Google Hack Traced to Two Chinese Schools

Remember last month's row between Google and China? New details have emerged on the sources of the attacks, reports The New York Times. Both are educational institutions--one has close ties to the Chinese military and the other has one of the top computer science programs in the country. But while many nefarious assumptions have been made about the Chinese government's involvement, there is still the possibility that the hackers could have been just a couple of wayward techies.
 
[A] leading professor in Jiaotong’s School of Information Security Engineering said in a telephone interview: “I’m not surprised. Actually students hacking into foreign Web sites is quite normal.” The professor, who teaches Web security, asked not to be named for fear of reprisal.
 
“I believe there’s two kinds of situations,” the professor continued. “One is it’s a completely individual act of wrongdoing, done by one or two geek students in the school who are just keen on experimenting with their hacking skills learned from the school, since the sources in the school and network are so limited. Or it could be that one of the university’s I.P. addresses was hijacked by others, which frequently happens.”
 
But experts within the computer security industry and the Obama administration have other ideas, including that the vocational school is a beard for government operations or that the attacks are a part of a complex and rather large criminal industrial espionage ring that seeks to steal intellectual property from the U.S. corporations.
 
(Photo credit: ullrich.c; C.C. 2.0)