Google China insiders may have helped with attack

From CNET News.com: Google is looking into whether employees in its China office were involved in the attacks on its network that led to theft of intellectual property, according to CNET sources and news reports.

Sources familiar with the investigation told CNET last week that Google was looking into whether insiders at the company were involved in the attacks, but additional details were not known at the time.

Employees in the Google China office were cut off from internal networks after January 13; some staff members were put on leave and others were transferred, Reuters reported on Monday, citing unnamed sources.

Google representatives did not immediately respond to e-mails from CNET on Monday seeking comment, and had declined to provide comment to Reuters, as well.

Meanwhile, France has joined Germany in urging people to avoid using Internet Explorer until a patch is released to fix a hole that was used in the attack on Google and for which exploit code targeting that vulnerability has been published on the Web. The French security organization CERTA issued a statement warning IE users about the threat, following a similar advisory from Germany's federal security agency last week.

Google discovered a sophisticated and targeted attack on its network in mid-December that originated in China and also targeted what is believed to be at least 30 other companies--including Yahoo, Symantec, Juniper Networks, Dow Chemical, Northrop Grumman, according to sources and reports.

In the attack on Google, Gmail accounts of two people were targeted, but only limited information was exposed, Google said. Separately, accounts of Gmail users who were human rights activists were compromised somehow and had been breached, Google said.

Foreign journalists living in Beijing, including a TV reporter for the Associated Press, were among those who had their Google e-mail accounts hijacked, The New York Times reported on Monday. The settings on the accounts were changed so that e-mail sent to the journalists was forwarded to other addresses, the report said.

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