Friday, March 5, 2010

Sino-American Tensions -- Google vs. China : Hack Attacks

Not long ago, Google gave another reason for pulling out of China. Google announced Tuesday that it had been the target of a “highly sophisticated” and coordinated hack attack against its corporate network. The attack was dubbed "Operation Aurora" by McAfee due to the belief that this is the name the hackers used for their mission.

It said the hackers had stolen intellectual property and sought access to the Gmail accounts of human rights activists. It was reported that the recent cyberattacks against Google and more than 30 other organisations appeared to have originated from computers at two schools in China.

One of the schools was identified as the Shanghai Jiaotong University; the other, as the Lanxiang Vocational School, an academic institution in China's Shandong Province with ties to the country's military.

The motive of the attack was coincidentally similar to what the Chinese government is trying to do . Such as sophiscated attack would need large amounts of funding, which may have came from the Chinese government.


However, many non-chinese companies also confirmed the digital assault. Minutes after Google announced its intrusion, Adobe also acknowledged in a blog post that it discovered Jan. 2 that it had also been the target of a “sophisticated, coordinated attack against corporate network systems managed by Adobe and other companies.”. Microsoft also admitted to the flaw in the Internet Explorer browser that allowed the hackers to gain excess to Gmail accounts and such, and published an advisory about the flaw that it already had in the works. Rackspace, a a hosting firm in Texas, was used by the hackers. Rackspace disclosed on its blog this week that it inadvertently played “a very small part” in the hack.

The company wrote that “a server at Rackspace was compromised, disabled, and we actively assisted in the investigation of the cyber attack, fully cooperating with all affected parties.”




As the evidence pile up against China, it is not confirmed that China was the culprit behind this. For all we know, this could just be Google's excuse for pulling out of China. The two universities involved in this attack also denied the attack. Inadvertently, this event drags the governments of the two countries into the conflict, as this hack attack might mean that China's military might have been behind this. This does not only affect business opportunities but also increase tensions and suspicions between the two superpowers.



Posted by T3echUL3ss0n at 5:45 AM