Suspected Chinese hackers tried to steal the passwords of hundreds of Google e-mail account holders, including those of senior US government officials, Chinese activists and journalists, the Internet company said.
The claim by the world’s largest Web search engine sparked an angry response from Beijing, which said blaming China was “unacceptable,” pointing to further tensions in an already strained relationship with Google.
The perpetrators appeared to originate from Jinan, the capital of Shandong Province, China, Google said. Jinan is home to one of six technical reconnaissance bureaus belonging to the People’s Liberation Army and a technical college US investigators last year linked to a previous attack on Google.
Washington said it was investigating Google’s claims while the FBI said it was working with Google following the attacks — the latest computer-based invasions directed at multinational companies that have raised global alarm about Internet security.
Andrew Davies of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, an independent security and defense think tank, said governments needed to pay more attention to hacking no matter where it originated from.
“I think there has been a certain lack of appreciation of the looming threat around the world,” Davies said. “We’ve been in catch-up mode for the last couple of years and it’s been hard to wake up Western governments to the magnitude of the threat.”
The hackers recently tried to crack and monitor e-mail accounts by stealing passwords, but Google detected and “disrupted” their campaign, the company said on its official blog. Google said it had notified the victims.
The revelation comes more than a year after Google disclosed a cyberattack on its systems that it said it traced to China. Google partially pulled out of China, the world’s largest Internet market by users, last year after a tussle with the government over censorship.
“We recently uncovered a campaign to collect user passwords, likely through phishing,” Google said, referring to the practice where computer users are tricked into giving up sensitive information.
It “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.”
A Washington-based security expert, Mila Parkour, first reported the Gmail attacks on her blog in February, saying they appeared to have started last year and were invasive.
China’s Foreign Ministry said it “cannot accept” accusations hackers in China tried to break into hundreds of Gmail accounts.
Google did not say the Chinese government was behind the attacks or say what might have motivated them.
However, a former US government official who served in China said he was fairly sure the Chinese government was responsible. He said it was a sign of Beijing’s fears that contagion from the Arab “jasmine” uprisings could spread to China.
“I’m fairly certain it’s the Chinese government, and probably the PLA [People’s Liberation Army],” said the former official, who asked that his name not be used.
LONG FLIGHT: The jets would be flown by US pilots, with Taiwanese copilots in the two-seat F-16D variant to help familiarize them with the aircraft, the source said The US is expected to fly 10 Lockheed Martin F-16C/D Block 70/72 jets to Taiwan over the coming months to fulfill a long-awaited order of 66 aircraft, a defense official said yesterday. Word that the first batch of the jets would be delivered soon was welcome news to Taiwan, which has become concerned about delays in the delivery of US arms amid rising military tensions with China. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said the initial tranche of the nation’s F-16s are rolling off assembly lines in the US and would be flown under their own power to Taiwan by way
CHIP WAR: The new restrictions are expected to cut off China’s access to Taiwan’s technologies, materials and equipment essential to building AI semiconductors Taiwan has blacklisted Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯), dealing another major blow to the two companies spearheading China’s efforts to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chip technologies. The Ministry of Economic Affairs’ International Trade Administration has included Huawei, SMIC and several of their subsidiaries in an update of its so-called strategic high-tech commodities entity list, the latest version on its Web site showed on Saturday. It did not publicly announce the change. Other entities on the list include organizations such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as well as companies in China, Iran and elsewhere. Local companies need
CRITICISM: It is generally accepted that the Straits Forum is a CCP ‘united front’ platform, and anyone attending should maintain Taiwan’s dignity, the council said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it deeply regrets that former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) echoed the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “one China” principle and “united front” tactics by telling the Straits Forum that Taiwanese yearn for both sides of the Taiwan Strait to move toward “peace” and “integration.” The 17th annual Straits Forum yesterday opened in Xiamen, China, and while the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) local government heads were absent for the first time in 17 years, Ma attended the forum as “former KMT chairperson” and met with Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Wang Huning (王滬寧). Wang
CROSS-STRAIT: The MAC said it barred the Chinese officials from attending an event, because they failed to provide guarantees that Taiwan would be treated with respect The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Friday night defended its decision to bar Chinese officials and tourism representatives from attending a tourism event in Taipei next month, citing the unsafe conditions for Taiwanese in China. The Taipei International Summer Travel Expo, organized by the Taiwan Tourism Exchange Association, is to run from July 18 to 21. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) on Friday said that representatives from China’s travel industry were excluded from the expo. The Democratic Progressive Party government is obstructing cross-strait tourism exchange in a vain attempt to ignore the mainstream support for peaceful development
RSS