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Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr says a report alleging Chinese hackers stole plans for Australia’s new intelligence hub will not hit ties with Beijing.

On Monday the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reported blueprints setting out the building’s cable layouts and security systems had been illegally accessed by a server in China.

Bob Carr did not comment directly on the claims.

But he said the government was “very alive” to cyber security threats.

“I won’t comment on whether the Chinese have done what is being alleged or not,” he said.

“I won’t comment on matters of intelligence and security for the obvious reason: we don’t want to share with the world and potential aggressors what we know about what they might be doing, and how they might be doing it.”

Bob Carr said the ABC report had “no implications” for a strategic partnership.

“We have enormous areas of co-operation with China,” he said.

The claims were made in a report on Chinese cyber-espionage by ABC’s Four Corners investigative programme on Monday night.

Chinese hackers stole plans for Australia's new intelligence hub

Chinese hackers stole plans for Australia’s new intelligence hub

The programme alleged that blueprints to the new intelligence headquarters in Canberra – due to be finished last year but delayed – were stolen in a cyber attack on a contractor that was traced to a server in China.

The plans detailed communications cabling and server locations, floor plans and security systems, the programme alleged.

It quoted Professor Des Ball, an expert on cyber security from the Australian National University, as saying access to such details would enable an outside party to identify rooms used for sensitive activities and work out how to monitor them.

The programme also alleged that the Prime Minster’s Office, the Defence Ministry and the Department of Foreign Affairs had been breached in hacking operations.

Four Corners did not identify the source of its information.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei rejected the claims, saying “groundless” accusations would not solve the problem of cyber hacking.

“Since it is technically untraceable, it is very difficult to find the source and identify the hacker,” he said.

“Therefore we have no idea what is the evidence for their report in which they make the claim with such certainty.”

Earlier this year, hackers from China – which is now Australia’s biggest trading partner – were thought to be behind an attack on the Reserve Bank of Australia, the Australian Financial Review reported.

The issue of cyber espionage looks set to be high on the agenda when the US and Chinese presidents hold their first summit in California next month.

Earlier this month, the Pentagon for the first time directly accused the Chinese government and military of targeting US government computers as part of a cyber espionage campaign aimed at collecting intelligence on US diplomatic, economic and defence sectors.

China called the report “groundless”, saying it represented “US distrust”.

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The US government has demanded designs for a 3D-printed gun be taken offline.

The order to remove the blueprints for the plastic gun comes after they were downloaded more than 100,000 times.

The US State Department wrote to the gun’s designer, Defense Distributed, suggesting publishing them online may breach arms-control regulations.

Although the files have been removed from the company’s Defcad site, it is not clear whether this will stop people accessing the blueprints.

They were being hosted by the Mega online service and may still reside on its servers.

The US government has demanded designs for a 3D-printed gun be taken offline

The US government has demanded designs for a 3D-printed gun be taken offline

Also, many links to copies of the blueprints have been uploaded to file-sharing site the Pirate Bay, making them widely available. The Pirate Bay has also publicized its links to the files via social news site Reddit suggesting many more people will get hold of the blueprints.

The Office of Defense Trade Controls Compliance wrote to Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson demanding the designs be “removed from public access” until he could prove he had not broken laws governing shipping weapons overseas by putting the files online and letting people outside the US download them.

“We have to comply,” Cody Wilson told Forbes magazine in an interview.

But he added the State Department’s fears were ungrounded, as Defense Distributed had been set up specifically to meet requirements that exempted it from the arms-control regulations.

Cody Wilson welcomed the US government’s intervention, saying it would highlight the issue of whether it was possible to stop the spread of 3D-printed weapons.

Unlike conventional weapons, the printed gun – called the Liberator by its creators – is made out of plastic on a printer. Many engineering firms and manufacturers use these machines to test prototypes before starting large-scale production.

While desktop 3D printers are becoming more popular, Defense Distributed used an industrial 3D printer that cost more than $7,500 to produce its gun. This was able to use high-density plastic that could withstand and channel the explosive force involved in firing a bullet.

To make the Liberator, Cody Wilson had to get a license to make and sell the weapon from the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

The Bureau said any American could make a gun for their own use, even on a 3D printer, but selling it required a license.

Cody Wilson, who describes himself as a crypto-anarchist, said the project to create a printed gun and make it widely available was all “about liberty”.

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