Fighter488
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Google hackers traced to two top schools in China
John Markoff & David Barboza
San Francisco: 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 trade secrets and computer codes and capturing email of Chinese human rights activists, may have begun as early as April, months earlier than previously believed. Google announced on January 12 that it and other companies had been subjected to sophisticated attacks that probably came from China.
Computer security experts, including investigators from the National Security Agency, have been working since then to pinpoint the source of the attacks. Until recently, the trail had led only to servers in Taiwan. Computer security industry and the US government are differing over how to interpret the finding.
The Chinese schools involved are Shanghai Jiaotong University and the Lanxiang Vocational School, according to people with knowledge of the probe who asked for anonymity.
Jiaotong has one of Chinas top computer science programs. Just a few weeks ago its students won an international computer programming competition organized by IBM beating out Stanford and other top-flight universities.
Lanxiang, in Shandong Province, is a huge vocational school that was established with military support and trains some computer scientists for the military. The schools computer network is operated by a company with close ties to Baidu, the dominant search engine in China and a competitor of Google. NYT NEWS SERVICE