China has become the biggest state sponsor of cyber-attacks on the West, primarily in its bid to steal commercial secrets, according to a report today by one of the world’s largest cybersecurity firms.

Crowdstrike, which revealed the Russian hack on the Democratic National Committee in 2016, said China was now ahead of Russia as the most prolific nation-state mounting attacks on firms, universities, government departments, think tanks and NGOs.

Its analysis of thousands of cyberattacks in the first six months of this year revealed more than a third (36pc) were targeted at technology firms, with a particular increase in attacks on biotechnology companies aimed at stealing their research secrets and intellectual property. Pharmaceutical, defence, mining and transport companies were also hit.

It said cyber-hackers were using increasingly sophisticated techniques to breach Western defences by replicating established software to hack firms, hijacking a firm’s clients’ computers as a potential ‘Trojan Horse’ route into their target and using personalised ‘phishing’ emails to senior executives.

China has become a bigger threat after a reorganisation of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) put hacking in the hands of contract firms, effectively privatising operations.

Free of previous Chinese state bureaucracy, they are run by computer science experts with extensive links into hacking forums and groups, says Crowdstrike, which provides cybersecurity for half of the world’s biggest 20 multinationals.