wikileaks cables blame chinese government for google hacking

8/13/2019 WikiLeaks Cables Blame Chinese Government for Google Hacking

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/wikileaks-cables-blame-chinese-government-for-google-hacking 1/3

WikiLeaks cables blame Chinesegovernment for Google hackingLeading politician ordered attacks after Googling his own name

and finding critical articles, US dispatches say

Dan Sabbagh

guardian.co.uk, Saturday 4 December 2010 17.46 GMT

larger | smaller

Google pulled out of China amid a row over government censorship and hacking of its systems, including Gmail

accounts used by activists. Photograph: Bao Fan/Getty Images/Chinafotopress

The hacking of Google that forced the search engine to withdraw from mainland China

was orchestrated by a senior member of the communist politburo, according to

classified information sent by US diplomats to Hillary Clinton's state department in

Washington.

The leading politician became hostile to Google after he searched his own name and

found articles criticising him personally, leaked cables from the US embassy in Beijing

say.

Leaks cabl es bl ame Chi nese government for Googl e hac. . . http: / / www. guardi an. co. uk/technol ogy/2010/ dec/ 04/ wi ki l ea. . .

ur 3 2010-12-5 11: 5



That single act prompted a politically inspired assault on Google, forcing it to "walk

away from a potential market of 400 million internet users" in January this year, amid a

highly publicised row about internet censorship.

The explosive allegation that the attack on Google came from near the top of the

Communist party has never been made public until now. The politician allegedly

collaborated with a second member of the politburo in an attempt to force Google todrop a link from its Chinese-language search engine to its uncensored google.com

version.

A cable from the Beijing embassy marked as secret records that attempts to break into

the accounts of dissidents who used Google's Gmail system had been co-ordinated "with

the oversight of" the two politburo members.

The cyber assault was described to the Americans by a high-level Chinese source as

"100% political in nature" and having "nothing to do with removing Google... as a

competitor to Chinese search engines".

Last December Google said that it was hit by a "highly sophisticated and targeted attack

on our corporate infrastructure". Part of it was aimed at the Gmail accounts of "Chinese

human rights activists" – although in a statement released in January, Google said that

there was no evidence the hackers were successful. Shortly after the attack, Google

chose to abandon mainland China. It relocated to Hong Kong, where it was able to run

an uncensored version of its website in English and Chinese, ending an awkward

attempt to reconcile partial adherence to Chinese requirements with westerndemocratic values.

While Google and the US suspected leading Chinese politicians were behind the

hacking, neither the company nor the US government said so at the time. Diplomats

even discussed whether China's most powerful man, Hu Jintao, the president, or his

prime minister, Wen Jiabao, were "aware of these actions". The secret note sent back to

Washington concedes that "it is unclear" whether advance knowledge of the attack went

right to the top.

Google, whose motto is Don't Be Evil, entered China in 2006. In an attempt to gain

market share from local rival Baidu, it launched Google.cn, in which results relating to

Tibet, Taiwan and the Tiananmen Square massacre were among those filtered out.

Google retained a link to the unfiltered Google.com on its Google.cn website, which

prompted months of tension before the January incident. A cable from Beijing records

that Google was already sounding the alarm to the most senior American diplomat in

the country at the time.

Dan Piccuta, the US chargé d'affaires, was told how the prominent politician had

"recently discovered that Google's worldwide site is uncensored" after he "allegedly

entered his own name and found results critical of him". Shortly afterwards, according


ur 3 2010-12-5 11: 5



guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

to the cable, the Chinese government ordered "the three dominant SOE [state influence

enterprises] telecoms [companies] to stop doing business with the company".

However, that was not enough to persuade Google to back down. The US embassy was

told that "removing the link to Google.com is against the company's principles". It

refused to block access to Google.com.

China then upped its attacks on Google, according to another cable. A group of Chinese

internet users reported that Google China was "not effectively filtering pornographic

sites" and the Chinese government blocked access to Google for 24 hours.

The documents reveal a close relationship between Google and the US authorities in

China. In January, a few days after Google made the hacking public – without specifying

who it believed was responsible – Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, made a

speech in Washington entitled "remarks on internet freedom".

Clinton weighed in heavily on the side of Google, warning that "countries that restrict

free access to information or violate the basic rights of internet users risk walling

themselves off from the progress of the next century".

She called on the Chinese government to "conduct a thorough review of the cyber

intrusions" without revealing that it was her own officials who believed the attack was

co-ordinated from inside the Chinese politburo.


ur 3 2010 12 5 11: 5

wikileaks cables blame chinese government for google hacking

Documents