Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State
Washington, DC
January 12, 2010
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We have been briefed by Google on these allegations, which raise very serious concerns and questions. We look to the Chinese government for an explanation. The ability to operate with confidence in cyberspace is critical in a modern society and economy. I will be giving an address next week on the centrality of internet freedom in the 21st century, and we will have further comment on this matter as the facts become clear.
With any luck this will overshadow the recent obsession with currency devaluation. I am very curious to hear more about exactly what went on in this hacking attempt, as Google would not go to the US government unless they were very, very concerned about what had transpired during this attack.
From what I can find out, it appears Adobe Systems was also a target. It looks like that besides accessing activist emails, this attack's primary motive was to gain access to high-end intellectual property (source code) in all target corporations. I would posit that their plan was to use whatever material they could get to bolster their domestic software industry, though there could be some political advantage I am not seeing.
It is also very huge that at this dinner Clinton attended just a few days ago, Cisco Systems (which builds the routers and switches that make the internet what it is) and Microsoft (which has also been under extreme scrutiny for censorship of Bing) were both present along with Google. Twitter being there is also important, but more or less expected given its design has become so popular in the United States while being explicitly incompatible with China's system.
Judging by the chatter back and forth on Twitter, but more so in the back-alley communication networks of the Internet such as IRC, there is a moderate cyber-war going on now between US and Chinese nationalist hackers. Nothing major as of yet. It would seem that aside from a few American counter-attacks, there are mostly preparations being made for a Chinese retaliation for 'Google attacking Chinese pride'. Chinese hackers (or 'honkers' 红客 as they like to be called, the literal translation of hacker is heike 黑客, but they frequently utilize the 'red' image) are frequently lambasted as prone to error in their attacks due to emotion overriding precision, so United States hackers tend to wait for the Chinese to make the first move, then massively counter-assault based on information garnered during the imprecise Chinese assault.
Though considering Baidu was hacked by the Iranian Cyber Army just the other day, one could expect the cybersecurity situation in China to be tight in the coming weeks.