For the past four months, Chinese hackers have persistently attacked the New York Times, infiltrating its computer systems and getting passwords for its reporters and other employees.
After surreptitiously tracking the intruders to study their movements and help erect better defenses to block them, the Times and computer security experts have expelled the attackers and kept them from breaking back in.
The timing of the attacks coincided with the report of a Times investigation, published online on Oct. 25, that found that the relatives of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) had accumulated a fortune worth several billion of US dollars through business dealings.
Security experts hired by the Times to detect and block the computer attacks gathered digital evidence that Chinese hackers, using methods that some consultants have associated with the Chinese military in the past, breached the Times’ network.
They broke into the e-mail accounts of its Shanghai bureau chief, David Barboza, who wrote the reports on Wen’s relatives, and Jim Yardley, the Times’ South Asia bureau chief in India, who previously worked as bureau chief in Beijing.
“Computer security experts found no evidence that sensitive e-mails or files from the reporting of our articles about the Wen family were accessed, downloaded or copied,” Times executive editor Jill Abramson said.
The hackers tried to cloak the source of the attacks on the Times by first penetrating computers at US universities and routing the attacks through them, said computer security experts at Mandiant, the company hired by the Times. This matches the subterfuge used in many other attacks that Mandiant has tracked to China.
The attackers first installed malicious software, or malware, that enabled them to gain entry to any computer on the Times’ network. The malware was identified by computer security experts as a specific strain associated with computer attacks originating in China. More evidence of the source, experts said, is that the attacks started from the same university computers used by the Chinese military to attack US military contractors in the past.
Security experts found evidence that the hackers stole the corporate passwords of every Times employee and used those to gain access to the computers of 53 employees, most of them outside the Times’ newsroom.
Experts found no evidence that the intruders used the passwords to seek information that was not related to the reporting on the Wen family.
No customer data was stolen from the Times, they said.
Asked about evidence that indicated the hacking originated in China, China’s Ministry of National Defense on Wednesday said that “to accuse the Chinese military of launching cyberattacks without solid proof is unprofessional and baseless.”
In Beijing, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Hong Lei (洪磊) told reporters: “The competent Chinese authorities have already issued a clear response to the groundless accusations made by the New York Times.”
Asked about cyberspying and hacking accusations made against China in general, he said: “To arbitrarily assert and to conclude without hard evidence that China participated in such hacking attacks is totally irresponsible.”
“China is also a victim of hacking attacks. Chinese laws clearly forbid hacking attacks, and we hope relevant parties takes a responsible attitude on this issue,” he said.
Additional reporting by AFP
TAIWAN IS TAIWAN: US Representative Tom Tiffany said the amendment was not controversial, as ‘Taiwan is not — nor has it ever been — part of Communist China’ The US House of Representatives on Friday passed an amendment banning the US Department of Defense from creating, buying or displaying any map that shows Taiwan as part of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The “Honest Maps” amendment was approved in a voice vote on Friday as part of the Department of Defense Appropriations Act for the 2026 fiscal year. The amendment prohibits using any funds from the act to create, buy or display maps that show Taiwan, Kinmen, Matsu, Penghu, Wuciou (烏坵), Green Island (綠島) or Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) as part of the PRC. The act includes US$831.5 billion in
The paramount chief of a volcanic island in Vanuatu yesterday said that he was “very impressed” by a UN court’s declaration that countries must tackle climate change. Vanuatu spearheaded the legal case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, which on Wednesday ruled that countries have a duty to protect against the threat of a warming planet. “I’m very impressed,” George Bumseng, the top chief of the Pacific archipelago’s island of Ambrym, told reporters in the capital, Port Vila. “We have been waiting for this decision for a long time because we have been victims of this climate change for
Taiwan is hosting the International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL) for the first time, welcoming more than 400 young linguists from 43 nations to National Taiwan University (NTU). Deputy Minister of Education Chu Chun-chang (朱俊彰) said at the opening ceremony yesterday that language passes down knowledge and culture, and influences the way humankind thinks and understands the world. Taiwan is a multicultural and multilingual nation, with Mandarin Chinese, Taiwanese, Hakka, 16 indigenous languages and Taiwan Sign Language all used, Chu said. In addition, Taiwan promotes multilingual education, emphasizes the cultural significance of languages and supports the international mother language movement, he said. Taiwan has long participated
Taiwan must invest in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics to keep abreast of the next technological leap toward automation, Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) said at the luanch ceremony of Taiwan AI and Robots Alliance yesterday. The world is on the cusp of a new industrial revolution centered on AI and robotics, which would likely lead to a thorough transformation of human society, she told an event marking the establishment of a national AI and robotics alliance in Taipei. The arrival of the next industrial revolution could be a matter of years, she said. The pace of automation in the global economy can
RSS