back to article China goes on attack over Google phishing claims

China has angrily denounced Google's claims that it has uncovered a sophisticated spear phishing attack on key US individuals which originated from the heavily firewalled country. Google said in a blog post that the campaign "affected what seem to be the personal Gmail accounts of hundreds of users including, among others, …

COMMENTS

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  1. Mr Brush
    Devil

    China has the honour of being the first country blocked from posting on my site.

    GeoIP + ban on anything coming from 'CN' = 99% reduction in spam.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Me thinks....

    Sounds like China is ....errr ...what's that word now.... errr .....ah! Lying. That's it!

  3. Rachel 6

    am i the only one worried that...

    (according to the BBC) 'hundreds of top US officials, military personnel and journalists' have been hit by *any* kind of phishing attack?

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ah-ha!

    "Which is of course just what you would say if you were conducting a cyberwar."

    Unless they just want us to think they're conducting a cyberwar...

  5. ratfox
    Devil

    Overreacting

    "The claims of so-called Chinese state support for hacking are completely fictitious and have ulterior motives."

    I do not recall Google ever said the attacks were supported by the Chinese STATE; merely that they originated in China. Why are they so defensive? Tsk, tsk...

    1) It did not happen

    2) We did not do it

    3) You cannot prove we did it

  6. Graham Marsden
    WTF?

    Why the hell...

    ... are "senior U.S. government officials" using Gmail in the first place???

    1. Ru
      Facepalm

      Why the hell...

      should "senior U.S. government officials" be allowed to use government email servers for their own personal mail???

    2. Gannon (J.) Dick
      Childcatcher

      It's complicated ...

      The secrecy of the Bush years hid the fact that Spook Authorities thought the web a toy. They've known for a very long time that the commercial model of friendly persuasion doomed security, and wanted no part of it.

      http://krebsonsecurity.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/GIG-IA-Capabilities.pdf

      In addition, actual security concerns kept them from publicly saying so. Why fight for the 'right' to be Big Brother when you don't really want to be Big Brother to begin with ?

      Then Google moved to town (Washington) with lots of shiny stuff. Shiny stuff full of holes, which the Spook Authorities had long before dismissed. Since there were no specifications for shiny stuff, the Google 'explain nothing' Business Plan was mistaken for actual suitability. We know this is hardwired into the Google Corporate Culture, it's just not all that clear how dangerous a short attention span coupled with a callous disregard for individual well-being really is.

      And here we are. Hope this helps.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Paris Hilton

      The actual justification is long and complicated.

      In fact, even a summary would be long winded. So instead I will sum up:

      Because it's cheaper for the US government to contract its mail handling to Google than it is to do it themselves.

      Anon, because I work as a contractor at an agency looking to do just this. Oh, and yes we are routinely told that even though 99% of what we do is public information and freely available, the Chinese are targeting our agency.

  7. Zippy the Pinhead
    Pirate

    China.. yes we believe you

    Of course China itself isn't spying.. its all those silly hackers you hire who does that.. Thanks for clearing that up for us

  8. Originone

    Audience?

    "The claims of so-called Chinese state support for hacking are completely fictitious and have ulterior motives"

    Seriously, who do they think this statement is for? Surely they know that the only people who matter won't believe this. Even if it is true it shouldn't be, its expected that China is doing this kind of thing so if they're not they may as well since they're going to be accused of it anyway.

    As a side note I quite respect the chinese form of communism, I can't imagine any other form of government that could have elevated so many so quickly from subsistance poverty to middleclass.

  9. Head
    Mushroom

    Hmmm

    I love the bit where they say they are going to find those responsible and shoot them in the head..

    ... oh wait.

  10. Tom 13

    So then, that will be confirmation that

    Google actually zeroed in on that one rather nicely.

    I would have thought the Chinese would know better than to mess with Mr. I-know-more-about-you-than-you-do-yourself.

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