The FBI was investigating allegations by Internet giant Google that Chinese hackers were behind the hacking of hundreds of Gmail accounts, including those of senior US officials, the White House said.

"US President Barack Obama is aware of it and is being updated on regularly," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters at his daily news conference.

"Threats to information and communications infrastructure pose a serious economic and national security challenge for the US and our partners, which is why the president has made cyber security one of his top priorities," he said.

"As with all intrusions, we employ an all-of-government approach with the appropriate agency in the lead. In this case, the FBI is coordinating a response. We're obviously aware of these reports. We're looking into these reports. We have no reason to believe, at this point, that any official US government email accounts were accessed," Carney said.

As of now, he said, there has been no impact on the US government policy, with regard to work emails, which is driven by the Presidential Records Act. "So the issue in terms of our work accounts, there we have no evidence to suggest that any of those accounts were accessed or compromised."