Media reports
have announced that news organisations like Washington Post, Wall
Street Journal, New York Times, etc are under cyber attacks. The
Washington Post believes that it has been attacked by Chinese
hackers. As per the allegations the attackers gained compromised
their computer systems as early as 2008 or 2009, but the cyber breach
was only discovered in 2011.
The computer systems of these newspapers were
infected by a malware that was communicating with its
command-and-control server associated with a Chinese hacking group.
It has also been reported that these new
organisations have now removed the malware and have made their
computer systems malware free once again. It seems the passwords of
these computers were compromised that gave the crackers access to the
computers of these news organisations.
Meanwhile, the Chinese Defense Ministry released a
statement that claims that the “Chinese military has never
supported any hack attacks. Cyber attacks have transnational and
anonymous characteristics. It is unprofessional and groundless to
accuse the Chinese military of launching cyber attacks without any
conclusive evidence.”
Eric Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman, has
described China as the most “sophisticated and prolific” hacker
of foreign companies in his forthcoming book co-authored by Jared
Cohen. According Schmidt Chinese state backed cyber crime is the
biggest online threat in the world.
