Experts slammed US claims that Chinese hackers are possibly behind the WannaCry ransomware as unreliable.

"The conclusion that the authors of the ransomware are Chinese people is premature based on only linguistic analysis of the ransom message, rather than the malware itself," said Zheng Wenbin, an Internet security expert at Qihoo 360. 

Flashpoint, a US intelligence company, said on its website on May 25 that authors of the WannaCry ransomware message are fluent in Chinese.

Map of attacked locations around the globe, produced by MalwareTech.com. /CGTN Photo

WannaCry is a malware that has infected computers in more than 100 countries and regions since May 12. It locked up data on infected computers and displayed a message in 28 languages demanding a ransom for restoration of the data.

Flashpoint said the hackers wrote the ransom message in Chinese first, then translated it into English and further converted that into other languages using Google's translation tool.

Zheng Wenbin said the linguistic analysis is "not professional" and the results are "not reliable".

The Chinese-version ransom message. /CGTN Photo

Li Baisong, deputy chief engineer of Antiy Labs, an anti-virus service provider, echoed Zheng's opinion.

Li said the malware itself is directly responsible for causing damage to computers, therefore, the investigation should target the malware itself. He noted that it is not enough to just study the ransom message, adding that the attack code and domain should also be analyzed to track the source.

Li said there is no evidence yet showing the hackers of the WannaCry ransomware are from China.

(Source: China Daily)