The New York
Times was the victim of an elaborate hacking attack from China,
according to a report
in Wednesday's Times. The attacks, which
have been on-going for the past four months, were apparently in retaliation for
an article
the Times published about the vast wealth accumulated by Chinese Prime Minster
Wen Jiabao's family.
Hackers first gained access to the Times's system on September 13th, but the breach
wasn't noticed until October 26th, the day after the article was published and
two days after the Times had asked
AT&T to monitor its network for any unusual activity. The paper first
became suspicious after receiving warnings from the Chinese government that, if
their investigation continued, they would "have consequences." It
wasn't until November 7th that the Times
realized the hackers were still in their network, at which point they hired
Mandiant, an outside computer security company, to investigate.
