The U.S. has used its technological advantages and the monopoly position of American enterprises in network infrastructure to develop a large number of cyber weapons, triggering an arms race and bringing serious threats and risks to global cyber security, said China's largest newspaper People's Daily in an article published on Thursday.

On May 12, 2017, the outbreak of "WannaCry" ransomware shocked the world, and spread to over 150 countries and regions. More than 100,000 organizations and over 300,000 computers, as well as many hospitals, educational institutes and government departments, were affected by the worldwide cyber-attack.

The article said that one of the important reasons for the attack, which caused serious losses, is because of "Eternal Blue," a cyber-weapon developed by the U.S.' National Security Agency (NSA), becoming public and used by hackers to make ransomware.

"'Eternal Blue' is just one of the many cyber-weapons of NSA's Equation Group," the author wrote.

On April 14, 2017, hacker group "Shadow Brokers" released a batch of cyber-weapons used by the Equation Group, including "Eternal Blue."

"Hackers can attack computers that are connected to the Internet with these tools, just like 'WannaCry' could cause serious damage overnight," the article said.

In the same year, "WiKiLeaks" released 8,761 secret documents code-named "Vault 7," and revealed the implementation of a series of highly confidential global network intrusion activities of the U.S.' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 2013 to 2016.

The content involves attack tactics, targets, the meeting records, overseas operations, the use of attack tools, and 700 million lines of source code.

The author wrote that by the end of 2016, the CIA-owned cyber intelligence center possessed more than 5,000 employees, and designed more than 1,000 viruses, including the Trojan virus, and other "weaponized malicious code" by report.

In 2015,  founder of "WiKiLeaks," Julian Assange, claimed that the U.S. developed as many as 2,000 types of cyber-weapons, making it the No.1 cyber-weapons power in the world.

At the end of the People’s Daily article, the author wrote that the massive development of cyber-weapons by the U.S. military and intelligence agencies is triggering a cyber-arms race, which directly threatens global cyber security.

"Cyber-weapons are comparable to nuclear weapons, and biological and chemical weapons, which may cause serious damage to the global infrastructure and the normal production and life of countries," said the author.

(Top image via VCG)