Effort gathered Chinese government agents,
online security experts... even outlaw hackers
online security experts... even outlaw hackers
Items in the latest WikiLeaks document dump reveal that the 2009 hacking attack on Google, Adobe, and others -which led to the withdrawal of Google Search from the Chinese market- was conducted Chinese government cyber-operatives, private security experts, and even Internet criminal hackers recruited directly by the Chinese government...
A global computer hacking effort: China’s Politburo directed the intrusion into Google’s computer systems in that country, a Chinese contact told the American Embassy in Beijing in January, one cable reported.
The Google hacking was part of a coordinated campaign of computer sabotage carried out by government operatives, private security experts and Internet outlaws recruited by the Chinese government. They have broken into American government computers and those of Western allies, the Dalai Lama and American businesses since 2002, cables said. -NYT
The attacks on Google servers had come in the wake of differences over the communist Chinese forcing Google to filter/censor results. Subsequently, Google email accounts were hacked, IP theft was carried-out, and trojan-horse malware attacks arrived to Chinese dissidents and others in a Pdf file:
The "highly sophisticated and targeted attacks" - which Google said also affected 20 other large firms across a wide range of businesses - were traced to Chinese IP addresses. These hacking attacks also involved attempts to steal the search giant's intellectual property but the primary target appears to have been webmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.
-The Register (UK)
-The Register (UK)
Israel's Stuxnet has not only hit Iran hard, but arrived in China as well. This provides a lesson in the viability of "weaponized" computer viruses, and Beijing sees this as an opportunity to leapfrog the West's massive military advantages by implementing it on a grand scale -here-