Guo met with U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson and Attorney General Loretta Lynch on Tuesday for the opening of the talks.
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The Justice Department said in addition, China and the United States will also conduct “tabletop exercises” in the spring with a number of scenarios created to improve understanding of the expectations for response and cooperation.
China has acknowledged for the first time that the breach of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management’s computer systems, which the Obama administration said exposed the personal information of more than 21.5 million people, was the work of Chinese hackers.
Earlier this week, China’s Xinhua News Agency reported that a government investigation in China found that criminal hackers were to blame for the attack and not state-sponsored hackers. The US is not so certain.
Anonymous U.S. officials had said that hackers in China were a leading suspect for the breach.
The arrest of the suspects behind the OPM hack is expected to further smoothen ties between both sides after Washington accused China of sponsoring the cyber attacks. That company was the recipient of trade secrets stolen by Chinese military hackers who were indicted a year ago for breaking into networks of the USA company Alcoa.
Unfortunately for the Chinese, the latest talks in Washington also coincided with reports that China was being blamed for a massive cyber attack on a supercomputer at Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) that has links to multiple government agencies including the Department of Defence.
Surprisingly or not, there are some coincidences in this piece of news that just came out of Beijing. It cites a claim by NSA director Adm. Michael S. Rogers who told Congress in September that there was no evidence found of any breached social security numbers used for fraud or other nefarious purposes.
A hot-line will be established to strengthen communication while dealing with individual cyber security cases.
Top-level US and Chinese officials were present for the agreement that was held in Washington D.C. and both countries plan to meet again in Beijing in May of 2016.
Chinese intelligence, security, and information technology officials took part in the talks.
A handful of hackers linked to the attack were arrested in China before Mr Xi’s visit, the Washington Post reported. Together they hashed out a deal whereby each nation would be able to offer help to the other in the event of a major cyber attack.
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“It would be the most important arrest that we’ve perhaps seen in cybercrime”, said Columbia University School of International Public Affairs’ senior researcher Jason Healey.
