Brits Accuse China of Web Espionage

UK spy agency MI5 has sent an unprecedented letter to 300 British business leaders, warning them that vital sectors of the country's economy are under attack from Chinese state-sponsored electronic espionage. The Chinese "use every means at their disposal" to dig up information about British companies, a letter recipient told the Times of London.

China's sophisticated web-based espionage is designed to foil even the best IT security. A major oil company and a large engineering firm are known to have been compromised recently by Chinese spying. The British alert follows a US congressional report last month that called Chinese espionage "the single greatest risk to the security of American technologies." (More China stories.)