Cyber-attack part of vast spy campaign

Washington : 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 email attachments to sneak into the networks of major financial, defence and technology companies and research institutions in the US, security experts said.

At least 34 companies — including Yahoo, Symantec, Adobe, Northrop Grumman and Dow Chemical — were attacked, according to congressional and industry sources.

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.

"Usually it's a group using one type of malicious code per target," said Eli Jellenc, head of international cyber-intelligence for VeriSign's iDefense Labs, a Silicon Valley company helping investigate the attacks. "In this case, they're using multiple types against multiple targets — but all in the same attack campaign. That's a marked leap in coordination."

The standoff touches on the most sensitive subjects in US-China relations: human rights and censorship, trade, intellectual property disputes, and access to military technology.

The recent attacks seem to have targeted companies in strategic industries in which China is lagging, industry experts said. The attacks on defence 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.

"This is a big espionage programme aimed at getting high-tech information and politically sensitive information needed to jump-start China's economy and the political information to ensure the survival of the regime," said James Lewis, a national security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "This is what China's leadership is after. This reflects China's national priorities."

— Washington Post News Service