Recent allegations that Chinese authorities hacked into Microsoft's Outlook email service are "groundless", the official Xinhua news agency quoted Beijing's cyberspace regulator as saying late on Thursday. The comments, made by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) spokesman Jiang Jun, were in response to a Monday report by online censorship watchdog GreatFire.org, which said that Chinese users of the email service were subject to a hacking attack over the weekend.

Xinhua quoted Jiang as saying that the accusation aimed to "incite dissatisfaction and smear China's cyberspace management system".

Last month, Google's Gmail email service was shut down in China before resuming disrupted activity, forcing many Chinese users to adopt domestic email systems.