Cyber-crime against the US costing billions: FBI chief

[WASHINGTON] China is waging an aggressive cyber-war against the United States which costs American business billions of dollars every year, Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey said.

The FBI chief told CBS television's 60 Minutes programme on Sunday that China topped the list of countries seeking to pilfer secrets from US firms, suggesting that almost every major company in America had been targeted.

"There are two kinds of big companies in the United States," Mr Comey said. "There are those who've been hacked by the Chinese, and those who don't know they've been hacked by the Chinese." Annual losses from cyber-attacks launched from China were "impossible to count", Mr Comey said, but measured in "billions". Asked which countries were targeting the United States, Mr Comey replied: "I don't want to give you a complete list."