The report explains how China Telecom has allegedly diverted Internet traffic for roughly 18 minutes by releasing incorrect routing information that diverted all data through Chinese servers.

While the company denies all accusations, the evidence shows that the traffic to around 10-15% of internet destinations were rerouted through servers based in China including US government and military sites and other popular websites such as Yahoo and Microsoft.

Actions such as these could compromise the integrity of encrypted information to and from servers and as such there is a risk of data theft, although it is not clear yet as to what has been done with the data.

While there are indications that exploitations involving China may be state-organised, there has been no conclusive proof to confirm this.