Google implicates the Chinese government of cyber warfare, considers pulling out of China

Filed under: Internet, Security, Google

Ladies and gentlemen, you are now witnessing a landmark moment. Look at the clock, take a good look around you and absorb your surroundings, because history is being made. Google has just published a statement with thinly-veiled disgrace for the Chinese government. While it's not said directly -- perhaps for fear of serious retaliation -- the wording definitely implies that the Chinese government or its agencies has hacked Google's infrastructure, performed surveillance and stolen its intellectual property.

Google goes on to say that the primary focus of the attack was its Gmail service. But it gets murkier: it was a targeted attack on the email accounts of Chinese human rights activists. And to add insult to injury: U.S.-, Europe- and China-based users who are advocates of human rights in China have been routinely accessed by third parties. In other words, someone (the Chinese security agency?) has phished for account details or installed backdoor/trojan malware on these advocates' computers.

Ultimately, in an act that is surely designed to extol their primary tenet, virtue and slogan 'don't be evil', Google is now planning to remove its censoring of the Internet for Chinese users. "[...] We will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China."

Remember the day, for this is finally the day when a corporation sticks it to an entire nation. The largest nation in the world. Google's sure got balls.

Update 14 January 21:10 EST: The White House has now added their support of Google's actions against China.

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Google implicates the Chinese government of cyber warfare, considers pulling out of China originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 19:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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