China has rejected Google's accusations that it is behind a wave of high-level hacking attacks and said its critics had "ulterior motives" in trying to blame the government in Beijing.
On Wednesday the search company revealed that Chinese hackers have stolen the Gmail login details of hundreds of senior US and South Korean government officials, as well as Chinese political activists – although China has rejected accusations it is behind the attacks, suggesting critics had "ulterior motives" in trying to blame the government in Beijing.
China's rebuttal came after it emerged an independent blogger had broken news of the wave of attacks on her "personal interest blog" over three months ago.
Google has warned the victims of the "phishing" scam and made a public statement about the threat. The US company said it could not say for sure who was responsible, but it traced many of the attacks to Jinan, the capital of Shandong province and a suspected centre of cyber espionage.
"The issue of attribution and knowing whether a state or non-state actors are involved is a huge problem in cybersecurity," Christopher Painter, coordinator for cyber issues for the state department, said on the sidelines of a cybersecurity conference in London. He declined to comment further on the Google claim.
A spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry said it was unacceptable to blame Beijing.
"Hacking attacks are an international issue. China is also a victim," Hong Lei told a regular press conference. "The so-called statement that the Chinese government supports hacking attacks is a total fabrication out of nothing. It has ulterior motives."
In a seperate development it emerged Mila Parkour, an IT worker and blogger, had revealed the scam on her Contagio blog on 17 February this year.
Parkour, who is based in Washington DC, wrote that the method used – called "spear phishing" – was "far from being new or sophisticated", but described it as "particularly invasive". Her description of how the attack works matches accounts of the attack on Google.
"Victims get a message from an address of a close associate or a collaborating organisation/agency, which is spoofed," she wrote.
"The message is crafted to appear like it has an attachment with links like View Download and a name of the supposed attachment. The link leads to a fake Gmail login page for harvesting credentials."
Parkour, who writes under a pseudonym, told the Guardian: "I just shared my analysis, hoping it might help others.
"I did not officially notify Google as it was not a new type of attack," Parkour said. "I did a mini research and analysis and posted the findings as I heard it happened to other people in the military and the US government.
"I did not realize it had as many victims as [Google] made it sound on their post."
This is not the first clash between the world's biggest search engine and the world's biggest censor. In January 2010 Google said it would no longer censor its China-based search engine in accordance with government demands, in response to the China-based intrusions into the accounts of human rights activists. The Chinese authorities have since withdrawn the licence for Google's mainland-based search operations.
Late last year diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks revealed that Google had raised its concerns with the US embassy and a "well-placed" contact had said the targeting of Google was "100% political".
The computer security firm McAfee has alleged that China-based attackers made "co-ordinated, covert and targeted" intrusions into the systems of five major oil and gas firms to steal proprietary information.
Last month the human rights website change.org said it had been repeatedly targeted by hacking attacks from China after launching an online campaign for the release of the artist Ai Weiwei.
The perpetrators and motives remain unclear, though Google's naming of Jinan as the origin is consistent with the assumptions behind previous investigations by security experts.
Last year the New York Times named Lanxiang vocational school in Jinan as one of two educational institutions linked to the so-called Aurora attacks against Google.
The school, which is about 250 miles south-east of Beijing, offers many technical subjects, including computing. It has repeatedly denied any involvement in the hacking attacks.
Contacted on Thursday, the school rejected the latest accusations. "We have nothing to do with this event," said a woman at the school office who declined to give her name. " How can we have such high technology or such elite students? It's impossible."
Chinese computer experts cautioned against drawing quick conclusions.
"It is very hard to say this is a problem caused by any one country. China is also sometimes a victim," said Song Jiaxing, a professor in the computer department of Tsinghua University. "What this certainly shows is that security measures are inadequate. It's like operating a goldmine without sufficient locks."
