Legal News

China and the Law: Did Chinese Hackers Attack LA Law Firm?

By Ashby Jones

In the midst of the Google/China flap comes a news report that an LA-based law firm may have been the target of a China-originated cyber-attack.

Gibson Hoffman & Pancione, which is representing a company suing China for allegedly stealing its software code, announced its computers have come under a cyber-attack that originated in the China and that the FBI is investigating the attempted intrusion. Click here for the WSJ story; here for the LA Weekly story.

Gipson Hoffman is representing Santa Barbara-based CYBERsitter in a $2.2 billion lawsuit against China that was announced last week. The firm has claimed that malicious emails that can unleash “Trojan” code enabling the takeover of its computers has been sent to some of its addresses. But the firm said it’s not clear if any of the attempts were successful. The firm stated:

Beginning Monday evening, attorneys at Gipson Hoffman & Pancione began receiving several targeted customized Trojan emails made to appear as if they were sent by other members of the firm. Unlike ordinary spam or virus emails, Trojan emails are specially constructed to retrieve data from the target’s computer and often allow the sender to gain access to the target’s computer or to the company’s servers. It has not yet been determined whether any of the attempts were successful.

The suit against China alleges that the People’s Republic’s “Green Dam Youth Escort” censorship computer programs — mandatory web filters that were later dropped by the government, illegally contained “over 3,000 lines of code from [CYBERsitter's] award-winning Internet content filtering software. . . ” according to a CYBERsitter statement.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on January 14, 2010 (boomark / email).