Alleged attacks on Google by Chinese schools denied
- Source: Global Times
- [02:51 February 20 2010]
- Comments
By Hao Zhou
A man passes by the Google office in Beijing. Photo: Xinhua
Regarding reports that a string of cyber attacks on Google e-mail accounts were launched from servers at two Chinese schools, an Internet security expert said Friday that even if this is true, it doesn't necessarily mean the attackers were at the schools or in China.
The New York Times yesterday cited anonymous officials from the US National Security Agency involved in the investigation on the Google intrusions as saying that the attacks had been traced to computers at Shanghai Jiaotong University and Shandong Lanxiang Vocational School.
A security official who examined the incidents couldn't confirm the report, Bloomberg said later.
"Technically speaking, a computer's IP address doesn't represent the attacker's address," said Li Fei, an information security expert at China's National Defense University. "Even if the report is proved true, the real intruders could be anybody from anywhere in the world, because the IP address can be also hijacked."
The New York Times said evidence acquired by a US military contractor that faced the same attacks as Google has even led investigators to suspect a link to a specific computer science class, taught by a Ukrainian professor at Shandong Lanxiang vocational school.
It also alleged that Lanxiang is a huge school that was established with military support and trains some computer scientists for the military.
But a Lanxiang staff member, surnamed Li and responsible for telephone consultations on recruitment, told the Global Times Friday that the school has never invited foreign professors to teach at the school.
The students are mostly recruited from the countryside and are at high-school level, and the facility isn't equipped with the sophisticated equipment needed for such attacks, an unidentified person at Lanxiang told Bloomberg.
"All the armies in the world recruit from universities and high-level technical schools," a military expert said on condition of anonymity.
