Report: Diverse group wrote code for Google attack

A diverse group of Chinese hackers who work as security professionals, consultants and temporary contractors for Chinese and American tech companies in China collaborated to develop the codes that led to an attack on Google's infrastructure last year, according to a report on Friday in The Washington Post.

The news follows a New York Times report on Thursday that linked the attacks to the prestigious Shanghai Jiaotong University and Lanxiang Vocational School. The Post, citing unnamed sources, said servers at those schools, as well as other servers, were used to route the attacks and mask the identities of the real attackers.

Sources also told the Post that investigators have narrowed the list of attackers to six individuals, including students who hack for the prestige that goes with it. The hackers who developed the code for the attack did not execute the attack, nor did they "nose around" the networks of Google or any of the other companies attacked, according to the report.

For more on this story, see WashPost: Diverse group developed codes for Google cyber attack on ZDNet.com.