The traffic to a few rarely sensitive US websites was quickly rerouted around China, according to Reuters.
The incident, that happened for 18 mins final April, is published in a inform by the US-China Economic and Security examination commission.
It found that China Telecom sent improper routing information, but it is not coherent either it was intentional.
It comes among stability discussions in the US and the UK about cyber-security.
Among traffic rerouted around China was that unfailing is to US Senate website, the Office of the Secretary of Defence, Nasa and the Commerce Department, the inform said.
"Evidence connected to this situation does not evidently show either it was perpetrated purposely and, if so, to what ends," according to the breeze inform performed by Reuters.
"However, P.C. safety researchers have remarkable that the ability could capacitate serious rouge activities," it added.
The risk of cyber-attacks has been high on universal agendas recently.
This week, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates warned that cyber-attacks acted a outrageous future hazard and urged more joined-up efforts between the US army and municipal agencies.
MPs in the UK have moreover been conference about the risks of cyber-attacks.
In indication since to the Science and Technology Committee, experts mentioned that a accordant cyber-attack able of deleterious key infrastructure could now usually be launched by an challenger state.
Stuxnet fears
"The risk of a accordant assault that has essential outcome on infrastructure would have to be at state turn and thus politically unlikely," mentioned Dr Hayes, a comparison associate at the Microsoft Institute for Advanced Technology in Governments.
But he mentioned the collection were there for either politically-motivated hackers or organized criminals to launch an attack.
"If we see a chief weapon, we need plutonium, but cyber-weapons are just a coming after of ones and zeros. We have concerns that Stuxnet could be copied," he said.
"The risk of that is high and could have localised outcome on vicious infrastructure," he told MPs.
The new Stuxnet malware, that appeared to be targeted at Iran's chief power plant, has caused warning in governments around the world about a new call of state-sponsored cyber-attacks.
Dalai Lama
Dr Ross Anderson, from the University of Cambridge, told MPs that Stuxnet was a complex square of malware.
"We can presupposition it was from someone who didn't similar to the Iranians enlightening uranium. It took 6 people 5 months to write. It appears whoever consecrated it had access to people whose business was essay malware, together with people evidently consultant in industrial manage systems.
It was an bid saved to the demand of 1m or thereabouts," he said.
Experts have surmised that its difficulty means it could usually have been created by a republic state.
Mr Anderson told MPs that he had personal impasse in to state-sponsored malware attacks.
"A couple of years ago, a tyro of cave helped the Dalai Lama's office coherent up malware evidently from the Chinese government," he said.
Currently, though, the greatest risk to UK P.C. systems was still the awaiting of inner network failures as upgrades to the net addressing network began, he said.
"The many expected result in of intrusion to the internet comes from program disaster associated with passing from one to another to IPV6," he said.
But he warned that the hazard of outmost attacks was expected to obtain worse over time, as more and more systems became computerised.
Experts indispensable
Mr Anderson mentioned that supervision indispensable to become more "IT-aware".
"Regulators such as Ofgem and Ofcom should have people on their staff who comprehend IT and the risk we could be sleepwalking into," he said.
He warned that the supervision indispensable to do more.
"We have never put sufficient in to combating cyber-crime. The Metropolitan police have difficulty nutritious e-crime units, because they are for all time being closed down or merged," he said.
He assist that the situation was not helped because the enlightenment of the UK's safety body GCHQ was non-collaborative, different that of the US's National Security Agency.
"Currently there are two well-defined communities, the polite residents and the counterclaim community. Outside of the counterclaim residents there is no source of expertise," he said.
"Bodies similar to the Information Commissioner's Office and the Metropolitan police do not have their own engineering staff, so are gratified to Cheltenham [the bottom for GCHQ] for advice."
He was not assured that GCHQ was the correct body is to job.
"It might take a cyber-attack to remonstrate the important apportion that GCHQ is amateurish and things must be changed," he said.
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