The ongoing discussions in Washington constitute the first official dialogue between the two nations on the subject since 2014, when China pulled out of a working group after the US indicted five military officials for hacking.
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Intelligence officials have characterized the breach as traditional intelligence-gathering, the kind of activity in which the USA itself engages.
China, Russia and Iran are among the U.S.’s most prolific and sophisticated hacking adversaries.
The government of China says it has captured the hackers responsible for breaching the Office of Personnel Management database, a giant theft of data from millions of people that was revealed earlier this year.
CrowdStrike, a US cyber security firm, released a report shortly after Xi’s state visit in which several USA companies claimed detection of attempted hacks connected to the Chinese government.
USA intelligence chief James Clapper in June said the OPM cyber attack was carried out by Chinese hackers but did not specifically accuse China’s government.
The intrusions exposed sensitive personal information, including names, Social Security numbers and addresses of more than 22 million current and former federal employees and contractors, in addition to 5.6 million fingerprints. The news service didn’t provide any evidence.
“Rice and Guo agreed that ISIS poses a threat to both the United States and China and discussed steps to strengthen coordination in addressing this threat”, National Security Council Spokesperson Ned Price said. At the time, the hackers were not being linked to the OPM hack.
U.S. officials are likely to be dubious about the Chinese contention.
The Washington Post, however, reported Monday that officials have witnessed a decline in hacks on US companies since the indictments previous year.
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Along with the OPM hack, officials from the two countries identified other cases to work on, reached further consensus on fighting cyber terrorism and agreed on programs to boost the fight against cyber crimes, Xinhua said, without giving further details.
