Tech & Biz

Jiaotong & Lanxiang Vocational School: Google China Hack Sources

by Jordan Yerman | February 19, 2010 at 10:30 am

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Computer forensics investigators have traced the Google China attack to computers at two vocational schools in China: Shanghai Jiaotong University and Lanxiang Vocational School, which has close ties to the Chinese military. Lanxiang Vocational School's network is run by Baidu, the leading search engine in China.

Jiaotong University has one of the best computer science programs in China.

So far, these findings point to two main possibilities: tha the Chinese government was using these schools as a front for an attempted Google crack, or that a third country or business entity used the schools as a springboard for the attack, looking to shift blame to China and its poor human-rights history in the event that the exploit was uncovered.

Tracing the attacks further back, to an elite Chinese university and a vocational school, is a breakthrough in a difficult task. Evidence acquired by a United States military contractor that faced the same attacks as Google has even led investigators to suspect a link to a specific computer science class, taught by a Ukrainian professor at the vocational school.