NYT and Wall Street Journal go public on attacks by Chinese military hackers

The New York Times says criminal hackers have spent four months attacking its e-mail servers and staff computers trying to gain access to information related to the newspaper's investigation into the wealth of Wen Jiabao's family.

Attackers successfully installed spyware on 53 computers after gaining access to all Times employees passwords, but computer security experts "found no evidence" any reporting files were stolen.

China's Foreign Ministry yesterday challenged the evidence gathered by theNew York Times, then today The Wall Street Journal came forward to say its computers have also been infiltrated by Chinese hackers, something the FBI has been investigating for more than a year.

With the Foreign Ministry's response and what specifically intruders were looking for, asks The New Yorker's Evan Osnos, what does this say about Xi Jinping's pledge to tackle corruption?

The renewed commitment to combating corruption isn’t looking as sincere. On the contrary, this case feels like déjà vu for the Times: in 2004, the Chinese government detained the Times researcher Zhao Yan, accusing him of leaking state secrets.

So far, the biggest loser amid these online intrusions appears to beSymantec, whose antivirus software reportedly only detected one out of 45 types of malware used by the Times' attackers.

A New York Times report on Chinese hackers from 2010 - by David Barboza, one of the main targets these past four months - continues to be mocked by Chinese geeks today.

For more on the many other kinds of industrial cyber-espionage, check out the interview with Wired magazine senior writer Kim Zetter below.

Source:scmp.com