The Chinese cyber attacks

The Chinese government may have ordered cyber attacks on Google, according to the latest US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks. Citing the cables, the New York Times said China made repeated and often successful hacking attacks on the US government, private enterprises and Western allies as far back as 2002.

Google closed its China-based search engine service in March, two months after saying it would stop censoring results.

It said the move was a response to what it described as a sophisticated cyber attack that it traced to China.

The dispute was resolved in July after Google tweaked the way it directs users to an unfiltered search engine.The paper quoted one cable dated earlier this year as saying: "A well-placed contact claims that the Chinese government co-ordinated the recent intrusions of Google systems.

According to the cables, at least one previously unreported 2008 attack, which US investigators code-named Byzantine Candor, yielded more than 50 megabytes of email messages and a complete list of user names and passwords from a US government agency.

Source : skyNews