Google's Troubles and Chinese Nerds

Google's recent cyber-security problems, which lead the company to threaten to pull out of China if the Chinese government refused to lift internet censorship, may have been perpetrated by a few junior college and university students. According to the New York Times, experts investigating the incursion have pointed to the Shanghai Jiaotong University and the Lanziang Vocational School in the Shandong Province.

A few weeks ago the Jiaotong University won the international "Battle of the Brains" competition, a prestigious programming contest put on by IBM. Jiaotong has one of preeminent computer security programs in China. Furthermore, Lanziang Vocational School reportedly has ties to the Chinese military, and trains Chinese military computer scientists.

A professor of web security from Jiaotong was quoted saying:

"I’m not surprised. Actually students hacking into foreign web sites is quite normal. I believe there’s two kinds of situations, 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.”

So there you have it, maybe what transpired was the orchestrations of some covert Chinese military hacking outfit, or maybe just the efforts of a few mischievous "geeks."

Full article here.