The New York Times is reporting that one of the U.S. State Department cables in the WikiLeaks release is directly linking China’s political leaders to the ‘Operation Aurora’ cyber-attacks on Google and other U.S. companies.
The Google attack was ”part of a coordinated campaign of computer sabotage carried out by government operatives, private security experts and Internet outlaws recruited by the Chinese government,” according to one of the leaked cables.
From the article:
A global computer hacking effort: China’s Politburo directed the intrusion into Google’s computer systems in that country, a Chinese contact told the American Embassy in Beijing in January, one cable reported. The Google hacking was part of a coordinated campaign of computer sabotage carried out by government operatives, private security experts and Internet outlaws recruited by the Chinese government. They have broken into American government computers and those of Western allies, the cables said.
Microsoft says Google was hacked with IE zero-day
Google has already pinned the blame for the “highly sophisticated and targeted attack” on China but there has been little tangible (public) evidence proving conclusively that it was a state-sponsored hack.
The attacks occurred during 2009 and included the use of a zero-day vulnerability in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser. The attackers were able to hack into corporate systems at more than 30 U.S. companies, including Google, Adobe and Juniper Networks.
