Baidu briefly falls victim to hackers
- Source: Global Times
- [02:49 January 13 2010]
- Comments
By Xie Ying
China's top search engine Baidu was apparently hacked Tuesday morning by people who referred to themselves as the Iran Cyber Army.
Some Internet users in China said they were unable to access the search engine starting at about 7:30 am. Users in Beijing and several provinces including Liaoning, Jiangsu, Sichuan, Anhui, Guangdong and Hubei had problems, the China News Service reported.
An hour later, Internet users saw a page with a dark background and the flag of Iran. The words "Iranian Cyber Army" appeared on that page.
Li Yanhong, the search engine's CEO, wrote on the website's tieba.com Tuesday, saying that the attack "is unprecedented."
The search engine said the service resumed at noon, but were unable to confirm that Iranians were behind it, the news agency reported.
Baidu apologized to Internet users through emails, and explained that one of its domain name www.baidu.com was hacked. It said it continued to provide service with its other domain www.baidu.com.cn during the attack.
Baidu could not be reached for comment.
Mohammad Ali Ziaei, a press counselor at the Iranian embassy in Beijing told the Beijing News Tuesday that he did not know of the attack and even if the attack was conducted by Iranians, they did not represent the government. "We ourselves are also annoyed by these hackers," he said.
It appeared that some Chinese Internet users took retaliation against Iranian websites.
A member of Honker Union of China (HUC) sent a photo to the Global Times of what was an attack of the Iranian website room98.ir but it was unclear who was behind it.
The screenshot showed a black page with China's national flag and several English sentences that said, "This morning your Iranian Cyber Army intruded our baidu.com. … This is a warning."
The screenshot was signed by a member from Honker Union for China, which is not the same as Honker Union of China.
Lin Lin, leader of a Chinese hacker group Eviloctal Security Team, told the Global Times that the attack on Baidu did not involve the use of the best technology and imposed no risk to the company's server.
Lin expressed concern that someone might have attacked Baidu just for fun.
"I don't think it is Iranian hackers that attacked Baidu," he said. "I find no reason why Iranian hackers want to attack Baidu."
