China Hacks Media and Activist Yahoo Emails

With Hu of China on his way to attend the non-proliferation summit, China scored another major publicity coup this week when it hacked journalist and other emails on Yahoo. Andrew Jacobs, among those hacked, reports:

In what appeared to be a coordinated assault, the e-mail accounts of more than a dozen rights advocates, academics and journalists who cover China have been compromised by unknown intruders. A Chinese human rights organization also said that hackers had disabled its Web site for five days in a row.

The infiltrations, which involved Yahoo e-mail accounts, appeared to be aimed at people who write about China and Taiwan, rendering their accounts inaccessible, according to those who were affected. In the case of this reporter, hackers altered e-mail settings so that all correspondence was surreptitiously forwarded to another e-mail address.

Not only were journalists in both China and Taiwan hacked, including people I personally know, but as the report notes, many others working on democracy and freedom issues in Taiwan and China-related areas were hacked. Also hacked were individuals of pro-Taiwan sympathies but who are not necessarily high profile about it. Certain listmembers of the China discussion list ChinaPol were hacked -- we cheeto-eating, pajama-wearing troglodyte bloggers are not allowed on that list, for it is where the great and powerful foreign policy experts confer, converse, and otherwise hob-nob with their brother experts about China policy. Yes, that's right, China hacked members of a list of people who influence the foreign policy of a number of western nations. Great move, Great Wallers. Many of those amenable to reason on China's place in the world must be wearing frowns this week. Yup, that demon that you guys thought could be safely confined to the pentacle of the international trade system? It isn't going to be held by incantations to Free Trade.
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