Chinese hackers broke into the computer network of the Ministry of External Affairs recently, prompting the government to think about fortifying the system.

No sensitive information is believed to have been accessed during the hacking which was detected during regular checks by the intelligence agencies, official sources said in New Delhi on Friday.

Though the government does not have any specific idea about who the hackers were, the IP addresses left behind suggested the hand of Chinese.

The sources sought to play down the development, saying it was an ongoing effort by hackers from China, Europe or any other country to break into the computer networks of MEA and these attempts would continue till technology is used.

The government will have to improve the defences and fortify the system to defeat such attempts, they said.

Noting that it was not yet clear what kind of information was accessed by the hackers, the sources said no sensitive information is believed to have been accessed as such documents are not usually kept on computers that have online connections.

The trend of hacking began several years back and intelligence agencies regularly check the systems to detect these.