Several years ago, Google made the decision to move into China and caved in to filtering certain search terms. There were many in the tech community that raised their voices – after all, Google’s corporate motto is “Don’t Be Evil”. Many people decried the censorship as evil.
Personally, I always figured it was a way for Google to get their foot in the door with China, like they stated in their blog. After all, some sort of western presence in China was better than none.
Now things have changed drastically. Apparently, China has been doing a little technical espionage, and targeting Google and other companies. According to Google, they have been targeting specific user accounts.
In something that I think might be unprecedented – Google is firing back at the Chinese government. This obviously presents a financial growth danger to Google, and potentially puts Google’s whole Chinese business in jeopardy. Nice to see a company grow the proverbial “set of nuts”. Go Google.
Oh yeah, did I mention that the exploit is reported to involve a combination of social engineering and a serious flaw in Internet Explorer – imagine that!