Cyber attacks prompt probable Google withdrawal from China
Thursday, January 14, 2010
An attempt to crack the email security protecting the accounts of several human rights activists in China and elsewhere has caused search giant Google to end its cooperative relationship with the Chinese government, and, experts say, probably cease operations in China altogether.
CNET's Elinor Mills reports that the recent attack was similar to one that targeted U.S. companies this summer, citing information from security researchers at VeriSign. A maliciously crafted PDF file was attached to email messages, hoping to exploit a zero-day flaw in Adobe's Reader software.
That flaw was corrected by Adobe in a patch released on Tuesday, which was the same day that Google announced its decision to stop censoring its search results from the Google.cn web portal. Experts say that this decision will almost certainly lead to the government banning the search engine from being accessed by Chinese surfers.
Mills says that, although there is widespread suspicion about the Chinese government's role in these attacks, there is no evidence linking that country's authorities to the attempted email hacking.
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