Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Google may pull out of China over cyber attacks

From http://www.roguegovernment.com/Google_may_pull_out_of_China_over_cyber_attacks/18926/0/18/18/Y/M.html

Google may pull out of China over cyber attacks
Published on 01-12-2010
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Source: Washington Post
Google, the world's largest Internet search engine, said Tuesday that it may pull out of China because of a sophisticated computer network attack originating in China and targeting its e-mail service.
Google said it had evidence to suggest that "a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts" of Chinese human rights activists. The attack was discovered in December.
Based on its investigation to date, Google said it does not believe the cyber attack succeeded. "Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves," the company said in a blog posting.
But David Drummond, Google senior vice president and chief legal officer, added that the attacks "have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China."
Google has further decided it is no longer willing to continue censoring its search results in Chinese Google sites, Drummond said, and over the next few weeks it will discuss with the Beijing government how it may operate "an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all," he said.

"We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China," he said.
At least 20 other large companies have been similarly targeted with such attacks, Google said. The firms' industries range from finance and technology to media and chemicals.
"We have taken the unusual step of sharing information about these attacks with a broad audience not just because of the security and human rights implications of what we have unearthed, but also because this information goes to the heart of a much bigger global debate about freedom of speech," Drummond said.
In a separate development, Google officials said, the company discovered that the Gmail accounts of dozens of China human rights advocates in the United States, China and Europe "appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties." The hacking occurred most likely through phishing scams -- luring users to download malicious software by opening innocent-looking e-mails -- or malware placed on users' computers, rather than by breaking into Google's corporate infrastructure, the company said.
China is among a handful of countries considered to have impressive cyber offensive capabilities, but U.S. officials have refrained from publicly accusing the country because determining with certainty who is behind an attack is quite difficult.
Attacks against China rights activists have been growing, however, and suspicion has fallen on the Beijing government or its broad army of proxies.
When Google set up a subsidiary in China in 2005 and purchased servers hosted in the country, it agreed to censor its search results. But the company and the government officials trolling the Internet have continued to clash over what content should be blocked.

The conflicts escalated in June when Beijing blamed Google for smut on the Internet, saying that some search results could be considered pornographic. The government ordered Google to halt foreign Web searches. Many Chinese bloggers pointed out that Chinese search engines would produce the same results but only the foreign company was singled out for blame in headlines in the state-run People's Daily and New China News Service.
That same month China temporarily blocked Google.com and Gmail in what was believed to be a punishment.
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