The New York Times is reporting that the recent online attacks on Google (GOOG) and on other American corporations have been traced to two computers at schools in China.
The two schools in question are Shanghai Jiaotong University and the Lanxiang Vocational School, according to anonymous sources of the newspaper.
Jiaotong touts one of China’s top computer science programs. Lanxiang is a vocational school that was founded by the military and trains computer scientists for the military.
Google first announced on Jan. 12 that it and other companies were the targets of computer hijacking which were believed to be from China. The attacks, which were intended to steal trade secrets and computer codes and also the e-mail of Chinese human rights activists, may have begun in April --- months earlier than originally thought.
Only until recently, the investigation had led the National Security Agency to Taiwan.
Spokesmen for the Chinese schools said that they were unaware that American officials traced the hacking to the schools.
According to an interview with a professor of Jiaotong’s School of Information Security Engineering in the Times article, it is common for students to hack into foreign Web sites.
“I believe there’s two kinds of situations,” the professor said in the article. “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.”
Soon after Google announced its claim, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton confronted China with a speech on Internet censors, specifically on its control of open access.
An unknown flaw in Microsoft’s (MSFT) Internet Explorer allowed hackers access to Google’s servers. A technique called man-in-the-mailbox was utilized in the takeover of the company’s servers. After taking over a computer, the attackers insert a digital attachment into an e-mail message in which the recipient is likely to open, thus allowing the attackers access to the desired computer.
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