Law firm that sued Chinese government reports cyber attack
The Los Angeles law firm representing a software company that filed a software piracy suit against the People's Republic of China last week said today that it has been the victim of a cyber-attack that originated in China this week. (Statement)
On Monday evening, the lawyers at the firm of Gipson, Hoffman and Pancione in Los Angeles began receiving trojan e-mails made to appear as if they were sent from within the firm. It remains unclear yet whether any of attacks were successful at allowing attackers access to any data. The attacks, which have been reported to the FBI and are under investigation, come a day after Google announced that it had been attacked from within China and threatened to shutter its Google.cn site.
Google said yesterday that at least 20 other large companies in the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors were similarly targeted. Adobe confirmed yesterday that it was victim of a "sophisticated" and "coordinated" attack on its corporate network systems, though it was unclear if that attack originated in China. Adobe became aware of the attack on January 2, 2010.
On January 5, 2010, the firm filed a $2.2 billion lawsuit against the People's Republic of China, two Chinese software developers and seven PC manufacturers for allegedly pirating 3,000 lines of code from the Cybersitter software developed by California-based Solid Oak Software. The suit alleges that the code was used to develop the Green Dam Youth Escort software, a content filtering program that is required to be installed in all PCs sold in the country.
Days after the government issued a directive calling for the software installations last June, allegations about the pirated code surfaced. The law firm also said today that the makers of the Cybersitter software came under cyber attack from within China last June, shortly after the reports of piracy first surfaced in the press.
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