Google China Google Cyberattack Part of Vast Espionage Campaign

Some things never change with the Communist overlords in China who still believe that they can do whatever they want in terms of espionage and theft of financial and corporate data. The Beijing Olympics were supposed to showcase a changed China, but obviously not much has changed as Google has learned the hard way. While China represents a huge market, as Google is learning, perhaps businesses need to think twice about doing business in the country until it begins to respect legal rights of both its residents and foreign companies operating within that nation. Besides spying on its own human rights activists, China has also sought to gain business and national security information. Just maybe Google and others need to exit the country if the same old ways are going to just keep on continuing. In a statement, Google said in part as follows:

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These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered--combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web--have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

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The Washington Post has more coverage on the Chinese cyber attack and here are some highlight:
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Computer attacks on Google that the search giant said originated in China were part of a concerted political and corporate espionage effort that exploited security flaws in e-mail attachments to sneak into the networks of major financial, defense and technology companies and research institutions in the United States, security experts said.
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At least 34 companies -- including Yahoo, Symantec, Adobe, Northrop Grumman and Dow Chemical -- were attacked, according to congressional and industry sources. Google, which disclosed on Tuesday that hackers had penetrated the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights advocates in the United States, Europe and China, threatened to shutter its operations in the country as a result.
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Human rights groups as well as Washington-based think tanks that have helped shape the debate in Congress about China were also hit.
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Security experts say the attacks showed a new level of sophistication, exploiting multiple flaws in different software programs and underscoring what senior administration officials have said over the past year is an increasingly serious cyber threat to the nation's critical industries.
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The standoff between Google and China touches on the most sensitive subjects in U.S.-China relations: human rights and censorship, trade, intellectual property disputes, and access to high-tech military technology.
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"The recent cyber-intrusion that Google attributes to China is troubling, and the federal government is looking into it," White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said. He added that President Obama made Internet freedom "a central human rights issue" on his trip to China last fall.
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The recent attacks seem to have targeted companies in strategic industries in which China is lagging, industry experts said. The attacks on defense companies were aimed at gaining information on weapons systems, experts said, while those on tech firms sought valuable source code that powers software applications -- the firms' bread and butter. The attacks also focused on obtaining information about political dissidents.

Blackwater's Owner Has Spies for Hire

Oh goody! If hired mercenaries were not enough, Blackwater is expanding it service to include spies for hire. According to the Washington Post, The Prince Group, the holding company that owns Blackwater Worldwide, has been building an operation that will sniff out intelligence about natural disasters, business-friendly governments, overseas regulations and global political developments for clients in industry and government. So are the Chimperator and Emperor Palpatine Cheney using them here in the U.S. to spy on would be terrorists (i.e. anyone the Chimperator doesn't like or deems to be a threat in his never-never land of warped reality)? It truly would not surprise me. And I wonder how many bloggers are on Chimpy's enemies list.Here are story highlights (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/02/AR2007110202165.html?hpid=topnews):

The operation, Total Intelligence Solutions, has assembled a roster of former spooks -- high-ranking figures from agencies such as the CIA and defense intelligence -- that mirrors the slate of former military officials who run Blackwater. Its chairman is Cofer Black, the former head of counterterrorism at CIA known for his leading role in many of the agency's more controversial programs, including the rendition and interrogation of al-Qaeda suspects and the detention of some of them in secret prisons overseas.

They have the skills and background to do anything anyone wants," said RJ Hillhouse, who writes a national security blog called The Spy Who Billed Me. "There's no oversight. They're an independent company offering freelance espionage services. They're rent-a-spies." Black and Richer spend much of their time traveling. They won't say where. It's a CIA thing. Black called at midnight recently to talk about Total Intel from "somewhere in the Middle East."

Pakistan perhaps??