Piffey

Google reported on its blog today that the company has been repeatedly attacked by Chinese hackers, possibly working for the government, over a span of what could be up to two years. The Mountain View company is using this as an opportunity to finally turn back to their “don’t be evil” philosophy and tell China that it will no longer censor results on the Chinese version of its search engine. This comes as a shock to many people in technology since Google bent over backwards to cooperate with the Chinese government in 2006, under much criticism, so the company could gain a share of the massive Chinese market.

“These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.”

(Google Blog via The Register)

The attacks were reported as “highly sophisticated and targeted” and specifically compromised the G-mail accounts of a large group of human rights activists working in China. Along with these recent breaches in mid-December, Google discovered that more than 20 other companies have been breached. The companies range from technology firms, media outlets, and chemical companies. Each attack seems highly targeted and with the specific intention of either stealing source code, intellectual property, or the data of users that are considered to be working against the Chinese government.

Adobe also reported a similar security breach today that originated from China. No response has come from either the Chinese government or from any of the hackers responsible for the attacks. Google has been talking to relevant law enforcement agencies and has also contacted several of the other companies that experienced a security breach.

Many are speculating about what is going to come of this news since the U.S. nor the Chinese governments can remain silent on the issue. It is a known fact that the Chinese government employs hackers that routinely attack other nation’s Internet infrastructures. Some hopeful theorists say that this will mark the end of Chinese censorship of the Internet. More realistically however is that a digital trade war will ensure or that Google will just leave the idea alone and continue to censor results once everyone has forgotten about the story.

What’s interesting about this story is that Chinese and Russian hackers penetrate U.S. servers, even government servers, almost daily and it rarely makes the news. Why is it that Google suddenly finds it necessary to make some noise about the issue? Is Google thinking it can use this to flex its global political power and make the Chinese government cooperate with an unfiltered Internet delivered exclusively by the company to the Chinese people? Does Google think that making it an issue will provide them with more political sway with the current administration? It will be interesting to see what develops out of the attacks over the next few days and to what extent this announcement will be used.