China's Baidu sues US domain registrar over attack
Summary
Leading Chinese search engine Baidu.com has filed a lawsuit that blames a US-based internet domain registrar for allegedly allowing a hacking attack that left the site disabled and defaced.
Topics
Leading Chinese search engine Baidu.com has filed a lawsuit that blames a US-based internet domain registrar for allegedly allowing a hacking attack that left the site disabled and defaced.
Baidu filed the suit in New York on against Register.com, claiming the domain registrar's "gross negligence" lead to the search giant being "unlawfully and maliciously altered", the company said in a statement on Tuesday.
Baidu's site was disabled for several hours January 12, and visitors were re-directed to a site where a group calling itself the Iranian Cyber Army claimed responsibility for the attack. The same group had taken credit for a similar attack on Twitter in December.
Baidu said its Chinese site — Baidu.com.cn — was unaffected by the outage. Baidu controls about 62.2 percent of the Chinese search market compared with Google's 14.1 percent, according to ComScore numbers for November 2009.
For more on this story, read "Baidu.com sues US domain registrar over hacking" on CNET News.
Talkback Most Recent of 20 Talkback(s)
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Hallowed are the Ori20th Jan 2010 -
Hypocrisy ....
The world's leading source-country for cyber-crap gets a dose of their own chicanery and can't wait to run to a US court and sue.
But make it impossible to do the same thing to entities in their own country, including their government.
Priceless.
nottheusual120th Jan 2010 -
What's sauce for the goose
is sauce for the gander. Those who think that all such attacks or a majority of them come from China are deluding themselves - wittingly and unwittlingly - and trying to do so to the rest of us as well....
Henri
mhenriday20th Jan 2010 -
Master Joe Says...
This is the pot calling the kettle black, if there ever was such a thing. I can say that my sympathy for Baidu is 0%. Don't go blaming someone (especially if the attack is carried out by Iranians), when your own people are responsible for more cybercrime than any other country in the world. That would be like Obama suing an elephant for having big ears.
--Master Joe
MasterJoe20th Jan 2010 -
Reality Check
Factoring out whose Website got hacked, defaced, or attacked, and factoring out by whom, is suing the domain registrar typical? In other words, is Baidu's response way out of the norm?
If it is typical, then let's keep the China bashing to ourselves. If it's out of the norm, then these sentiments about "what goes around, comes around" are fair.
elizab20th Jan 2010 -
Red herring
Who do they want to fool? Weren't all the previous attacks by this so-called "Iranian Cyber Army" originated from China and targeted sites used by Iranian people to break the Iranian government's stranglehold on the media - dissidents' sites as well as social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter?
Now that those attacked sites started to take legal action against the Chinese, the Chinese react by hacking their own site!!
OldGuru20th Jan 2010 -
IT_Guy_z20th Jan 2010 -
I guess they could have a case if the DNS pointers were somehow affected.
No details provided, so it is really had to speculate.
Otherwise, its pointless.
Been_Done_Before20th Jan 2010 -
SystemVoid20th Jan 2010 -
Seems fair to me....
Google blaming the Chinese government for being hacked...
Baidu blaming the registrar for being hacked...
There point here being if Google can blame anybody without sufficient evidence, then I guess it's fair game for anyone else.
BTW, just because Google says that the hacked gmail accounts were those of human rights activists doesn't automatically make the Chinese government guilty.
ckl_8820th Jan 2010 -
After the outed activist's organs are harvested, sold to rich westerners
Who will be left to speak up for the oppressed? You?
Yep Goog just snatched the china accusation out from their behind. Not by using network investigative tools. If you don't believe the Communist Chinese Govt. has many server farms dedicated to the theft of the worlds Private, Govt, and Military IP. Then you're either insincere or not too smart. These attacks targeted individuals, on a personal level. There was some real 007 James Khan shite going on here. Including double agent insider types working for the Chin Govt, employed at Google.cn.
We know for a fact, now, Chinese agents have been working at and stealing secrets from Los Alamos National Laboratory since at least the 1980s. Now Chairman Mao can put multiple nuke warheads on his missles. Hooray for progress.
Chinese blatant, in your face, knockoff manufacturing of brand name products, rival and often exceed what actual companies can produce. Denying they would use the internet in this fashion is either subterfuge or ignorance.
Are you a spy trying to deflect us from the truth? Or just not very smart?
invmgr@...21st Jan 2010 -
Pfft !
Tell 'em they can take it out of the copyright violation settlement pool that China is waiting to hand over to all the US companies who've been victims of knock-off goods.
ejhonda20th Jan 2010 -
RE: China's Baidu sues US domain registrar over attack
FUGG CHINA! They are Responsible for a LOT of the pain in da azz stuff going aroung right now! GOOGLE PULL OUT OF CHINA!
Nahnot4ulol@...20th Jan 2010 -
Frivilous Chinese PR - You blabbed our domain name
Typical inept Chinese attempt at war of "losing face". They just do not understand the word plausible or some top Chinese Internet managers do not know basic Internet technology .
Domain registrars only control who owns domain names. LOL many do not even run name servers to match domain names to IPs.
The idea of SECRET but reserved domain names is sort of silly and pointless, the feeblest of security through obscurity with total reliance on obscurity. Apparently they expected to spread the domain name only by word of mouth and that the news media would not leak the name.
The nation that claims the history of building the Great Wall ought to think about simple use of firewall blocking at their Internet portals to the world. At least implement their simplistic access ideas in firewall rules that allow in country only trusted (whitelisted) agents from outside China by IP. Still not secure but taking some of the responsibility.
wellduh20th Jan 2010 -
Don't HELP Them!
The Chinese government is an evil dictatorship.
The latest incident with them hacking into Gmail
has made this, I hope, more obvious to more
people.
So don't help them in any way.
Then again, I have to admit: I don't know the
technology well enough to know whether your
"simplistiic access ideas" suggestion is help or
a false lead.
Please feel free to give them false leads at any
time!
mejohnsn20th Jan 2010
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