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Bad News For Diplomacy: Chinese Gov't to Blame in Google Attacks

by Amar Toor on January 14, 2010 at 06:25 PM

As Chinese citizens continue to shower Google's Beijing headquarters with flowers and "Thank You Google" cards, a group of researchers reportedly identified the source behind the cyber attacks that spurred Google's recent decision to stand up to the People's Republic. According to a report from VeriSign iDefense Labs, the Chinese government was indeed behind the December attack on Google and 30 other companies, and may have even orchestrated a remarkably similar attack on U.S. companies back in July. iDefense researchers were able to trace the attacks back to its server source, which they unequivocally claim to be "a single foreign entity consisting either of agents of the Chinese state or proxies thereof."

Not only do the findings validate Google's accusation of China's involvement in the recent Gmail attack, they also cast a shadow of suspicion over the role the government played in the July cyber attacks on Silicon Valley companies. Both assaults, apparently, emanated from "IP addresses within the same subnet," leading researchers to speculate that "the two attacks are one and the same, and that the organizations targeted in the Silicon Valley attacks have been compromised since July."

If this is, in fact, true, and China has indeed been actively spying on U.S. tech companies, this could open a whole new can of diplomatic worms. China will soon be faced with a lot of questions. Let's hope they don't censor their answers. [From: Ars Technica]

Tags: china, chinese government, ChineseGovernment, cyber attack, CyberAttack, google, hackers, hacking, politics, top

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