CHINA CAME out with a stout denial of claims by web giant Google that it was behind an audacious assault on the personal Gmail accounts of hundreds of senior US government officials.
“Blaming these misdeeds on China is unacceptable. Hacking is an international problem and China is also a victim. The claims that China supports this kind of hacking are without any basis in fact, and there is another motive at work,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei told a scheduled news briefing.
The latest accusations of hacking from China could ratchet up the pressure on relations between Beijing and Washington, which is trying to pressure China to do more to stop cyber-warfare.
It’s the second time in 17 months Google has identified China as the site of an audacious attempt to hack into its network.
Google’s security team engineering director Eric Grosse said in a blog posting they had uncovered a campaign to collect user passwords.
“This campaign, which appears to originate from Jinan, China, affected what seem to be the personal Gmail accounts of hundreds of users including, among others, senior US government officials, Chinese political activists, officials in several Asian countries (predominantly South Korea), military personnel and journalists,” Google said. Jinan is the capital of Shandong province and is home to the Lanxiang Vocational School, which was one of two prestigious educational facilities linked to a number of cyber attacks last year.
Lanxiang says it is a vocational school that trains hairdressers and chefs, and insists its expertise is in vehicle maintenance and repair. It advertises for students on TV and says it has the biggest computer laboratory in the world, a boast it says is confirmed by Guinness World Records.
Jinan is also home to one of six technical reconnaissance bureaus belonging to the People’s Liberation Army.
Online commentators had different opinions about what exactly happened and who was behind it.
One blogger called Waihui quipped: “Lanxiang vocational school is so powerful? They’ve done another invasion?”, while Yilouwang hailed Lanxiang for taking its place on the world stage.
“Maybe it was done by some young active hackers, they thought what they did was to show love for their country, but actually it only adds to the government’s foreign pressures, no more,” wrote Baibojiudao. Some were sceptical. Duyuxielan wrote in a microblog posting: “Do you think the Chinese government would say the hacker is from China? Even if he was, it would still publish an announcement saying it’s not true.” Fanjianzhi agreed. “Look at the accounts that were hacked. We all know who is the hacker...” The White House believes no key security breach took place of official government e-mail accounts, but the FBI and Homeland Security in the US are investigating.
Google’s relationship with China has been fraught for years, and although it is the second biggest search engine in China, it heavily trails market leader Baidu.
Last year, Google threatened to pull out of China completely over complaints of censorship and a sophisticated hacking assault originating from China in late 2009 and early last year.
China has tens of thousands of officials working at monitoring the internet, the famous “Great Firewall of China” and more than a dozen ministries and agencies are involved in enforcing the rules, which China says are aimed at stopping pornography and other harmful content, but which critics believe are used to stop dissent.Google went public on the attacks on its servers – which experts say were far more serious than the current round. True to its “Don’t Be Evil” motto, Google took its server to Hong Kong, where Beijing’s censorship does not reach.