Yahoo email accounts hacked in China, Taiwan

BEIJING, CHINA: Yahoo email accounts of some journalists and other users whose work relates to China were compromised in an attack discovered this week, days after Google announced it would move its Chinese-language search services out of China due to censorship concerns.

Some journalists in China and Taiwan found they were unable to access their accounts beginning March 25, among them Kathleen McLaughlin, a freelance journalist in Beijing. Her access was restored on Wednesday, she told Reuters.

Andrew Jacobs of the New York Times in Beijing said his Yahoo Plus account had been set without his knowledge to forward to another, unknown, account.

In late 2009 and early this year, several human rights activists and journalists whose work related to China had similarly discovered their Gmail accounts had been set to forward to unfamiliar addresses, without their knowledge.

Google cited the Gmail attacks in January, when it announced a hacking attack on it and more than 20 other firms. Google cited those attacks and censorship concerns in its decision to move its Chinese-language search services last week to Hong Kong

Yahoo did not comment on the nature of the attacks, or whether they were co-ordinated or isolated incidents.

"Yahoo! condemns all cyber attacks regardless of origin or purpose," spokeswoman Dana Lengkeek said in an email response to a Reuters query.

"We are committed to protecting user security and privacy and we take appropriate action in the event of any kind of breach."

Google's announcement of the hacking attacks drew unprecendented outside attention to cyber-security and China's Internet controls, used to limit discussion of topics deemed sensitive or threatening to "social stability".

Sporadic disruption

On Tuesday, Internet users in mainland China were sporadically unable to conduct searches through Google's portal in Hong Kong, a disruption that Google attributed to changes in China's Internet filtering configuration.

Google said it was monitoring the situation but it appeared the access problem had been resolved. Access has been patchy since Google shifted to Hong Kong, underscoring the vulnerability of Google's business in the world's most populous country.

Very few of the other firms mentioned by Google in January as having been affected by the attack have publicly identified themselves.

A source at the time told Reuters that Yahoo knew it had been a target of attacks and discussed them with Google before Google went public.

Yahoo said at the time that it was "aligned" with Google's position, a statement that its Chinese partner, e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, called "reckless".

Unlike Google, Yahoo keeps some of its email servers in China. It was criticed by the U.S. Congress when it released to Chinese authorities information relating to the account of Shi Tao, a Chinese journalist who was then sentenced to 10 years in jail for revealing state secrets.