Hacker Attacks May Drive Google Out of China

The Washington Post has reported a sophisticated computer network attack originating in China, and targeted primarily at Google’s Gmail service and corporate infrastructure, has led the company to threaten to pull out of the country completely.

Google says it has evidence that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists, but it also said that at least 20 other large companies including finance, media and chemical firms have been the targets of similar attacks. 

“It’s clear that this attack was so pervasive and so essential to the core of Google’s intellectual property that only in such a situation would they contemplate pulling the plug on their entire business model in China,” says James Mulvenon, a China cyber expert with Defense Group.

Some 34 other companies are believed to also have been targeted, including Adobe, Northrop Grumman, Dow Chemical and others.  Hackers appeared to be after information on weapons systems and companies’ “source code” which is the most valuable form of intellectual property as it relates to a firm’s computer applications.

The National Security Agency and other authorities are participating in the investigation of these events.  Google says it discovered the attacks in December. 

In a related story, The Washington Post reported that roughly 80 million Chinese citizens currently use the Google search engine and that the Chinese government potentially faces a significant backlash if Google makes good on its threat to leave the nation.  In addition to hacker attacks, Google is unhappy with the Chinese censorship of its Web site and monitoring of email accounts. 

For more information, see both stories in The Washington Post
“Google threatens to leave China after attacks on activists’ e-mail” 

“China’s Google dilemma”