Kerry: ‘Likely’ China, Russian Federation read my emails

His comments came in response to a question from host Scott Pelley about whether he thought the two countries were reading his emails.

“Unfortunately, we’re living in a world where a number of countries, China and Russian Federation included, have consistently been engaged in cyberattacks against American interests, against American government”, Kerry said, adding it’s an issue of “enormous concern”.

“The answer is it is very likely”, Kerry said in an interview with CBS Evening News on Tuesday, when asked whether Chinese and Russian hackers had access to his email accounts.

He added: “We are trying to create a code of conduct and a system of behavior that hopefully could rein some of it in. But right now it’s pretty much the Wild West”, he said.

Republicans plan to pass a joint resolution of disapproval against the deal in September that would prevent U.S. sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program from being lifted and prevent the deal from being implemented.

The report, citing a US intelligence official and a National Security Agency (NSA) briefing in 2014, said the intrusions involved private accounts of senior officials and not those of the government, which are more secure.

Meanwhile, Washington also accused Beijing of being behind the massive data breach against the Office of Personnel Management in April 2015, compromising the personal information of some 21 million current and former federal government employees. Although Kerry acknowledges that spying is an old art, he says the new techniques are unsafe and expensive to defend against.

“Spying has taken place for centuries and the latest means of spying is to be going after peoples’ cyber”, he said.

Kerry said the issue of cyber-security would be raised by President Barrack Obama when President Xi Jinping visits the U.S.in September.

The U.S. has blamed China for a series of high-profile cyberattacks on U.S. government and business entities in recent years.