Baidu goes amiss after invasion by hackers
By Zhu Shenshenand Wang Xiang |
January 13, 2010, Wednesday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
MILLIONS of Chinese Internet users were not able to see Baidu's home page for about four hours yesterday after it was hijacked by hackers in the United States.
It was the worst attack against China's biggest search engine since it was established more than 10 years ago.
When Netizens logged into Baidu in the morning they received a surprise - a logo of the "Iranian Cyber Army," a dark background and the flag of Iran.
Baidu.com Inc eventually restored service about 11am.
The Beijing-based company said its domain name, baidu.com, was overtaken by servers in the US, with the same method of attack used against Twitter last month.
"We apologize to our users and seriously condemn the behavior of attacking legal Websites," Baidu said in a statement delivered to Shanghai Daily last night.
Internet users said they found themselves navigated to an image showing an Iranian flag and a slogan saying "This site has been hacked by Iranian Cyber Army," when they entered the address of baidu.com in the morning.
Netizens have posted screen shots of the defaced Web page on online forums and created quite a buzz.
Baidu has about 70 percent of the online search market in China, where there are more than 350 million Netizens.
Baidu provides services including news browsing and searches, music downloads, video searches and online forums via Tieba.
The same group claimed responsibility for taking down US-based social network twitter.com last month.
The Iranian Cyber Army is reportedly an anti-US government group and why it attacked Baidu is a mystery.
"It has been the most serious Internet attack Baidu faced since it was founded (in 1999)," said an engineer at Beijing-based Rising, an Internet security firm.
Hackers managed to attack Baidu's domain name servers in the US and replaced its Internet address with another uniform resource locator, registering in the Netherlands, experts said.
Websites find it difficult to defend against such attacks and should upgrade security and their server systems regularly, according to Rising.
Other major search engines in China registered a 30-percent increase of page views while Baidu was down.
The incident led to a wave of "counterattacks" by some hackers reportedly based on the Chinese mainland.
By 2:30pm yesterday, at least three Iranian Websites were hacked and festooned with images of China's flag and various slogans.
However, no individuals or organizations in China have claimed responsibility.
People should stay calm and refrain from attacking overseas Websites in revenge, Baidu said in its statement.
It was the worst attack against China's biggest search engine since it was established more than 10 years ago.
When Netizens logged into Baidu in the morning they received a surprise - a logo of the "Iranian Cyber Army," a dark background and the flag of Iran.
Baidu.com Inc eventually restored service about 11am.
The Beijing-based company said its domain name, baidu.com, was overtaken by servers in the US, with the same method of attack used against Twitter last month.
"We apologize to our users and seriously condemn the behavior of attacking legal Websites," Baidu said in a statement delivered to Shanghai Daily last night.
Internet users said they found themselves navigated to an image showing an Iranian flag and a slogan saying "This site has been hacked by Iranian Cyber Army," when they entered the address of baidu.com in the morning.
Netizens have posted screen shots of the defaced Web page on online forums and created quite a buzz.
Baidu has about 70 percent of the online search market in China, where there are more than 350 million Netizens.
Baidu provides services including news browsing and searches, music downloads, video searches and online forums via Tieba.
The same group claimed responsibility for taking down US-based social network twitter.com last month.
The Iranian Cyber Army is reportedly an anti-US government group and why it attacked Baidu is a mystery.
"It has been the most serious Internet attack Baidu faced since it was founded (in 1999)," said an engineer at Beijing-based Rising, an Internet security firm.
Hackers managed to attack Baidu's domain name servers in the US and replaced its Internet address with another uniform resource locator, registering in the Netherlands, experts said.
Websites find it difficult to defend against such attacks and should upgrade security and their server systems regularly, according to Rising.
Other major search engines in China registered a 30-percent increase of page views while Baidu was down.
The incident led to a wave of "counterattacks" by some hackers reportedly based on the Chinese mainland.
By 2:30pm yesterday, at least three Iranian Websites were hacked and festooned with images of China's flag and various slogans.
However, no individuals or organizations in China have claimed responsibility.
People should stay calm and refrain from attacking overseas Websites in revenge, Baidu said in its statement.
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