31 March 2010 | Author: D. Warburton Search Copywriter

New cyber attacks target Yahoo! in China

Internet giant Yahoo! has been the target of a new outbreak of cyber attacks originating in China and Taiwan, targeting the e-mail accounts of international journalists working in the countries.

The eight confirmed attacks on Yahoo! accounts were reported by the Foreign Correspondents' Club of China (FCCC), a Beijing-based press association that has criticised Yahoo! for failing to reveal details of the incidents to those affected.

A spokesperson told the news agency: "Yahoo has not answered the FCCC's questions about the attacks, nor has it told individual mail users how the accounts were accessed."

The BBC reports that one of the journalists affected was Irish Times correspondent Clifford Coonan, who received an error message when he tried logging into his Yahoo! account earlier this week. Mr Coonan said: "I don't know who's doing it, what happened. They [Yahoo!] haven't given any information, but it seems to be happening to journalists and academics in China, so that's why it's a little suspicious."

Yahoo!'s only statement on the matter was that the company is "committed to protecting user security and privacy." Yahoo! previously supported Google in publicly condemning the Chinese cyber-attacks that affected its rival in December, causing the company to face criticism from its Chinese owners the Alibaba Group due to the lack of evidence available at the time. Yahoo! never revealed whether it had itself been a target of the original attacks, and is remaining similarly tight-lipped about the latest incidents this time around, despite the evidence.

Yahoo! is a strong supporter of online freedom and security, having recently supported Google in opposing Australia's web censorship plans, but the company may be wary of taking action against China following the Google situation.

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