They found that for 15 minutes in April a Chinese state controlled telecommunications company was able to hijack 15 percent of the world's internet traffic, including data from the US military, civilian organizations and other US allies.

The Chinese could have carried out eavesdropping on unprotected communications like email and instant messaging and manipulated data passing through their country or decrypted messages.

As of now, no one outside of China can say what happened to the terabytes of data after the traffic entered China.

Congress charged the Commission to evaluate the national security implications of the bilateral trade and economic relationship between the United States and the China.

This story is part of Federal News Radio's daily Cybersecurity Update brought to you by Tripwire. For more cybersecurity news, click here.