China

The cyberattack that targeted banks, TV broadcasters, and an Internet service provider in South Korea yesterday originated from an IP address in China, but the identities of the people responsible remain unknown, South Korean regulators say.

"We've identified that a Chinese IP has connected to the organizations affected," a spokesman for South Korea's Communications Commission told a press conference on Thursday, according to a Reuters account of the event.

The revelation comes a day after a massive coordinated attack on servers in South Korea led officials to raise the alert status for the nation's army … Read more

IDC has revised down its monthly worldwide PC shipments data, citing a weakening Chinese market.

The research firm suggested a fall of as much as 2 percent to 7.7 percent year over year, based on the its previous figures. For the first quarter, PC sales worldwide could fall by "double digits" and face another decline in the second quarter, albeit less so.

While March figures will recover somewhat, it will not be enough to offset the losses in February.

China accounted for more than 21 percent of global shipments in 2012, but suffered due to the timing … Read more

Widely followed Chinese commentator Kai-fu Lee, a former Google and Microsoft executive, took to Twitter today to lay out just how often his blog posts get censored.

Turns out, it's quite often.

Lee, who ran Google's China division and founded Microsoft's China research lab before that, is now an investor in China. He speaks out regularly about censorship in China and recently encouraged his 30 million followers on the Chinese social-networking site Weibo to follow him on Twitter.

Today, Lee tweeted to those followers that his posts have been deleted dozens of times during the last year. … Read more

The U.S. and China both say they want to directly discuss the issue of cybersecurity, but the odds of an open discussion are slim at best.

The Chinese government today responded to a U.S. invitation to enter into a dialogue with the U.S. over acceptable behavior in cyberspace, Reuters reported.

At a daily news briefing, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chuying said that "China is willing, on the basis of the principles of mutual respect and mutual trust, to have constructive dialogue and cooperation on this issue with the international community including the United States to maintain … Read more

The White House warned China today to end a campaign of cyberespionage against U.S. companies, saying in its toughest language yet on the issue that the hacking activity threatens to derail efforts to build stronger ties between the two countries.

U.S. companies are increasingly complaining that intellectual property is being stolen through attacks "emanating from China on an unprecedented scale," Tom Donilon, the president's national security adviser, said during a speech at the Asia Society in New York.

"The international community cannot afford to tolerate such activity from any country," Donilon said. "… Read more

National governments are increasingly purchasing surveillance devices manufactured by a small number of corporate suppliers and using them to control dissidents, spy on journalists, and violate human rights, the advocacy group Reporters Without Borders warns in a new report released this afternoon.

The group's 2013 report for the first time names five private-sector companies "Corporate Enemies of the Internet" for their choice to become "digital mercenaries" and sell surveillance and censorship technology to authoritarian regimes.

"If these companies decided to sell to authoritarian regimes, they must have known that their products could be used … Read more

It's no secret that the Chinese government is spying on its own citizens, and censoring what they see and access online. But for major players in the technology industry, such as Microsoft, a foothold in the lucrative Chinese market is worth bowing down to certain ethical considerations that would not ordinarily pass in the Western world.

One U.S. student has shown that, amid rumors that Skype is not as secure or as private as it is believed to be, the Chinese authorities are able to snoop and censor text-based conversations for active censorship and surveillance purposes. 

A … Read more

Watch out, Google: Android is under scrutiny in China.

The Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology today released a white paper that takes aim at Google's Android operating system. The ministry said that Android's popularity has caused the country to become "too dependent" on the operating system. And although other companies have tried to build on top of Android, the ministry complained that the operating system's "core technology and technology road map is strictly controlled by Google."

Reuters was first to obtain the white paper and report on it.

Android's popularity … Read more

China has accused the U.S. for most of the cyberattacks launched against its military networks.

In a statement released today, China's Ministry of National Defense said that cyberattacks against its military sites have increased over the past few years. Based on checks of IP addresses, the Defense Ministry claimed an average of 144,000 cyberattacks per month last year, according to Reuters.

And it fingered the U.S. for almost 63 percent of them.

The allegations from Beijing come hot on the heels of a recent report from U.S. security firm Mandiant, linking the Chinese army to cyberattacks … Read more