Chinese military refutes link to cyber attack on Google

BEIJING - Senior Chinese military experts and educators have dismissed reports suggesting that the military was in any way involved in cyber attacks on Internet search giant Google.

In a Thursday report, The New York Times (NYT) linked two Chinese educational institutions - Lanxiang Vocational School based in Jinan, Shandong province and Shanghai Jiaotong University - to the online attacks that also targeted American corporations.

The newspaper also cited Lanxiang’s ties with the Chinese military and Baidu, the major Chinese online search engine and Google competitor.

Pan Zheng, a senior expert in US strategy at National Defense University, told China Daily the Google attacks “had nothing to do with the Chinese government and military”.

Pan said the search engine’s accusation is inadequate. “Even if the hacking location was confirmed to be inside China, it is still different from saying the attacks are backed by China.”

The NYT report also said that “if supported by further investigation, 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”.

Major General Luo Yuan, who is with the Academy of Military Sciences, said that allegations linking the attacks with the Chinese government and military are irresponsible.

“China has on many occasions reiterated that it opposes hackings of any form and such activities are strictly prohibited by law. Its military would not go against the rules,” Luo said.

A leading professor from the school of information security engineering in Shanghai Jiaotong University told the NYT in a phone interview that the findings were not surprising as students hacking into overseas websites is usual.

Lanxiang Vocational School’s spokeswoman, surnamed Zhou, also refuted the allegations of her institution’s involvement with the Chinese military. (ANI)