SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Last month, when Google engineers at their sprawling campus in Silicon Valley began to suspect that Chinese intruders were breaking into private Gmail accounts, the company began a secret counteroffensive.
It managed to gain access to a computer in Taiwan that it suspected of being the source of the attacks. Peering inside that machine, company engineers actually saw evidence of the aftermath of the attacks, not only at Google, but also at at least 33 other companies, including Adobe Systems, Northrop Grumman and Juniper Networks.
Seeing the breadth of the problem, they alerted American intelligence and law enforcement officials and worked with them to assemble powerful evidence that the masterminds of the attacks were not in Taiwan, but on the Chinese mainland.
But while much of the evidence, including the sophistication of the attacks, strongly suggested an operation run by Chinese government agencies, or at least approved by them, company engineers could not definitively prove their case. Today that uncertainty, along with concerns about confronting the Chinese without strong evidence, has frozen the Obama administration’s response to the intrusion, one of the biggest cyberattacks of its kind, and to some extent its response of other targets, including some of the most prominent American companies.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Makes you wonder how lame US Gov cybersecurity is & kudos to GOOG
Update 1
Obama's Challenge in Cyberspace
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Richard A. Clarke
Former Advisor to the President on Cyber Security
In the next few days President Obama will decide whether he will live up to his campaign promises about dealing seriously with the challenge of cyber security by creating a White House office to direct government activity and coordinate with the private sector. None of the options being served up to him will create the stand alone White House office that is needed to provide the leadership on this issue.
The reasons that this decision is important have been spread across the media this last month. Among the facts revealed are that foreign intelligence services have penetrated the control systems of the US electric power grid and have left behind "logic bombs" and "trap doors;" data about America's latest fighter aircraft, the F-35 Lightning II, has been copied off the networks of defense contractors and sent overseas; the Pentagon plans to appoint a new four star general to run a new Cyber Command based on the National Security Agency (NSA); and a National Academy of Sciences blue ribbon panel has urged caution about the US engaging in offensive cyber war.
Net Net: I don't think Obama 'measured up' very well
Update 2
January 14, 2010
Microsoft's Ballmer: We're Staying in China and Addressing IE Security Issues
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/...
Hilarious !
Update 3
Four possible explanations for Google’s big China move
http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/...
Excited by the fourth possibility i.e. Google is about to join the front lines of the anticensorship wars.