January 13, 2010
As Internet news outlets move on to the latest search engine bombshell — Google’s announcement that it might pull out of China altogether — China’s newspapers were still covering the news of yesterday’s hacker attack on Baidu.
The Oriental Guardian gets points for its eye-catching magazine-style cover design that puts a “Baidu hacked” keyword into a Google search box.
The article inside gives a minute-by-minute account of the attack, which replaced Baidu’s homepage with text reading “hacked by Iranian Cyber Army.”
Despite the cover image, the only significants mention of Google in the article itself are a quote from a Baidu user (“Baidu’s just easier to use. I always feel that Google’s search results don’t really fit the habits of Chinese people”) and speculation that the hack was engineered by Google lovers.
However, that notion is just one of ten possible explanations listed in the article. Others include:
- Although the Red Hacker Union struck back after the Baidu attack, netizens pointed out that the counterattack was on iribu.ir, a site of unknown provenance, not on the actual website irib.ir.
- Yesterday, Baidu had already secretly transferred its domain name inside the country. Whois data on Baidu does not yet show any updated information.
- On January 8, Baidu COO Peng Ye resigned for personal reasons, and there were other changes to Baidu’s executive lineup. It is hard not to imagine a connection to the subsequent large-scale attack.
- There is talk within the industry that such a large-scale, successful, sustained attack could not be the work of single individual, and organized crime cannot be ruled out.
Google’s announcement generated its own range of reactions, from the shocked to the to the critical to the cynical.
Further reading:
January 14, 2009
- Imagethief: Google detonates the China corporate communications script
- James Fallows: The Google news: China enters its Bush-Cheney era
- RConversation: Google puts its foot down
- ChinaYouren: What is going on with Google in China?
- China Hearsay: Google Threatens to Stop Following Censorship Rules. Is This A Joke?
- China Digital Times: “It’s Not Google that’s Withdrawing from China; It’s China that’s Withdrawing from the World” (translations of Twitter updates)
Update (2010.01.14): The Oriental Guardian followed up its Baidu-on-Google front page with a Google-on-Baidu edition, with “Google exits China” in a Baidu search box.
- Oriental Guardian (Chinese): Spectators on the Baidu tragedy
- Bumian’s blog (Chinese): Who suffers if Google exits China?