Chinese Cyber-Attack Said to Be Part of Vast Espionage Campaign

The cyber-attack that prompted Google to threaten to remove its service in China was part of a concerted espionage campaign against American financial, corporate, defense and research institutions, the Washington Post reports. At least 34 companies, including Yahoo, Symantec and Dow Chemical, were hit, along with human rights groups and Washington-based think tanks that work on human rights issues in China.

Google said the Gmail accounts of human rights activists in the United States, Europe and China were compromised, igniting the search giant's threat to shutter services in China.

The attacks, presumed to be carried out by hackers working for the Chinese government or military, showed a new level of sophistication and highlighted what the Obama administration has called an intensifying cyber-threat. The standoff between Google and China touches on some of the most contentious issues between the United States and China, and the attacks are quickly creating a diplomatic rift.

"The recent cyber-intrusion that Google attributes to China is troubling, and the federal government is looking into it," White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said. He added that President Obama made Internet freedom "a central human rights issue" on his trip to China last fall. News of Google's threat to leave the country was heavily censored throughout China; only a harsh editorial calling the company a "spoiled child" appeared in the state-run People's Daily.