Chinese Hacking Activity Traced

A series of online attacks on Google and dozens of other American corporations have been traced to computers at two educational institutions in China, including one with close ties to the Chinese military, say people involved in the investigation.

They also said the attacks, aimed at stealing computer codes, trade secrets and capturing e-mail of Chinese human rights activists, may have begun as early as April, months earlier than previously believed.

These sophisticated attacks have been traced back to an elite Chinese university and a vocational school, the Shanghai Jiaotong University and the Lanxiang Vocational School respectively.

Jiaotong has one of China’s top computer science programs, beating out Stanford and other top universities in competitions. Lanxiang, in east China’s Shandong Province, is a huge vocational school that was established with military support and trains some computer scientists for the military. The school’s computer network is operated by a company with close ties to Baidu, the dominant search engine in China and competitor of Google.

Some believe the vocational school is being used as a cover up for government operations. The findings raise as many questions as they answer, including the possibility that some of the attacks came from China but not necessarily from the Chinese government, or even from Chinese sources