTIONary]

7. Yes, and it is very important for GPS, which is why....

.... this would be a national security issue. In the US it is something of a distributed system, I don't know about China.

The Chinese BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) is their GPS equivalent. Being able to disrupt their national time keeping system could put it out of service.

[tavernier]

8. I'm guessing their clocks

don’t say “nine-ish”