Authorities revealed that recently, computer systems at the White House have been hacked into, the police stating they believed the computer servers had been compromised by Chinese hackers, who thus came into the possession of several e-mails between government officials. The electronic correspondence did not contain any classified information, authorities added.

The hackers only breached the servers for short periods of time, just enough to steal the e-mails, ceasing each attack before United States computer experts could manage to patch the vulnerabilities in the systems.

U.S. government cyber intelligence professionals reckon that the hacking was sponsored by China’s government, reasoning that the targeted nature of the attacks had made them to reach that conclusion. Nevertheless, they have admitted of the fact that it was almost impossible to trace the electronic information theft back to the source.

The Chinese intelligence is known for its particular method of taking hold of bulks of info, only to afterwards search for the pieces it needs through the whole amount, which lends weight to police officials’ belief that the attacks have been requested by the Chinese government.

This summer, a similar incident was reported with regards to Barack Obama’s and John McCain’s campaign computer networks, when U.S. government cyber experts informed that hackers had downloaded information that offered insight into the candidates’ political views.

At that time, cyber investigators found that the aforementioned  attacks had also originated in China, but they were not able to track down the organisation behind the hackings.