China Telecom accused of hijacking 15 percent of global traffic

A congressional commission report obtained by Fox News reveals nearly 15 percent of world's Internet traffic, including data from US government websites, was redirected via Chinese servers on April 18th. The incident lasted for about 18 minutes, it's not clear whether the hijack was deliberate but the report states this level of access could enable surveillance of specific users or sites.

It was not immediately clear whether the incident was deliberate, but the April 18 redirection could have enabled malicious activities and potentially caused an unintended "diversion of data" from many U.S. government, military and commercial websites, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission states in a 316-page report to Congress.

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According to the draft report, a state-owned Chinese telecommunications firm, China Telecom, "hijacked" massive volumes of Internet traffic during the 18-minute incident. It affected traffic to and from .gov and .mil websites in the United States, as well as websites for the Senate, all four military services, the office of the Secretary of Defense, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and "many others," including websites for firms like Dell, Yahoo, IBM and Microsoft.

More details at FoxNews.