Attacks on Google, other US firms traced to two Chinese schools

Haryana saves more girls, but 9 districts fall behindComputers located in two Chinese schools, including one with close ties to the Chinese military have been traced for the series of online attacks on Google and dozens of other American corporations.

According to several people with knowledge of the investigation who asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the inquiry, the Chinese schools involved are Shanghai Jiaotong University and the Lanxiang Vocational School.

The attacks, aimed at stealing trade secrets and computer codes and capturing e-mail of Chinese human rights activists, may have begun as early as April, months earlier than previously believed, the New York Times quoted people involved in the investigation, as saying.

On January 12, Google had announced that it and other companies had been subjected to sophisticated attacks that probably came from China.

Evidence acquired by a United States military contractor that faced the same attacks as Google has even led investigators to suspect a link to a specific computer science class, taught by a Ukrainian professor at the vocational school.

Just a few weeks ago its students of Jiaotong, which has one of China's top computer science programs, has won an international computer programming competition, "Battle of the Brains", organized by I. B. M. the beating out Stanford and other top-flight universities.

Lanxiang is a huge vocational school that was established with military support and trains some computer scientists for the military in east China's Shandong Province. (With Input from Agencies)