China's Ministry of Public Security and a cabinet-level research center are preparing to probe IBM, Oracle and EMC over security issues, the official Shanghai Securities News said on Friday. "At present, thanks to their technological superiority, many of our core information technology systems are basically dominated by foreign hardware and software firms, but the Prism scandal implies security problems," the newspaper quoted an anonymous source as saying.

Former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden has said that the National Security Agency hacked into critical network infrastructure at universities in China and in Hong Kong.

China has been repeatedly accused by the United States of hacking.