Several U.S. media outlets experienced a massive wave of cyberattacks allegedly coming from the Chinese military over the last few months. While some newspapers have claimed that their networks are now safe, the Wall Street Journal may still be a victim of the online onslaught.
The newspaper's owner Rupert Murdock tweeted today, "Chinese still hacking us, or were over weekend."
On a visit to our offices last year, a U.S. lawmaker with knowledge of intelligence affairs explained that, when it comes to cyber-espionage, there are only two kinds of American companies these days: Those that have been hacked, and those that don't know they've been hacked. So it comes as no great surprise to learn that The Wall Street Journal has also been hacked.
The official newspaper of the Communist Party of China has rejected claims the country was involved in hacking U.S. news agencies The New York Times (NYT) and Wall Street Journal (WSJ).
"Even those with little understanding of the Internet know that hacking attacks are trans-national and concealable," said People's Daily on its front page, according to AFP's report Monday. It added the Internet protocol (IP) addresses were not sufficient to confirm the origin of the hackers.
China has dismissed accusations that it had hacked into the system of the New York Times, in a cyber-attack the paper linked to its expose of the wealth amassed by the family of Premier Wen Jiabao.
The New York Times earlier announced it had fallen victim to hackers and said they were possibly connected to China’s military.
Access to software collaboration site GitHub appeared to be restored in China on Wednesday, just as former Google executive Kai-Fu lee criticized its blocking as a senseless move that would harm the nation's developers.
Sources told popular Chinese web portal Tencent (via BrightWire) on Tuesday that Apple CEO Tim Cook outlined plans for the R&D center with acting Beijing Mayor Wang Anshun on Jan. 8.
A security audit of a US critical infrastructure company last year revealed that its star developer had outsourced his own job to a Chinese subcontractor and was spending all his work time playing around on the internet.
The firm's telecommunications supplier Verizon was called in after the company set up a basic VPN system with two-factor authentication so staff could work at home. The VPN traffic logs showed a regular series of logins to the company's main server from Shenyang, China, using the credentials of the firm's top programmer, "Bob".
Late last month, former CIA analyst Allen Thomson was clicking through a space news website when he noticed a story about a new orbital tracking site being built near the small city of Kashgar in southwestern China. Curious, he went to Google Earth to find it. He poked around for a while, with no luck. Then he came across something kind of weird.
Last month the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations (one of the US's most prestigious think tanks) was attacked by a group of hackers.
The attack aimed to compromise the computers of the website's high-profile clientele, which includes high-level politicians, powerful businessmen (and humble Shanghaiist writers).
The hack was believed to be carried out by the Elderwood Group, a China-based hacker coalition that has previously targeted Google, Tibetan- and Uyghur-rights groups, Amnesty International, Taiwanese travel sites, and other pages seen to be "anti-China."
Apple today said it has sold 2 million iPhone 5 smartphones in China since Friday, setting an opening weekend sales record for the country.
The announcement was Apple's first to trumpet sales in the People's Republic of China (PRC), as well as the first to tout numbers for any individual market other than the U.S.
