Lawyers who filed a lawsuit against the Chinese Government on behalf of a US software company over alleged theft of software code that was used in state-mandated filtering software, was reportedly targeted by a phishing attack that has also targeted Google.
A recent security attack on Google and Google services, which it is claimed originated from China, has prompted the search engine giant to consider ending its activities in the country and now law firm Gipson Hoffman & Pancione, working on behalf of Solid Oak Software, has also reported being targeted.
The company is currently filing a lawsuit against the Chinese government after claiming that source code used in one of its software programmes has been stolen and be used in the government mandated Green Dam software that was included with all PCs sold in mainland China between July and August 2009. The software is used on all PCs in schools, internet cafes and public locations but home and business users are now no longer obliged to use the software. The lawsuit is worth around $2.2bn.
The company reported that employees were receiving emails, all of which carried Trojans, which were made to appear as if they were sent by other members of the firm.
The attack follows Google’s announcement on Tuesday that hackers it believed were acting on behalf of China attacked the defences of 34 large companies, including Google and Adobe. Google has since pledged to stop honouring the Chinese government’s demands to filter search results on Google.cn or pull out of China altogether, a market thought to be worth around $1bn.
