251,287 US diplomatic cables were leaked in the latest round of Wikileaks documents and some of them point to China’s politburo as being behind attacks on Google. This has long been suspected, of course, and is the source of much tension between Google and the Chinese government. The New York Times spells it out –
A global computer hacking effort: China’s Politburo directed the intrusion into Google’s computer systems in that country, a Chinese contact told the American Embassy in Beijing in January, one cable reported. The Google hacking was part of a coordinated campaign of computer sabotage carried out by government operatives, private security experts and Internet outlaws recruited by the Chinese government. They have broken into American government computers and those of Western allies, the Dalai Lama and American businesses since 2002, cables said.
One of the weirder sidelights to this story is the allegation that the Chinese attack was instigated after a member of the politburo Googled his own name, found articles critical of him, and then swore revenge.
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