"NSA's activities are focused and specifically deployed against - and only against - valid foreign intelligence targets in response to intelligence requirements," Vanee Vines, an agency spokeswoman, said in a statement to the Times.
"We do not use foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies on behalf of - or give intelligence we collect to - US companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom line."
Parts of the program have been disclosed in documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the former NSA systems analyst, the Times reported.
A Dutch newspaper published the map showing where the United States has inserted spy software, sometimes with the help of local authorities. Der Spiegel, a German newsmagazine, published information about the NSA's hardware products that can secretly transmit and receive signals from computers, according to the Times.
The Times said that it withheld some of those details, at the request of US intelligence officials, when it reported in summer 2012 on American cyberattacks on Iran.
Hong Lei, a spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry, said Wednesday that the US "on one hand has been playing up the cyber threats from other countries, and on the other hand has been implementing cyber surveillance endangering the sovereignty, security and public privacy of other countries."
Hong called on the US to "work with the international community to create international regulations and build a peaceful, safe, open and cooperative cyberspace."
At New Delhi's Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses, cybersecurity expert Cherian Samuel said, "If it had been any other country doing this kind of thing, the US would have come down on them like a ton of bricks with punitive sanctions."
