Major intrusions by Chinese hackers of US companies’ computer systems appear to have slowed in recent months, private-sector experts say, ahead of a meeting between China’s president and President Barack Obama with cybersecurity on the agenda. Three senior executives at private-sector firms in the field told Reuters they had noticed a downtick in hacking activity. “The pace of new breaches feels like it’s tempering,” said Kevin Mandia, founder of Mandiant, a prominent company that investigates sophisticated corporate breaches. A point of friction in US-Chinese relations, cybersecurity will be a major focus of talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping this week in Washington, D.C., Obama said earlier this week. In the same remarks, Obama called for a global framework to prevent the Internet from being “weaponised” as a tool of national aggression, while also holding out the prospect of a forceful US response to China over recent hacking attacks.
