The Inquirer reports Chinese Internet users found themselves unable to access websites including CNN.com and Yahoo.co.jp, key news sites that are popular with Chinese readers. Instead, users were redirected to software site wpkg.org and travel website ptraveler.com.
Wpkg.org is the official website of a Windows program for automated software deployment, capable of installing software packages onto a computer in the background and designed for use by system administrators. The site is reported to have “no idea” about why traffic was directed to it.
The China Daily cited experts from the National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team Coordination Centre (NCNERTTCC). Apparently, some Chinese web servers were infected by malware originating from abroad. This caused the redirection experienced by Internet users.
An official is said to have told the China Daily that the attack was aimed at Chinese telecom carriers and that the damage done to China’s Internet infrastructure could not be immediately estimated.
Reuters report that the China Daily was told by experts that it may prove difficult to find the source of the attack. The servers are likely to have been controlled remotely so that no trace of the presence of the hackers was left. Currently, nobody has claimed responsibility for causing the mysterious outage.
China vigilantly polices access to the Internet to ensure that it cannot be used to spread beliefs at opposition to the reigning Communist rule. Services including Facebook and Twitter are inaccessible in the country, despite repetitive attempts to bypass “The Great Firewall” of China.
It is unusual for China to be on the receiving end of a cyber attack. Usually, the news is filled with claims that Chinese hackers attacked Western infrastructure but it looks as though it could be the other way round in this case.
